4:3 VS 16:9 - What FOV do the pros use?

Field of view determines how much you can see. Pros favour less. I favour more. I make a whole video ranting about it and how unfair everything is. Enjoy!
0:00 - Intro
3:00 - Aspect ratios
4:36 - Aspect ratios 2
5:52 - Resolutions
9:32 - Stretched VS black bars
10:36 - Framerate
11:48 - Black bars 2
12:21 - FOV!
13:25 - Refresh rates
15:36 - Conclusion

[RiderStudioGames]

When they add a FOV slider I will make sure to bind my second mouse key to change the fov so I can "scope in" with the AK lol

[shm]

12:06 Lovely how the monitors are advertised as "21:9 You see more!" and all of the players use black bars.

[broomguy]

Chain together a bunch of curved monitors and make a full circle. 360° of peripheral vision, with no image distortion!

Also, Dead by Daylight is the only game I've ever played with a fixed horizontal FoV and a variable vertical FoV. Playing on a 21:9 monitor is miserable - it cuts off the top and bottom of the screen. Turning it sideways to be 9:21 makes you a gigachad who can see over walls.

[Spaztron]

Let's not forget that in the 1.6 days using 16:9 was detrimental, as the wider your resolution was, the *lower* your FOV became.

[xzebix]

I guess that additionally the stretched effect for enemy sideways movement (appearing faster) also works for your own sight. So you can differ better between lower strafing speeds, which is helping with the "only shoot, when standing still" CS accuracy. But this probably especially works for beginners, when it's already muscle memory, there is no more need for this

[WordUser]

9:16 is a great competitive aspect ratio, any enemies coming from above or below will never catch you off guard

[Balsalmo]

1440x1080 gang represent. Played at native 16:10, then 16:9 res for years, but gave 4:3 stretched a try last year and my HS accuracy stat went up by a noticeable amount after I got used to the new res. Also I don't think wide filed of view is as important in CSGO as in some other fps games like e.g. Battlefield because angles are more predictable and good crosshair placement is crucial.

[TwistedPresence]

There's a technical reason that you can't have both a vertical and horizontal field of view at the same time while maintaining a given resolution. It's to do with how the 3D rendering math works and the projection Matrix. Horizontal FOV is a function of aspect ratio (resolution) and Vertical FOV.

[elliejohnson]

I may not be a pro, but I've tried 4:3 and 16:9 and I can tell you that the loss of FOV is a huge detriment. My friend uses an ultra wide and he sees things I don't, and it genuinely gives him an advantage. I've lost a few rounds because he didn't call something out that he thought I could see, when I couldn't.

[ObieCS]

Another thing you could have mentioned here is resolution scaling, i.e. rendering the game at a lower or higher resolution internally, while keeping the HUD and menu elements at native res. I think many CS players would appreciate the option.

[thatcherfreeman]

I guess it's worth noting that as visible at 13:08, the fov console command in CSGO indicates the horizontal degrees of FOV when using a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is converted internally to a vertical FOV that is fixed for all other aspect ratios.

This is important because different games actually measure their FOV in different ways. Some specify the horizontal FOV at 16:9 and some specify the horizontal FOV of your display (this sucks!). If you want your FOV in other games to match CSGO, then having the right numerical measurement is important, and usually you'd want to make sure your vertical FOV is the same for all your games, if you play at different aspect ratios.

[Noxelius]

Is it to late to change my new year resolution?

[LetMePickAUsernameAAAAAAAA]

Some info for new players if there even is such a thing: don't get stuck in researching pro player settings, such a thing as the best ratio/resolution doesn't exist. I have >5k hours and climbed from Silver Elite Master to Global and in ~9 years of CS:GO I have tried every possible combination of settings and I still change my crosshair or go from 4:3 to 16:9 from time to time when I get too familiar with my settings and feel my gameplay is going stale. The only thing I never change are my graphical options as I landed on a good compromise betwwen performance and image quality.

[dysgregulated]

4:45 there were actually lots of early LED monitors that were also 4:3 and even some 5:4, it wouldn't need to be a CRT... In fact, according to the wikipedia for Dell Monitors, it looks like there were 4:3 LCDs produced as late as around 2012-2013 ish, so if they got new-old-stock you could be talking about only a 6 or 7 year old monitor. Thank you for reading this completely unnecessary comment.

[Faruq-xngj]

In my experiment for my CSGO setting, the vertical resolution determent the clarity of the image. So if you want more performance while maintenance the clarity you can make 4:3 custom resolution like 1440x1080 if you have 1920x1080 monitor, you can get more performance from get 25% less resolution and 25% less image to render.

[No]

when using stretched, it's just easier to spot bigger targets not necessarily hit them

[minamoto_hikari]

Nice video! c:
Also respect for redoing some parts of the video instead of just leaving a comment/putting the correction in the description! That shows how much effort you put into your videos :D

[DenisLange]

4:3 is used by 3/4 of the player base such a coincidence :D 4:37

[AlphaYellow]

The reasons for which players who used to play the original CS stayed at 4:3 for so long were varied: personal preference, familiarity with the 4:3 aspect ratio, bogus widescreen implementation in the 1.6 update, longtime widespread availability of 4:3 monitors, higher performance in lower 4:3 resolutions, and placebo accounts for it as well.

About the placebo part, players often feel that hitbox sizes get bigger at stretched 4:3 resolutions, but it's purely placebo, since everything else gets bigger as well, not just the hitboxes, and also aiming becomes more difficult, since it is faster in stretched resolutions, making any claims about this false. About the lower and higher FOVs, as long as the FOV isn't too low, it doesn't make any difference, since for a lower FOV, you see less in the sides, but your view is zoomed in. For higher FOVs, you see more in the sides, but your view is zoomed out, so they negate eachother as well.

About the way Valve implemented widescreen in the 1.6 update, they opted to lock the FOV at 90 no matter the resolution (for no reason at all, since higher or lower FOVs give you absolutely no advantage whatsoever), and this was done to prevent players from seeing more on the sides. But at the same time, let's face it, it defeated the whole fckin purpose of playing in widescreen in the first place, as players were starting to get widescreen monitors back then with the EXACT goal of being able to see more around the character, for a better immersion in both online and offline games. Instead of the FOV automatically adjusting to the aspect ratio based on the 4:3 FOV, they chose to lock it, which meant people kept using 4:3 just because it also gave them the widest vertical FOV, since the horizontal one was the same in all resolutions.

About the higher performance in 4:3 resolutions, it's pretty obvious, lower resolutions result in less computational demand, meaning your GPU can spit out way more frames each second, meaning less input lag and lower response times, and resulting in better performance for professionals, since every milisecond counts in a competitive nature. But if we talk about less pixels to render, then 720p is way better than those common 4:3 resolutions, since it's 16:9 and gives you a wider FOV with even higher framerates.

About the familiarity with the 4:3 aspect ratio, well it is exactly that, they wouldn't change if their current one works so well for them anyway. They often spend many hours each day playing the game, and any change to their settings or setup can be disruptive to their gameplay. This is why many players will stick with the same settings and aspect ratio for years (even decades in many cases), even if there may be better options available. Switching to a new aspect ratio can take time to adjust to, and may negatively impact their performance in the short term.

[Red_R]

I play on a 3440x1440 monitor (21:9) with 1920x1200 (16:10) stretched. I used to play at 1280x960 stretched on a 1080p monitor before I even realized that's what a lot of pros use, it just felt good. My current res was the closest I could get to it, plus it gives me that little bit more clarity