FOV of Black Ops II PC version to be locked at 80 degrees

The PC as a gaming platform has never been very important for Activision’s Call of Duty franchise. This was evident as far back as three years ago with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Now, according to a tweet by the Treyarch community manager, the PC version of the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops II will have its field of vision (FOV) limited to 80 degrees.

@pcdev tweeted, “And don’t ask me to raise the FOV cap. Max is 80. Thankyouverymuch. <3, -pcdev”. When users asked Pcdev the reason for the FOV cap, he replied that technical limitations were stopping Treyarch, otherwise it would have increased the cap just to prevent a backlash from fans. FOVs are generally locked because of the hardware limitations of gaming consoles, as the consoles have problems streaming high-resolution textures in a game. The FOV is locked so that less in-game area is visible, and hence, less in-game area needs to be streamed. Games on the PC don’t generally have the same problem as the hardware on gaming PCs is leagues ahead in terms of power than that on gaming consoles, and hence, have no problems streaming more high-resolution textures.

The future is black and its FOV is locked at 80

This is a big deal when it comes to first person shooters because the FOV determines how much you can see in the first person view. While FPS games on consoles are usually capped at 60-65 degrees because of the hardware limitations of the systems, this isn’t a problem because players are generally far enough away from the screen for the FOV to be right. When playing a PC game, players are generally much closer to the screen and require an increased FOV to avoid feeling nauseous due to tunnel vision.

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Back in 2009 when Activision had released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the company faced a lot of complaints from players for locking the FOV of the game to 60 and removing the capability of playing on dedicated servers. This forced PC gamers to play on peer-based games, which caused high amounts of problems if the host of the game was on a slow connection.

Earlier this month, the Xbox 360 version of Black Ops II was leaked. Downloads of the game have shown up over all the torrent websites eight days before its official release. As a result, videos have been popping up all over YouTube that show some of the gameplay. Responding, Treyarch design director David Vonderhaar took to Twitter to say: “If you are going to live-stream the game early, which I don’t remotely recommend, you could at least be good at it. :P” He later tweeted, “I’m really glad people are excited for the game. Legit streams coming up later this week and early next. Watch this space.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops II will be released on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC on November 13.