I wrote this up for another thread, but it's on page 11 or some such where nobody will ever see it. I think it deserves it's own thread, as it very clearly defines why the zoom is both realistic and important:
Right, the wordy explanation.
First off, a real set of ironsights and what it looks like looking down those sights:
As you can see, the camera (like the human eye) blurs out the rifle and focuses on the target farther down range. The human eye performs a similar feat, bringing distant features into focus. However, it is impossible for a computer monitor to provide the proper depth of field. Even if we're trying to aim at a target far away in game, our real human eyes are still focusing on a computer monitor less than 2 feet in front of them. Without zoom, we end up pixel hunting, like in ROOST:
We have no way to focus on targets in the distance, and so everything looks zoomed out. It's very difficult to judge in-game distances. 50m feels like 100m, 100m feels like 200m, and 200m feels like 500m. It skews our perceptions and makes it impossible to pull off real-life shots in the game engine. So, the developers of yore added weapon sway and bullet spread to compensate for the limited sight (and engagement) distances. It was hardly a realistic solution, but it worked for the time.
In comes RO2:
Now take a good hard look at these pictures and tell me which one is most accurately simulating the real human eye. To make up for the fact that we're still looking at a monitor 2 feet away from our heads, the camera zooms in, bringing distant targets into focus like our real, human eyes would at those distances. Zoomed out, the game is trying to give us peripheral vision, but when we take aim it sacrifices the peripheral to accurately represent visual distances.
Are you starting to understand now?
