Setups are important in SimRacing – and that does not just mean the virtual car parameters: A comfortable seating position, force feedback settings and pedal calibration are essentials, and your Field of View falls into that category, too. It is more important than you might think – which is why it should be set up correctly.
For every rig and seating position, there is technically only one correct FOV. Monitor size and the viewing distance play the most important part in setting it up, and it can be calculated with various calculators available online just for this purpose.
To understand why it is important, think of sitting in your rig as sitting in the cockpit of a race car, and your monitor as your windshield. The closer this “window” is to you, the more you are going to see, and vice versa. It would be easy to compensate for a bigger distance by increasing the FOV to see more to the side of the car, but that would warp your perception considerably – and the goal is to have the same FOV that you would have in real life to make it easier to judge distances and speeds.
A narrower FOV means that you can see less to the sides of your display, which is why ultrawide screens and triple screens have become very popular in SimRacing – they offer peripheral vision even if a lower FOV is needed.
While it might take some getting used to once you switch to your correct FOV from a wider one, it will help you get faster and more consistent after a while as you know how to judge distances correctly and where the boundaries of your car are. Of course, a narrower FOV often means that you will not be able to see your wing mirrors anymore. Most sims offer a virtual mirror to remedy this problem, however.
Notes
– use a calculator to help you set up your FOV
– mount your monitor as close to your wheel as possible, ideally right behind it, but in a way that your hands will not hit the monitor when steering
– to help with lower peripheral vision, use the virtual mirror, radar apps and/or Crew Chief to know what is going on around you