Fact Check: Does Atomic Heart have an FOV slider on PC?

Atomic Heart, the much-awaited open-world FPS from developer Mundfish is finally here. With the game releasing on PC alongside next-gen consoles, fans have marveled at how well it runs. Especially on the PC platform, considering the variety of hardware combinations. As such, it is a given that the user settings will reflect a similarly robust selection to tweak the player's gameplay experience.

That is true for the most part. A lot is accounted for from resolution and frame rate to varied rendering parameters and even dynamic resolution scaling. But what about the FOV slider? Does Atomic Heart have one?

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Surprisingly, Atomic Heart lacks an FOV slider on PC

For a PC title, this is pretty shocking, especially given how Atomic Heart shines in the performance aspect. Nevertheless, if players visit the settings menu, they will be greeted with two tabs: Display and Quality (or Graphics in most other games). The former concerns the monitor display, while the latter relates to the visual quality. The FOV option is nowhere to be found in either category.

But what is FOV in the first place? For the uninitiated, it stands for Field of View. As the name suggests, it is responsible for shwocasing how much of the game is displayed at any given time on the screen.

As such, a smaller FOV will close in the camera, reducing the number of assets that need to be rendered at any given time; however, a larger FOV value means players can take in more of the scenery around the sides of the screen.

For an FPS game, a larger FOV is preferred so players can keep an eye out for foes. But it should be noted that this also has a performance impact due to displaying more graphical elements. Smaller FOV has the opposite effect, as it boosts performance at the cost of playability to a degree. This omission has been felt to a striking degree by the PC community.

As for why it has not been included, the developers at Mundfish have spoken out on the matter. Detailed in an interview with Wccftech, Atomic Heart director Robert Bagratuni explained that the game already has a wide enough FOV, which is why it was deemed unnecessary. This is not a convincing enough answer for most gamers as many would prefer to tweak their gameplay experience manually.

Perhaps we could see a fan mod for FOV in the future. After all Atomic Herat is an Unreal Engine 4 game that does make general modding easy. But for now, players do not have any alternative.

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What platforms is Atomic Heart on?

Atomic Heart was recently released for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S platforms. Given how scalable the game has shown itself to be, it is no surprise that last-gen versions were also considered.

Besides PC, players can expect the best experience on the current-gen platforms PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S thanks to the 60 FPS target frame rate.