Metro: Last Light Dev Explains Locked FOV

[Andy Chalk]

Metro: Last Light Dev Explains Locked FOV

4A Games says it will unlock FOV in the next Metro: Last Light patch but warns that messing with it could have some unexpected results.

Metro: Last Light seems to be doing quite well [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/10324-Metro-Last-Light-Review-A-New-Dawn] for itself with both gamers and critics, but one complaint to emerge from a certain number of players is that the FOV - that's field of view - is locked. It's not an issue for most people but FOV enthusiasts take the matter pretty seriously for a number of reasons, most commonly that the default field of view can cause varying degrees of motion sickness. The general feeling is that since it's not a big deal to add an FOV slider, every FPS should have one; but 4A Games says it's actually not quite that simple.

"The main reason for maintaining a fixed FOV is because we have 3D elements like the watch and weapon ammo that need to remain visible. In addition, all the game's first-person cut scenes and cinematics and each and every animation involving Artyom's hands - idle weapon animations, reloads, ladder climbing, melee attacks etc, - were created assuming the same, fixed field of view," the studio explained in a Steam forum post. "Changing the FOV would break all the cut-scenes and animations - you would be able to see inside Artyom's arms, or they would appear to float in the air in front of you. Or worse."

The team had considered including three FOV presets in the game but decided against it because of the significant amounts of work involved for less-than-ideal results and the detrimental impact on performance caused by the increased amount of geometric detail in a wider field of view. But now, acknowledging that this is a bigger deal than expected, 4A says it will give players what they want - for good or for ill.

"The next title update, due in the next few days will allow you to directly change the FOV in the .cfg files," the studio wrote. "This may well trigger a number of issues listed above - you have been warned!"

That's not necessarily the end of it, however: 4A described this as an "immediate term" fix while it looks at other possible solutions which will presumably also allow FOV adjustments in the console versions of the game.

Source: Steam [http://steamcommunity.com/app/43160/discussions/0/810924134080116088/]


Permalink

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I bet a mod will surface in about a week that fixes those scaling issues.

Really though you would think they should consider things like this early on. I mean they target a mature PC enthusiastic audience and ignore what historically upsets mature PC enthusiasts.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

I would prefer they made graphics settings more tweakable in-game. Not being able to play on ultra without motion blur is just weird. (seriously, who the fuck needs motion blur?)

 

[Mr.Pandah]

Regardless, I'm still stoked to play this today when I go home.

 

[Teoes]

Odd that it wasn't included before but then who knows what affects devs' decisions when it comes to designing the available graphics options? At least they're doing something about it now I suppose. But then..

..will Ranger mode be added in this patch too?

I know, I know - I'll see myself out. Still looking forward to splashing some cash on this game at some point.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

I've never had FOV affect performance, by like any degree whatsoever. Is this really an issue people have? Trading away a few FPS for 90 FOV?

Anyway, methinks that the 360 was the lead platform this time around. I haven't played Last Light, but when all of your animations and item/gun placements are based around 60 FOV or something (The Paper Towel Roll Telescope) it's usually a console being the lead platform. I could be talking out of my ass regarding this particular title, though.

 

[Clovus]

I've never had FOV affect performance, by like any degree whatsoever. Is this really an issue people have? Trading away a few FPS for 90 FOV?

Anyway, methinks that the 360 was the lead platform this time around. I haven't played Last Light, but when all of your animations and item/gun placements are based around 60 FOV or something (The Paper Towel Roll Telescope) it's usually a console being the lead platform. I could be talking out of my ass regarding this particular title, though.

Its impossible to have a console as a leading platform and have such graphics . Besides, FoV is 70.

That's what makes this so odd. The lead platform was obviously PC. PC gamers have different sized monitors and sit different distances from them, so FOV is pretty important.

A low FOV will not actually make me feel sick, but I definitely do feel like I have a box on my head or something. It pretty much makes everything just feel really wrong.

Their explanation seems pretty dubious. I guess the explanation is that when 3D elements like the watch are being used, they don't actually make physical sense. Like, in order to get the watch and arm into the section of the screen they wanted, it would make the character have crazy arms. So, instead the arms just float out in front of the character and if you mess with the FOV you'll see weird floating arms. That seems like a pretty dumb design issue from early on.

 

[Jorec]

Well at least they gave a... decent reason for not having an FOV slider and are kind enough to provide one if you have to change your FOV. They could have said fuck all about it and left people to bleed their eyes out.

Kudos for that.

 

[Undomesticated Equine]

Here is though for all the geniuses that go around saying how sloppy and lazy Metro devs were for not doing the animations for all possible FOVs.

Game development cost money and they wanted to save some by locking the FOV.

Also almost all FPS games use floating arms or weapons and will look weird with high FOV.

CoD with 120° FoV

Like, in order to get the watch and arm into the section of the screen they wanted, it would make the character have crazy arms. So, instead the arms just float out in front of the character and if you mess with the FOV you'll see weird floating arms. That seems like a pretty dumb design issue from early on.

So saying something like this makes you it look like you have no idea what are you talking about.

 

[Baresark]

I don't buy this excuse. I'm going to use Crysis 3 as an example. They had a separate FOV for the foreground (weapon and hands) than they did for the rest of the view. You could change the FOV but keep the gun and hands so it wasn't distorted. This seems like an obvious good decision when it comes to design.

That said, as someone who is usually bothered by low FOV, I am not getting that at all for this game. I'm not denying the FOV is low, but for some reason it's not bothering me this time around. Which is good because I love this game. At the same time, I'm looking forward to an FOV options.

Edit: I would like to point out that the exact same excuse was made by the developer of The Darkness 2, and when you forced the FOV higher it didn't have cut off floating darkness tentacles like they claimed it would. It's bad when a developer makes an excuse that the entire gaming community knows is complete bullshit.

 

[4RT1LL3RY]

Separate FOV for view models and world view is a normal thing that engines can handle. People want higher world view FOV, that doesn't mean you need to do much work, unless you are using world models as your first-person models.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Basically your engine is shit, everyone since Half-Life 2 knows to put the player model on a separate rendering cycle so the view can be changed freely without breaking the first person model/animations.

 

[Bravo Company]

I've never been able to notice a difference in FoV. Changing the FoV doesn't seem to make a difference to me in most games. What exactly does the FoV change? All I notice is how close/far the arms/gun seem to be from the character.

Default FoVs have always been fine for me and my friend, however my other friend who plays the same games we do, will occasionally complain about the FoV being too low and causing him to become nauseous. What am I not seeing here?

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

So the game suffers from the same shit that plagued the last one. Good to know. I couldn't play Metro 2033 because of how obnoxcious the FOV was and without a way to properly fix it.

 

[ABigCow]

Basically your engine is shit, everyone since Half-Life 2 knows to put the player model on a separate rendering cycle so the view can be changed freely without breaking the first person model/animations.

No, the engine is not shit because the hands are not in a separate render cycle. The game is designed around having the player's hands interact with the world, flipping switches and such. In order for that to happen, the hands need to have the same FOV as the rest of the world. This choice was probably made to make the world feel more immerse, removing gamelike elements like an onscreen hud, and switches that flip themselves.

The devs however, could have made the hands work well at different FOV's if they had concerned themselves about it during development.

 

[Kathinka]

I've never been able to notice a difference in FoV. Changing the FoV doesn't seem to make a difference to me in most games. What exactly does the FoV change? All I notice is how close/far the arms/gun seem to be from the character.

Default FoVs have always been fine for me and my friend, however my other friend who plays the same games we do, will occasionally complain about the FoV being too low and causing him to become nauseous. What am I not seeing here?

simply put, fov, field of view, is the angle of the vision "tunnel" that you look into the game world through. a higher fov means a wider field of view and vice versa. to simulate lowering your fov IRL, just hold your hands to the sides of your eyes to narrow the field of your vision. usually a higher fov is more desirable because obviously you will see more of what's going on. don't overdo it though or you get a weird fish-glass like effect. it does have it's problems.

now, games nowadays often tend to be console ports made with little effort. a console player will usually sit quiet a distance away from his monitor, so the monitor will take up, say, 20 degrees of your RL field of vision. the game-fov is, say, 60°, and all is fine.
now, same game, same 60° fov, but a PC-player. the PC player sits much closer to his monitor, the monitor takes, say, 90 degrees of the field of vision. however, you are looking only on 60 degrees of game world. this will make your brain go "woa woa WOA, what the hell is going on?" and will cause motion sickness in many people since the perceived fov of doesn't correspond with the actual portion of your vision it takes up.

 

[teebeeohh]

I've never been able to notice a difference in FoV. Changing the FoV doesn't seem to make a difference to me in most games. What exactly does the FoV change? All I notice is how close/far the arms/gun seem to be from the character.

Default FoVs have always been fine for me and my friend, however my other friend who plays the same games we do, will occasionally complain about the FoV being too low and causing him to become nauseous. What am I not seeing here?

high FOV basically gives your character peripheral vision. this is why horror games tend to have low FOV, it makes it easier for the developer to place monster just out of your field of view and while looking for them you will just be able to keep one in your field of view. games with 1st person melee mechanics are also terrible with FOV, i think because they want to simulate the kind of focused tunnel vision your character would have when fighting someone with your fists.

some people get motion sickness from low FOV, others don't. And some people just hate low FOV because if it's lower than what you are used to in real life it just feels weird and unreal. it's just silly if the highly trained super soldier get's shot by somebody standing slightly to his left because his eyes only work in extreme tunnel vision.
This is also a more serious problem with PCs since you usually play console games on a bigger screen and sit farther away.


and if i remember correctly dishonored had a similar problem in that increasing the FOV would result in you seeing past corvos magnificent cuffs and his arms would look really silly, especially when choking people.

 

[Woodsey]

I've never been able to notice a difference in FoV. Changing the FoV doesn't seem to make a difference to me in most games. What exactly does the FoV change? All I notice is how close/far the arms/gun seem to be from the character.

Default FoVs have always been fine for me and my friend, however my other friend who plays the same games we do, will occasionally complain about the FoV being too low and causing him to become nauseous. What am I not seeing here?

It affects peripheral vision, so how wide your view is of the world. It's nauseating because it feels like you're wearing blinkers with binoculars also strapped to your eyes and you feel like you can't see everything you'd naturally be able to.

It ranges from headaches to a general queasiness for me. A lot of people seem to get it and don't understand what's causing it.

and if i remember correctly dishonored had a similar problem in that increasing the FOV would result in you seeing past corvos magnificent cuffs and his arms would look really silly, especially when choking people.

Hm, scales to 100 degrees no problem.

Basically your engine is shit, everyone since Half-Life 2 knows to put the player model on a separate rendering cycle so the view can be changed freely without breaking the first person model/animations.

No, the engine is not shit because the hands are not in a separate render cycle. The game is designed around having the player's hands interact with the world, flipping switches and such. In order for that to happen, the hands need to have the same FOV as the rest of the world. This choice was probably made to make the world feel more immerse, removing gamelike elements like an onscreen hud, and switches that flip themselves.

The devs however, could have made the hands work well at different FOV's if they had concerned themselves about it during development.

It's actually far more immersion-breaking for me to feel my character glide slightly and be locked out for a few seconds every time they want to play an animation for a button. You're right though, their excuse is basically that they were lazy or, at the very least, absent-minded and didn't bother doing it during development.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

If my machine can run the first game well on low settings, since you can't adjust the actual settings individually, could mine run this game okay?

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

What is the FOV of this game anyway? I remember a few of my friends getting sick playing HL2, which was about 75 if I'm not mistaken? HL2 was fine for me, but anything less than that, started to make me feel ill, though only on longer gaming sessions. 3rd Person super narrow vision is also pretty difficult to watch, especially Resident Evil 6, boy was I glad they fixed that later on. Bit silly too keeping it so narrow, and together with the cruddy contrast/gamma that made some sections so dark you couldn't see a zombie 6 ft in front of you well made for cheap rather than any proper scares. Hope this game isn't like that.