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I'm tired of hearing here and there that the first-person view helps immersion in video-games "because it corresponds to a person's vision" This is not true, the so-called "first-person" view is not the point of a "person" but of a "camera". And it's not quite the same thing.
Videogame's first-person view has almost nothing in common with human vision wich is much more complex and efficient -a binocular vision with a peripheral perception angle >180° (roughly speaking) and you can add the eyes movements which *are* dissociated from the head direction-
FPS pov are NOT a person's vision. It is, in truth, the vision of a single camera placed on a rotating moveable mechanism. It doesn't refers to reality, it refers to cinema. In movies, this point of view is used to emphasize a feeling of stress, urgency or outright fear.
It is naturally frightening since the character is left with a terribly truncated vision. All the intensity of the effect relies precisely on what we do NOT see: being forced to move the camera constantly to have a semblance of peripheral vision, which is immediately stressful.
Imagine yourself with blindfolds and paralyzed eyelids and also disabled eyes movements.
That doesn't mean it's not immersive but immersion ingeniously comes from the fact that it forces the player to get emotionally and physically involved through continuous camera movements.
That doesn't mean it's not immersive but immersion ingeniously comes from the fact that it forces the player to get emotionally and physically involved through continuous camera movements.
In many ways, I would say that third-person games are much closer to the human perception: it offers proprioception (awareness of one's own body in space) + wide peripheral vision + reliable distance estimation. Maybe the reason why most peope feel more comfortable with it ?
