Corner of the eye

[Loc-Dog]

How come you can always see "further" in a game at the corner of the screen?

Take these pics as an example:

Center of view
Corner of the eye

See, when you're looking directly at the island, you cant see it. But when you turn away, you can. It's like this in every game i've played. From HL2 to Battlefield, but not in older games like HL1.

What's the deal with this?

 

[Sulkdodds]

How odd.

It's a conspiracy!

 

[StardogChampion]

Yeah I've always noticed that. Mostly in games with distance fog. In UT games it's really noticable.

 

[Evo]

Happens a load in BF2 too

D:

Annyoing as f**k i must say

 

[NJspeed]

It's not only distance, but close up items too. A lot of the times in games like Doom and Quake, there's text that's too blurry to read in the center of your screen, but put it off in the corner and you can read it perfectly.

Very odd, yes.

 

[Shakermaker]

Yeah, I had this in multiple games. The Unreal engine does this, BF2 has it, FarCry apparently .... No answers?

 

[Sulkdodds]

Maybe it's something to do with how the game renders things. With the first screenshot, you're looking directly into the distance where there's nothing to block anything that might be over there. There's the possibility to see more so it has to render less (if you see what I mean). On the second screenshot he's looking at something closer to home that blocks anything behind it, so the engine's able to render the far-away land after all because it's only at the corner of the screen.

 

[Loc-Dog]

Yeah I've always noticed that. Mostly in games with distance fog. In UT games it's really noticable.

Maybe its because of bad programming in the distance fog. Maybe the fog is only rendered within a certain field of view.

At the center of the screen where the fog is rendered, the effect works nicely. But at the edge of the screen maybe the fog isnt rendered as well, so you see objects better.

 

[boglito]

Maybe its because of bad programming in the distance fog. Maybe the fog is only rendered within a certain field of view.

At the center of the screen where the fog is rendered, the effect works nicely. But at the edge of the screen maybe the fog isnt rendered as well, so you see objects better.

It's because the most efficient (simplest) way to calculate fov and draw-distances is using a triangular "footprint", not a circle-segment. (lok-dawg drew a circle-segment, but I suppose that they use triangles instead.) That would explain this effect since the drawdistance would be shorter in the center if the footprint is a triangle.

.bog.

 

[Vegeta897]

Ahh, I understand now. The fog wall around you isn't a half-circle, it's just a flat wall, so the edges of the wall are further from you, allowing you to see more on the sides.

 

[Asuka]

Interesting. Never noticed this.

 

[AmishSlayer]

Well I know in real life you can see better in the dark if you look a little away from the object in question...but not during the daylight like that

 

[Loc-Dog]

Ahh, I understand now. The fog wall around you isn't a half-circle, it's just a flat wall, so the edges of the wall are further from you, allowing you to see more on the sides.

Good explenation. It should be a circle instead though. I dont think it would raise system requierments at all, its just lazy developers.