With Blinders On

[1eyedjack]

When prompted by a friend about my gripe with the first person perspective, I needed very little time to come to a conclusion. If you took your hands and closed them into circles where your thumb meets your fingers and held them up to your eyes to exclude all peripheral vision, you would have a reasonable example of a common first person view in gaming today. A welding mask is even better, and if you've ever worn one you have a good idea of why it would be a bad idea to have a firefight with it on. If it isn't right in front of your face it might as well not even exist.

It doesn't necessarily detract from every game. In Portal I'm never worried about anything sneaking up on me and there's usually plenty of time to look around. Sometimes I'd like to see more of the puzzle but I understand the emphasis on perspective because that's what the game is about. There's a time and a place for it though.

I tried Dishonored but I just couldn't get over the first person view. It all felt so unnatural and frustrating. I'm sure that with practice and a constant quick loading and mental mapping of an area that I could declare myself god king of cool stealthy moves, but I kept thinking that the whole game would be vastly improved with a third person perspective. Then again you'd just call it Thief at that point.

In pretty much any multiplayer FPS there can be a party of enemies behind you dancing to the macarena and they may as well be on the other side of the moon for all it matters. I understand that things are loud in warfare but when things are quiet and no one is shooting each other I'm not so used to gunfire that I'm deaf to everything else. Spinning around every so often to check that I'm not being molested makes me feel awkward more than anything else.

In many "realistic military shooters" you can run up and slap a claymore behind someone, stick a knife in their back, have a tea party and they're none the wiser. There may be people that say that I'm whining because I lack awareness and to that I call shenanigans. I'm typically one of the bastards doing these things, but whenever I do it or it happens to me I just feel like this is just shoddy design.

It isn't just the "realistic" shooters. Anytime I think of one of the Spartans in Halo sneaking up on something I can only laugh. The equipment they are wearing has to make some sort of sound when they move and they weigh an obscene amount in that armor. Yet time and time again I can stick a knife into someone thinking to myself, "this is ridiculous" as I twist it.

I suppose it wouldn't be such an issue if there was more of a warning that someone was there. Not too much of a warning. If I'm bustling around in full riot gear lugging packs and ammunition my presence should be heralded by the clanking of equipment and my heavily laden footsteps. The only way I should be able to sneak up on someone like that is if they have their eyes pinned to a rifle and there is a lot of excess noise going on. Even then if I trod hard enough, there should be a vibration in the controller in time with my footsteps. Just enough to make sneaking a little harder instead of the cakewalk it is.

Still, I miss peripheral vision. I'm not saying that first person perspectives should go away entirely, but it just seems to be an arbitrary acceptable standard with no real basis on anything except tradition. I'm far more a fan of the third person perspective, and while I personally dislike COD and games of their ilk, I'd hate them far less if they dropped the first person.

Let me know your thoughts on the subject and any comments. I feel like this kind of thing rarely gets talked about.

P.S.
Also no, I don't like gears of war but that has nothing to do with the perspective.

 

[DoPo]

Wait, are footsteps gone from games nowadays? And the visual pain indicator? Dunno, I haven't really played many shooters lately.It used to be a common feature, though (hols Half-Life-ish) - footsteps would alert you for anyone close by, while if you're shot/hurt, you'd get a visual ndicator on the screen where did the "pain" come from - front, back, left, or right. It came in a form of a flashing (usually red) from the given direction.

 

[Zhukov]

I never found it that hard to look around every now and again.

 

[Bertylicious]

One of the best things one can do in a multiplayer FPS is stab a sniper in the back of the head. Snipers are the shooter equivilant of Jimmy Saville.

 

[krazykidd]

You do realise the noise of armor and ammunition rustling will become annoying after like 10 minutes right? Because if your enemy makes sound , you also much make sound . Then there is differenciatin the sound of your enemies and allies. Sound is a tricky thing , it can easily become annoying if not done perfectly .

Then there is the vision . First , people can look behind them ( obviously) and i know you aren't talking about that just had to mention it. Second if you are seeing something from the side of your eyes , it's hard to guage distance , when you are looking fowards , you do see what's to the side sort of but it is blurred since you aren't focused on it . I am no expert , but i suspect duplicating that effect in a game would no only be difficult , but not aesteticslly pleasing .

I do agree that footsteps should be easier heard , depending on the noise level , but some games with proper surround sounds does exactly this . To the point where you can hear the direction the footsteps are coming from.

 

[1eyedjack]

You do realise the noise of armor and ammunition rustling will become annoying after like 10 minutes right? Because if your enemy makes sound , you also much make sound . Then there is differenciatin the sound of your enemies and allies. Sound is a tricky thing , it can easily become annoying if not done perfectly .

Then there is the vision . First , people can look behind them ( obviously) and i know you aren't talking about that just had to mention it. Second if you are seeing something from the side of your eyes , it's hard to guage distance , when you are looking fowards , you do see what's to the side sort of but it is blurred since you aren't focused on it . I am no expert , but i suspect duplicating that effect in a game would no only be difficult , but not aesteticslly pleasing .

I do agree that footsteps should be easier heard , depending on the noise level , but some games with proper surround sounds does exactly this . To the point where you can hear the direction the footsteps are coming from.

I'm aware that the alternatives I provided aren't the best and I agree that sound can be rather difficult to streamline in a game. I disagree about the noise and ammunition rustling though. Personally I think it would add a deeper level of immersion and makes sneaking a little more risky. It certainly can't be any worse than NPC's screaming the equivalent of "shoot that guy," over and over again.

Rather than having a blur or anything of the ilke I'd much rather it was just not first person. This is why I'm an advocate for the third person perspective. There's a wider field of vision and it makes it more difficult to sneak up on a person. I agree wholeheartedly on the aesthetics of the blurred peripheral vision. It just doesn't work. I'm curious about any work done with VR goggles and the like because with the right screens that would be far closer to what I'd want in a first person. Not that I'm going to hold my breath or anything. Innovation is not the strong point of this industry.

I'm glad we agree on the footsteps and I've played a few games that have the right combination that makes this work. The problem is that those are few and far between while the usual run stab spunkgargleweewee reigns supreme.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Whilst not a true substitute for peripheral vision, a higher Field of Vision value does wonders for this little dilemma.

 

[Frezzato]

I have to agree with you. It would be great to have a 170+ degree field of view in games, but nobody seems to make them (or want them apparently) even with the prevalence of large, widescreen HDTVs. I figured I would just save up for a gaming PC with an Eyefinity card and couple three monitors (with ultra thin bezels) together.

​

Check out this Eyefinity demonstration video of Dead Space on YouTube. It looks so strange because it's a true video capture that you can't appreciate unless you have Eyefinity as well. All you see is Isaac in the middle screen and huge amounts of background graphics on either side.

 

[DustyDrB]

I do much prefer 3rd person, but I've learned to deal with the first-person perspective. Mostly due to gratuitous amounts of TF2.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

snip

First off, I think you are taking this way too seriously.

I've never had a problem with first person. Your fingers to thumbs in a circle thing is bogus. I did that, and then I did it with my hands' fingers together in a lab science goggle shape where if the sides were blacked out with no peripheral vision. The reason I say it is bogus is because when I do those things I actually see less then I normally see in all the first person games I've played(and I have played the Halos and some of the CoDs).

Also, those people that you are assassinating in Halo, are either not watching the radar or you are crouched and sneaking so you don't show up on their radar. Plus, you mention the sound of the armor, well, since it is futuristic armor, it probably has some kind of sound dampening tech on it. Oh, and some sound is made, I've heard the foot falls of enemy Spartans before, metallic sounds when in bases and outdoor sounds with footsteps on grassy grounds. I'm guessing your ears aren't keen enough to pick it up, or you aren't able to pick it out from the sound of random gunfire and explosions.

So I really don't know what to say, other then I guess that you are playing your first person games on some really weird settings or you aren't playing your games on a big enough screen.

One of the best things one can do in a multiplayer FPS is stab a sniper in the back of the head. Snipers are the shooter equivilant of Jimmy Saville.

Okay, I didn't know who that guy was, so I looked him up. After reading about him, I still don't get the relation you are trying to make.

I do get that your are trying to say that you don't like snipers. The problem I have is that you sound like you are trying to say that there is something wrong with snipers(which there isn't). Sniping as well as camping is a normal and accepted military tactic, really it is one of the only military tactics used in shooters. Because in this day and age, only untrained raw recruits think that a legitimate tactic is charging in guns blazing with no knowledge of enemy position or running head on face to face shooting.

 

[Tupolev]

It's primarily an issue of FOV, not just first-person versus third-person. Interestingly, third-person games often have a larger FOV than FPS titles on consoles; Gears of War is sporting roughly 90 degrees regardless of screen aspect ratio, while Halo 3: ODST has ~86 degrees 16:9 and ~70 degrees 4:3, Halo 3 has 70 degrees 16:9 and 55 degrees 4:3, and many console FPS are even lower.

The pulling back of the camera adds a little peripherical and rear vision, but it doesn't realistically give you all that much added time to respond to things by itself. If someone comes from right behind you to punch you in the back in Gears, that's only a very small fraction of a second extra time that you get to respond compared with an FPS. Obviously core game design is a relevant factor in how meaningful that is as well.

I have to agree with you. It would be great to have a 170+ degree field of view in games, but nobody seems to make them (or want them apparently) even with the prevalence of large, widescreen HDTVs.

Part of the problem with 170 degrees is that the typical linear projection that gets used in rendering systems weights peripheral area more and more as the field of view approaches 180 degrees. The way this projection situates things on the screen is that, if you sit so that a flat screen fills up degrees of your vision, displaying an image with an FOV of degrees projects the image "accurately" to your eyes. To make an image of FOV 170 lines up "properly" in this respect, you'd need to sit REALLY close to a REALLY large display.

Now, I don't want to exaggerate the important of FOV-matching in this manner; I always found that playing Halo 1's ~110-degree split-screen on a 16"-wide view from 8 feet away works just fine. However:

Spoiler: Marathon with its default FOV of 80

Spoiler: Same spot but FOV set to 170

This just isn't going to be okay on typical displays of non-hilarious resolutions, sizes, and viewing distances. Unless you match screen size and FOV naturally, the standard projection method starts getting quite obnoxious to most people somewhere in the 100-140 degree range. To get really high FOVs looking *somewhat* natural, we'd probably have to resort to other projections that don't go as nuts when scaled, like equirectangular. And this might not be as efficient, though it may be worth looking into.

 

[Frezzato]

Part of the problem with 170 degrees is that the typical linear projection that gets used in rendering systems weights peripheral area more and more as the field of view approaches 180 degrees. The way this projection situates things on the screen is that, if you sit so that a flat screen fills up degrees of your vision, displaying an image with an FOV of degrees projects the image "accurately" to your eyes. To make an image of FOV 170 lines up "properly" in this respect, you'd need to sit REALLY close to a REALLY large display.

The current expanding/contracting banner ad is driving me freaking NUTS!!!

Anyhoo, I'm hoping for the best with Oculus Rift [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step-into-the-game]. The potential to have games made that allow for rapid view changes is very promising. That's one Kickstarter I am totally, 100% pulling for. More so than Ouya.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

One of the best things one can do in a multiplayer FPS is stab a sniper in the back of the head. Snipers are the shooter equivilant of Jimmy Saville.

Okay, I didn't know who that guy was, so I looked him up. After reading about him, I still don't get the relation you are trying to make.

I do get that your are trying to say that you don't like snipers. The problem I have is that you sound like you are trying to say that there is something wrong with snipers(which there isn't). Sniping as well as camping is a normal and accepted military tactic, really it is one of the only military tactics used in shooters. Because in this day and age, only untrained raw recruits think that a legitimate tactic is charging in guns blazing with no knowledge of enemy position or running head on face to face shooting.

Yes, but there's some big differences between real life and first person shooters. One of the biggest one is that "I might get shot at" is a way better reason to not do something in real life. In real life, taking virtually no risks is understandable. In games though, it just slows things down and draws people away from the more practical roles. I don't care how realistic it is, we're not going to get the objective done if you spend all day sitting as far away from the combat as possible and very rarely killing anything.

Or to put it another way:


EDIT: As for Jimmy Saville, well... Let's just say he was a bad man and leave it at that.

 

[skywolfblue]

When prompted by a friend about my gripe with the first person perspective, I needed very little time to come to a conclusion. If you took your hands and closed them into circles where your thumb meets your fingers and held them up to your eyes to exclude all peripheral vision, you would have a reasonable example of a common first person view in gaming today. A welding mask is even better, and if you've ever worn one you have a good idea of why it would be a bad idea to have a firefight with it on. If it isn't right in front of your face it might as well not even exist.

I agree completely. In real life, without turning my head or my eyes I can see where my hands AND my feet are virtually at all times. Half of FPS's don't even display hands/feet, and the other half require you to slowly turn your head.

It's one of the biggest reasons why I like 3rd person shooters more.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

snip

I don't care how realistic it is, we're not going to get the objective done if you spend all day sitting as far away from the combat as possible and very rarely killing anything.

EDIT: As for Jimmy Saville, well... Let's just say he was a bad man and leave it at that.

I'm going to be using Halo as reference since it is what I've played the most multiplayer in.

Sure, if the objective of the game isn't killing, then a sniper isn't as important. But I do my best to only get into games where killing is the only objective. That is one of the reasons I love that 343 took the non-kill objective games out of the big team game type, and gave those games their own game slot and made big team an all slayer objective.

If I have a sniper rifle with a good bit of ammo in it, I'm going to get way more kills with it than I would running and gunning, and since the objective is kills, sniping is better because the enemy has less of a chance to kill me if I'm near my base and looking at them through a scope as they are out of hit range with their weapons. This means that they have one less target get kills from. I regularly pick people of from my base to their base in distance, I have pics and a video of me sniping a guy that is just barely out(in midair) from going through their base's man-cannon.

I get kills on the enemy, they don't get as many if any kills on me. Sniping is only a stupid tactic if you don't know to snipe. It also doesn't hurt to practice, Team snipers is one of my favorite game types on Halo, though I for one think that the "kill cam" needs to be turned off in that game type if not removed from the game altogether. It is down right stupid. "Oh, you don't know who killed you, well here you go, he hit you from over there," the kill cam is one of the most sissy ass game mechanics added to FPS games. It should be that "If you didn't see who shot you, too bad. You find out yourself or just let it go." If you die in a shooter, the game shouldn't give you automatic clairvoyance to see where you were shot from.

On your edit, I said I read up on who the guy was, I was saying that the relation makes no sense because it has nothing to do with snipers, unless it is to say that snipers are bad, but that is wrong because snipers aren't bad, unless they are bad at sniping.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I agree completely. In real life, without turning my head or my eyes I can see where my hands AND my feet are virtually at all times. Half of FPS's don't even display hands/feet, and the other half require you to slowly turn your head.

It's one of the biggest reasons why I like 3rd person shooters more.

I'm going to have to say you are not normal, or that you apparently walk with your arms flailing in front of your face and you high kick step with each step you take.

The reason I say this is that I tested your method of real life first person vision, and while looking straight and walking normal, I can't see anything of my body, nothing. If I stop and look down as far as I can with my eyes, still without moving my head, the only thing I can see is a very small sliver of the top of my chest.

I've also asked family members and texted some friends and they get the same outcome as I do.

I have to move my head to see my arms, hands, and feet. Yes I can see my arms and hands if I walk with them held out like I'm carrying something, or flailing them like madman or how very young children walk when they don't yet get that they don't have to swing their arms maniacally when they move.

If you can see all those body parts when you are walking forward and looking straight forward, I'm going to have to ask you a question:

Do you have crazy bug eyes?

 

[Beautiful End]

Well...can you think of a good example? I mean, a game that does FPV so remarkably well that all other firs person view games look like crap?

I concur with what you said but I kinda got used to it by now. it's kind of an acceptable standard by developers now, isn't it?

 

[skywolfblue]

I agree completely. In real life, without turning my head or my eyes I can see where my hands AND my feet are virtually at all times. Half of FPS's don't even display hands/feet, and the other half require you to slowly turn your head.

It's one of the biggest reasons why I like 3rd person shooters more.

I'm going to have to say you are not normal, or that you apparently walk with your arms flailing in front of your face and you high kick step with each step you take.

The reason I say this is that I tested your method of real life first person vision, and while looking straight and walking normal, I can't see anything of my body, nothing. If I stop and look down as far as I can with my eyes, still without moving my head, the only thing I can see is a very small sliver of the top of my chest.

I've also asked family members and texted some friends and they get the same outcome as I do.

I have to move my head to see my arms, hands, and feet. Yes I can see my arms and hands if I walk with them held out like I'm carrying something, or flailing them like madman or how very young children walk when they don't yet get that they don't have to swing their arms maniacally when they move.

If you can see all those body parts when you are walking forward and looking straight forward, I'm going to have to ask you a question:

Do you have crazy bug eyes?

I guess so!

Looking straight I can see the forward tips of my fingers at my sides, and the tips of my toes. Granted I didn't get all scientific and break out the protractor to make sure my head was perfectly 90º so...

 

[1eyedjack]

I agree completely. In real life, without turning my head or my eyes I can see where my hands AND my feet are virtually at all times. Half of FPS's don't even display hands/feet, and the other half require you to slowly turn your head.

It's one of the biggest reasons why I like 3rd person shooters more.

I'm going to have to say you are not normal, or that you apparently walk with your arms flailing in front of your face and you high kick step with each step you take.

The reason I say this is that I tested your method of real life first person vision, and while looking straight and walking normal, I can't see anything of my body, nothing. If I stop and look down as far as I can with my eyes, still without moving my head, the only thing I can see is a very small sliver of the top of my chest.

I've also asked family members and texted some friends and they get the same outcome as I do.

I have to move my head to see my arms, hands, and feet. Yes I can see my arms and hands if I walk with them held out like I'm carrying something, or flailing them like madman or how very young children walk when they don't yet get that they don't have to swing their arms maniacally when they move.

If you can see all those body parts when you are walking forward and looking straight forward, I'm going to have to ask you a question:

Do you have crazy bug eyes?

Alright, you obviously have some trouble with this concept and I suppose if this is your first time hearing about it then there could be some issues. Please allow me to explain more thoroughly. If you allowed a circle around the human body and measured the degrees to which the human field of view allowed sight, you'd be pretty close to 180 degrees.

A good way to test your field of vision is to stare at a spot on the wall and hold your hands out at your sides. Bring your hands forward until you can see movement out of the corner of your eyes while still staring at that same spot on the wall. That is your field of vision. There is always some variation from person to person based on the placement of the eyes, but typically they fall around 140 to 180. The usual field of view that the screen on any first person game allows is somewhere between 80 to 100 degrees depending on the game.

I'm unaware of how to post an image, but here's a link to a pretty good representation of what I mean.

http://3dtvscdn.3dtvs.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Stereoscopic_Field_of_View.jpg

The blue line is a 100 degree vision and the entire 180 degrees represented is pretty close to your field of view.

Hopefully that should dispel any notions you have of others walking crazy. On the other hand, it may be that your field of vision is uncommonly narrow.

So to continue with my main point.

Best case scenario.
If your FOV (Field of View) is 180 and you are reduced to 100 then you are only getting about 56% of your total FOV. If you have an FOV of 140 and you are reduced to 100 then you have around 71% of your total FOV.

If your avatar in a first person game is human, his vision is reduced 44% to 29% from his actual FOV as represented by the television screen.

Again, best case scenario.

Edit: Looking back at Tupolev's post makes these numbers look laughable. 70 degrees of FOV in Halo 3? That's being reduced to 39% or 50% of your normal FOV! I was really giving it the benefit of the doubt earlier but looking again I mean wow.