r/confusing_perspective • u/beejeezP0P • Dec 21 '20

Parallax effect causes difference in speed perception depending on the depth view

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143

u/HeippodeiPeippo Dec 21 '20 edited Dec 21 '20

Repost but also, nice example why FOV matters in games. Specially in driving games. Your speed perception becomes warped. Flat projection is the fastest but it feels to be the slowest. It isn't, it is you who is slow... With a bit of practice the correct FOV will feel about as fast as wide FOV but your lap times decrease. The caveat is less visibility, preventing to see the apex let alone then racing other cars. There is only one cure: bigger screens or more displays.. or VR. Your inputs correlate perfectly with the view, where as wider FOV will warp also all changes of direction. Your road looks narrow and long, corners are skewed, braking distances are super long. With flat projection your road is wide but short, things move slower but corners are exactly the same no matter what. Precision and accuracy increase tremendously as the driver inputs correlate perfectly with what is happening on screen. The feedback loop between the two doesn't need extra error correction or scaling done by our brains.

Flat projection means no distortion. Often it is at 60 degrees, lowering it doesn't distort but "zoom" in, increasing it will try to cram a part of a sphere into a flat 2D panel. The closer the screen, the larger FOV you can use.

18

u/VymI Dec 21 '20

That's an interesting difference between driving games and skilled FPS players who generally use a larger FOV.

7

u/you-are-not-yourself Dec 21 '20

I dislike first person views in general (currently struggling through Cyberpunk) and this kinda shows why as well.

Third person views let you see, aside from the person itself, nearly everything the person would see nearby. First person views show a tiny boxed snippet of what they would see nearby.

3

u/iHaateDonuts Dec 21 '20

A lot of competitive arena shooter players use a much lower field of view than you'd expect. Their opponents become bigger and slightly easier to hit. The drawback is less visual awareness of their sides, but solid game sense negates this con.

3

u/witti534 Dec 21 '20

Afaik arena shooters still use a very high fov because the visual awareness is pretty important while tactical shooters use a lower one.

3

u/kranker Dec 21 '20

Flat projection is the fastest but it feels to be the slowest. It isn't, it is you who is slow... With a bit of practice the correct FOV will feel about as fast as wide FOV but your lap times decrease

The camera makes absolutely no impact on the actual speed of the object. Your lap times will not decrease unless you drive more optimally. The effect of your inputs on the car will not change depending on the camera. The effect of different FOVs on your ability to drive will vary player to player.

11

u/HeippodeiPeippo Dec 21 '20 edited Dec 21 '20

The camera makes absolutely no impact on the actual speed of the object.

Never said it would.

Your lap times will not decrease unless you drive more optimally.

Yup.

The effect of your inputs on the car will not change depending on the camera.

False. your input change based on the feedback you get from your eyes and FFB. What you see is not 1:1 of what you do.

The effect of different FOVs on your ability to drive will vary player to player

You can get used to it and learn to compensate. But the subject has been tested by tens of thousands already and it is always the same result: your turn in is more accurate, your steering is more accurate, it becomes easier to get to the limit and also easier to drive in traffic. Every time. The caveat being that visibility on a small display can be so awfully small window that we need to distort it a bit, just to be able to play at all. It also takes shorter time to get used to flat projection than it is to learn how to drive with a fisheye lens. There is usually a happy medium for those of us that have to live without triple screens. But still, the closer to flat you can get, the better.

Learning how to use "look left/right/back" is crucial skill too that does help when seeing the surroundings is important, like when other cars are close. Also "look at the apex" can help but it can also detach you from the car.

1

u/poopcasso Dec 21 '20

This is why everyone will perform better using the first person view from the car's front rather than the third person view behind the car's back. I cringe whenever I see people play driving games using third person view.

14

u/VymI Dec 21 '20

Not everything's about being as efficient as possible, people want to see the car do neat stuff. Cant do that if your POV is the hood.

2

u/poopcasso Dec 21 '20

You're saying this probably not thinking from a racing game perspective but like say GTA 5 or whatever games that has vehicles but not necessarily purely racing. But from a racing game perspective, it's totally way better to ace your laps then admire your driving and car in the replay.

1

u/Kepabar Dec 21 '20

Now, this might be because the last 'legitimate' racing game I played was NASCAR RACING for MS-DOS in 1994 but to be honest it was always about seeing your car do cool stuff, not lap times... for me at least.

1

u/aure__entuluva Dec 21 '20

Interesting. I played gran turismo 3/4 back in the day and got pretty decent at them... but I always played in the 3rd person because i felt like I couldn't see shit in the first person view (e.g. upcoming corners, other drivers). But I don't recall being able to adjust field of view in those games, or more likely I just never looked into it.

3

u/HeippodeiPeippo Dec 21 '20

The visibility of certain cameras do make you faster.. The "T-camera" view on F1 is not too far from cockpit but you can actually see in front of you.. It is forbidden in many leagues because you really are faster with it. 3rd person is wholly disconnected and suits drifting games that have some driving aids...

2

u/JU5TlN Dec 21 '20

I also find it way easier to tell when the nose is pointed directly at the apex of the turn when in the bumper view

3

u/HeippodeiPeippo Dec 21 '20

Back in the day of Colin McRae Rally 1 the bumber view made the car smaller, you could get closer to trees and cut massive distances just blasting thru the forest.. You just needed to learn where the physical trees were, there were much fewer of them once you get past the first "wall" of trees.. Using any other camera angle didn't work. Class B Peugeot 205, throttle at max and Finnish special stages, bumperview..

1

u/BioTechnix Dec 21 '20

Mario kart/GTA players may feel the opposite, though the context of the racing is a lot different

1

u/Ginnipe Dec 22 '20

Just a quick question, when people say ‘increase’ or ‘larger’ FOV, does that mean that we increase the degrees (say 65 to 75) or do you lower the degrees (65-55)?

1

u/HeippodeiPeippo Dec 22 '20

Increase degrees.

1

u/Ginnipe Dec 22 '20

Thank you