Annoying Elongated Views on Side of Screen?

[SPL Tech]

In two games, Battlefield 4 and Doom, I noticed that the dimensions of objects on the screen change dramatically depending on where on the screen they are being rendered. For example, if I look at a square garage door in the middle of my screen, it does in fact look like a garage door. However, if I move my character so the object is at the edge of the screen, that garage door elongates beyond what occurs in real life.

 

[JrClocker]

It's like using a "wide angle lens" for taking pictures...sometimes called the "fisheye" effect.

Has to do with your FoV (Field of View) setting in the game. You should be able to change these.

 

[Bishoff]

Yup, FOV. You should have an adjustment (normally a slider) to adjust this.

 

[bob4933]

Stole this from someone on reddit (crazydave33):

I was just about to ask this. Yeah it's pretty narrow FOV either 60 or 70 FOV. Too narrow in my opinion. I can't play for more than 4 games or else I get a headache. Anyone know how to enable the console? It is it -console in the launch properties and enter the command for FOV?

EDIT Ok I figured it out. Go into steam launcher properties and add +com_AllowConsole 1

Then go into the game, press CTRL+ALT+~ and it will open up the console

The type g_fov and a nbr.

I have mine as g_fov 120. That seems to be the cap.

Oddly it said the default is 90 FOV but it doesn't seem to be 90 in game.

 

[SPL Tech]

Yea, it's set to 130 FOV. I dropped it to 90 and it eliminates this effect, but in essence "zooms in" on the screen and displays far less material. It's kind of a lose/ lose situation. A low FOV means you cant see stuff around you, a high FOV means you get this annoying screen warp.

 

[JrClocker]

It means the graphics engine wasn't optimized to run at the aspect ratio of your monitor.

Welcome to gaming in the 3%!

Check out http://www.wsgf.org

They have a large list of games and often have tweaks to get things looking correct...or at least better!

 

[Janus67]

It means the graphics engine wasn't optimized to run at the aspect ratio of your monitor.

Welcome to gaming in the 3%!

Check out http://www.wsgf.org

They have a large list of games and often have tweaks to get things looking correct...or at least better!

at least according to their sig they are running at 1080p.

FWIW, FOV has always been that way. Generally people that play competitive shooteres/etc ratchet up the FOV to a very high level. It distorts the periphery but allows you to see more. That's sort of the point, it's somewhat of a fish-eye effect.

 

[SPL Tech]

It means the graphics engine wasn't optimized to run at the aspect ratio of your monitor.

Welcome to gaming in the 3%!

Check out http://www.wsgf.org

They have a large list of games and often have tweaks to get things looking correct...or at least better!

Im running 1080p 16:9 on a TV. Pretty standard aspect ratio.

 

[JrClocker]

Hrm - you shouldn't have that at 16:9.

Is there a "zoom" setting? If there is, you can "zoom out" and lower the FOV to get less of the "fish-eye" affect...

 

[jediman]

The stretch is actually the (a?) completely correct way of rendering for the FOV set in the game. The game renders as if your tv is a window and it knows how far away from the window you are. How it "knows" how far from the window you are is the FOV setting. The issue is that the FOV that your monitor is subtending of your eyes is not the FOV that the game is rendering. At 90 degree FOV (fairly standard for a lot of games) at 6 feet from your tv you need a 12 foot wide (165" diagonal) display. If you had a display this large then, when you looked out to the edge (from a central sitting position 6 feet away), that stretched picture would look correct to you. If you have a 55" diagonal TV, ~2 feet is the distance you should be sitting to get an undistorted view of 90 deg FOV. With a narrower FOV the (correct) "error" doesn't look as bad. In the end it is a (normal) problem between the monitor and chair that you probably won't be able to fix satisfactorily because it is already correct. The best correction (other than sitting at the obnoxiously correct distance) I can think of is getting an oculus rift and "virtual desktop" and placing your virtual display's FOV equal to your game's FOV (in flat not curved screen mode).

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry one more thing to add. There could also be an issue of vertical vs horizontal FOV. If the ratios between these are not correct for the monitor aspect ratio then things will actually be wrong. I haven't don't the math but I think the ratio of FOV's should actually change as a function of one of them. If the games did this incorrectly, then things will actually be incorrectly stretched even if you are sitting in the right place.

 

[jediman]

Oh and I just remembered. There actually is a visual error in a lot of games as a result of this. The error is that they expect you to be at the wrong distance even if they have to render it as if you were at the right distance, so they make the parts of yourself you can see and the items in your hands exceptionally large so that they look correct for the distance you are actually at and not the distance you should be at for the right FOV. To check this on your (55"?) tv, stand 2 feet from the center at 90 deg FOV and hold your hand over the hand of the model if yours is much smaller they scaled up the model to the wrong proportions.