I come bearing FOV news from 4A.
We're aware the community have been asking for a 'Field of View' slider for Metro: Last Light. Unfortunately, this was not as simple a thing to implement as it might appear!
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.
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.
We had considered offering three FOV pre-sets, but this would still require significant work to re-do every animation, adjust the HUD and UI and other seemingly small but incredibly time consuming tasks.
Even with a wider but still fixed field of view, Artyom's hands would look too far away. We know - we tried.
Game performance is also tied to FOV - the amount of geometric detail we put in each scene has been partly determined by this set FOV, and setting a wider FOV would have a performance impact.
We understand this issue is important to many people, and we have been looking at possible solutions.
In the immediate term - the next title update, due in the next few days will allow you to directly change the FOV in the .cfg files.
This may well trigger a number of issues listed above - you have been warned!
- 4A Games
That's nice.
But I don't care (I mean, I do, about the fix, but not about the reasoning).
I get headaches playing games with FOVs narrower than 90. Generally, my comfort zone, on my 27" monitor, is at 110 degrees, whilst it's at 90 for my 17", 1600*900 laptop.
Truth be told, I'm kind of getting, well, genuinely aggravated at developers who
continually do this. In Valve's case, they've quite literally
removed the FOV slider from their most recent games. Other developers have had improper FOV support, like Arkane, but they've gone on to fix it. Some just leave tweaks in there for the players, like Bethesda (but it resets every time I save, and doesn't seem to take affect if I edit the inis).
Seriously, guys, focus on helping all of us people with headache issues before worrying about other stuff, would you? I'd super appreciate it. It's literally, like, the first and most important thing in any first-person game out there.
In a third-person game, back the camera up, like in the older games. Let me see my
feet again, and help me not have headaches. Please. That'd be nice--really, genuinely nice, no sarcasm.
/rant over
