Practical Game Design

Choosing camera settings

The pitch, field of view, and distance are three key components of any camera. They have to be set and possibly adjusted during gameplay to fit the context and tempo of the game.

The default horizontal field of view should be set depending on the predicted distance from the screen and its size. The closer the players are to the screen and the larger it is, the higher the in-game FOV (field of view) can be. This is due to the screen occupying a proportionally broader angle of your actual vision. If we wanted to create a perfect window into the game world we'd need to match the FOV to the angle between the player's eyes and the borders of the screen, and in most cases, we'd end up with a very narrow view space. Fortunately ...