If field-of-view is one of those issues that never enters your head, you’re lucky – some have it enter their head and give their brains a good swirl, leaving them nauseous and unable to play whatever it is that’s causing the problem.
When the game in question is GTA V, it’s tough to just walk away and play something else. Happily, modders have stepped in to expand the FOV range of the new first-person mode beyond its official borders.
We’ve been tracking all the GTA V crash and launch bugsand their fixes as they appear.
The mod’s creator, one DrDaxxy, has tested the new limitless slider in the Steam and retail versions of GTA V. There’s “no guarantee” a patch won’t poke a stick in its wheels, but the modder plans to update for compatibility if necessary.
“You can now set your FoV in first person mode to whatever you want,” they write.
A couple of things to note: the slider in the camera menu, which goes from 45 to 55 degrees, will cease to work once the mod’s installed. And you’ll need to wait 30 seconds after starting up the game before the new settings kick in.
And there’s a potential catch: the mod fiddles with game memory, much like cheats do.
“[It] may even be considered one in online multiplayer as having a higher field of view can put players at a competitive advantage,” points out DrDaxxy.
With the nature of Rockstar’s anti-cheating measures still obscured, as these things have to be, there’s a risk FOV mods might get you banned at some point in the future.
If you’re willing to embrace that possibility, you can download the GTA V FOV mod files and follow Daxxy’s installation instructions:
- Find your GTA V installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Grand Theft Auto V). It should have files such as GTAV.exe and bink2w64.dll in it.
- Extract fov.txt and dsound.dll into that folder.
- Change the contents of fov.txt to your desired vertical(!) field of view. The default I’ve set is 68, which translates to about 100 degrees horizontal on a 16:9 display. If you only know the horizontal FoV you want, here’s a handy calculator: http://www.rjdown.co.uk/projects/bfbc2/fovcalculator.php
- All done! Launch the game as usual.
Are you somebody sometimes made ill by the wrong angles?