Simple question. Why is the FOV limited to 120 degrees?
I love trying to dream up the ultimate race rig. The most obvious element would be 'total' FOV. i.e. all of your field of view filled with track and cockpit provided by a cave type set up (as used by some quake nuts). Is there some reason that the FOV is limited, or did the devs just think nobody would want to use more?

Realistically it's very difficult to create a flat display that fills 120 degrees of your vision. Displays which are intended to fill your vision are usually curved and LFS will look deformed on these as it assumes it is drawing to a flat 'window' into the game world.

You won't be very happy with a higher FOV the way the image is rendered. Just as Bob said, the resulting image would be very distorted, and the maximum achievable FOV would be 180°, though that would look horrible already.

Ah, ok, I did try running a local network game with two of the clients acting as left and right views in spectator mode. It worked but there was a jumpy lag effect on the left and right views which was pretty distracting. Also, I wouldn't be very welcome taking up three slots on busy MP servers!

Yeah, maybe a 180° option would be nice. One can dream...

Quote from Bob Smith :

Realistically it's very difficult to create a flat display that fills 120 degrees of your vision. Displays which are intended to fill your vision are usually curved and LFS will look deformed on these as it assumes it is drawing to a flat 'window' into the game world.

Lots of people are talking about 3 monitor set ups. The current FOV options only allow for the monitors to be lined up as a flat display. So maybe there should be some kind of 'view distort' slider to allow for wrap around type displays.

I personally love using 120˚ view on my 2 monitor setup, Some people seem to think that it distorts the feeling of speed, but I think that it actually makes it feel better in comparison to 90˚ or lesser. Another plus is that you can see the mirrors. I think any more though would be overkill, but Kygetys has actually done a hack for his personal use to increase the FOV to 130 with his program to do software triplehead.

I guess you'd need some kind of fisheye rendering (example), or Scawen implements a feature to render three separate view angles and output them to different monitors. Both are rather resource hogging solutions.

Quote from AndroidXP :

I guess you'd need some kind of fisheye rendering (example), or Scawen implements a feature to render three separate view angles and output them to different monitors. Both are rather resource hogging solutions.

That fisheye rendering looks interesting. Is it a quake mod or a seperate program that could be used with LFS?

Would your second option take a lot of doing?

you dont really want 180° degrees FOV, do you?
http://don.vn.cz/temp/lfs/fovtest.jpg

^ That was the point I was trying to make

I think it would be nice to have like rFactor an option for surround gaming, in order to correct the distortion.

I do not see why LFS would look wrong on a curved display? So long as the FOV was lateral with a fixed verticle FOV it woudl be fine? Is the problem that the FOV when adjusted is affecting both the verticle and lateral axises of the view?

Quote from AndroidXP :

I guess you'd need some kind of fisheye rendering (example),

Very cool. Looks much more natural at high FOVs. Funny he says "apparently some people still play at 90 degrees", I always turn my FOV in FPS games down to 80 degrees. It just feels more real. With the fisheye rendering the image looks good up to about 180 degrees, which offers excellent vision. I'd imagine it would look somewhat weirder in a race sim though.

I play at much lower than 90 degrees too - I think that's just a quake specific thing as you can have quite a huge advantage if you can see what's going on around you, or even behind you. Doesn't really make much sense elsewhere, IMO.

Quote from Don :

you dont really want 180° degrees FOV, do you?
http://don.vn.cz/temp/lfs/fovtest.jpg

How did you do that? I tried to 'forcefully' change the FOV and it just snaps back to 40-120 range.

Hex or RAM editor I'd assume.

I borrowed a 2nd graphic card to test LFS with 3 screens, and it became obvious that 120° wasnt enough for that kind of rig. It gives me a much larger view, but the main screen displays a lot less than before, and it's quite disturbing.

I wish I could try with 140 or 150°...

Thanks for the Quake-FOV link.
I'd love to see some kind of a 'progressive fish eye'-view. The idea is that the center of the screen, where you measure distances and relative speeds, should be an almost unchanged flat projection, but the outside, where you want peripheral vision, is distorted to allow you to achieve a high field of view while maintaining maximum detail in the center of the screen.

Vain

I drive with three 22inch and 85° is what I like most. But it depends from car to car, I set it up so that the rear mirrors are on the side screens.

[img=http://img159.imagevenue.com/loc486/th_43398_PICT2095sm_122_486lo.JPG]

Quote from AndroidXP :

or Scawen implements a feature to render three separate view angles and output them to different monitors. Both are rather resource hogging solutions.

Scawen has answered that request in the past saying it would require a complete rewrite of the graphics system and was too much work...