Was looking at various FOV finder websites, but most of them don't letme put in screen sizes of under 20" or 4:3 ratio. I did find one that says my FOV shoulf be 18.3, which doesnt seem correct

I sit about 3 feet away from a 4:3 17" (supposedly, in reality its about an inch wider than my 13" laptop screen, but I think those are calculated on the diagonal??) Viewsonic E771.

I use this screen because I found it at the dump and it has awesome motion clarity and contrast in a dark room, though I admit its tiny.

Currently using FOV of about 80 and not a great driver on most tracks or cars. At least I can get around the tracks fine.

Also screen is curved if that matters much

(I use a PS3 controller and sit farther back than what may appear in the image so I don't see pixels so much)

Get screen width and divide by two (doesn't matter if inches or cm). Call this HW.

Divide HW by distance from screen. Call this T.

Find the "arctangent" or "inverse tangent" of T (e.g. using a scientific calculator). Call this HF.

The actual FOV you want is HF * 2.


That may be "correct" in a sense but usually that will really be too small for practical purposes unless you have a huge monitor. So then it's down to whatever FOV you like the most (personal preference).

Sitting far away from a small screen will result in such unpratical small FOV.

I like using old hardware too, if still functional, but CRT screens really are something for the museum.
With some searching you can find LCD screens in that size for free or very cheap. Advantage of LCD is thinner screen borders/bezels so even those older small screens can be suitable to build a cheap tripple-screen setup.
Might even consume less power

Quote from Lopyt_Music :

...and it has awesome motion clarity and contrast in a dark room, though I admit its tiny.
Currently using FOV of about 80...

Oh I remember the days of CRT monitor and how painful to me was to switch to TN matrix even though TN was wider. I switched just about in 2018 or so. The colours and output of CRT were great! I still miss colour benefits.

For 14" monitor my FOV was 90° and my eye/picture distance was around 60cm.
Now I use 105°FOV at 24" monitor with 80cm distance. (Some play with extra low values, but for me it's all about a 'natural feel' of a car and environment. 105 is pretty close to how I see cockpit/world IRL. None of advices and calculators did fit to me, so yeah, it's all about personal preferences as Scawen said.)

Quote from Snoop.DriftEra :

Oh I remember the days of CRT monitor and how painful to me was to switch to TN matrix even though TN was wider. I switched just about in 2018 or so. The colours and output of CRT were great! I still miss colour benefits.

For 14" monitor my FOV was 90° and my eye/picture distance was around 60cm.
Now I use 105°FOV at 24" monitor with 80cm distance. (Some play with extra low values, but for me it's all about a 'natural feel' of a car and environment. 105 is pretty close to how I see cockpit/world IRL. None of advices and calculators did fit to me, so yeah, it's all about personal preferences as Scawen said.)

CRT is instant in terms of response time, OLED is pretty close, TN/VA are bad ye of course
Being a user of fast TN and slow but bigger(32) VA just wanna add that i personally prefer LFS on a bigger one, even it has only 60hz, just because of correct fov settings. No super fast lap times still, just pleasure of seeing this game how it supposed to look