So i was playing a few FPS games lately. Mainly old games which had no native widescreen support. And some that were re-released with new engine or engine overhaul and presumably native widescreen support.

I noticed that for exemple Crysis 1 had native widescreen support when it was released, but was still featuring a low 60° FOV out of the box in the PC release. I have no idea if this FOV is either vetical or horizontal FOV.

About QuakeLive : i heard that the cg_fov cvar determines the Horizontal FOV but the value is only accurate for 4:3 aspect ratio. So I was wondering what is my real horizontal FOV in QuakeLive since I use cg_fov 90.

I use a 16:9 monitor in 1920x1080 resolution, so here we go :

ratio 16:9
horizontal 1920 pix, vertical 1080 pix
horizontal FOV=?

I first calculated the horizontal resolution i would need to get a 4:3 ratio using the same vertical resolution of 1080 pix.
1080/3 = 360, 360x4 = 1440

ratio 4:3
horizontal 1440, vertical 1080
horizontal FOV = 90°

Then i calculated how many hor pixels i have in 1° when in 4:3 with a 1440x1080 res. 1440/90=16

The i calculated how many times i have 16 in a hor res of 1920 :
1920/16=120

Result : real hor FOV in 16:9 is 120°.

Kind of funy to see how my brain resolves easy puzzles the hard way sometimes.

So, 120° sounds like a lot me. So i was wondering, are all the other FPS games calculating FOV using a horizontal base with a 4:3 ratio too? I have tested some FPS games where an fov of 90 looked much like 60 to me.

I think games should use a cvar that set the vertical FOV, since the only stable parameter seems to be the vert FOV across the different ratios why not use it?

PS : i actualy wanted ask for a way to set the hor FOV in other games to be the same as the one I use in QL. But yeah, that's prety much it for now. I know some rare games uses a diffeent method to not make 16:9 a big advantage over 4:3. I don't actualy remember which ones (RTS games?).