What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here.
If you watch the occasional Rainbow Six livestream by pro league players, you may have noticed
that quite a few of them will play on a non-native aspect ratio, particularly 4:3, instead of
the 16:9 ratio that is common on most screens nowadays.
Allegedly, squishing your graphics down into a 4:3 ratio gives you a competitive advantage
but is that really true?
Should I be playing in 4:3 if I finally want to hit that platinum rank for this season?
There’s only one way to find out, time for some tests and analysis!
So the argument for playing in a lower aspect ratio is, that it makes your targets larger.
Ok, let’s compare my native 16:9 with the 4:3 aspect ratio… and ye p, the SWAT truck
here is definitely wider, although not taller.
So in a way: yes, if you keep the same field of view (or FOV) angle and switch to a smaller
aspect ratio, you will get a stretched view that makes your target wider and therefore
in theory, easier to see and easier to hit.
BUT!
Things are not quite that simple.
See, the downside is that by stretching your image, you lose a chunk of your peripheral
view from each side so there is definitely a trade-off here.
You get a larger target but won’t be able to see as much to the left and right of the
direction you are looking in.
And it’s still not quite that simple, because we have not taken a change in FOV into consideration yet.
Here, watch what happens when I switch from 4:3 with an FOV: 75 to 16:9 with an FOV of 60.
Notice how the peripheral view remains exactly the same, we can just about see the red ladder
on the right and the tree on the left, so there is no advantage or disadvantage in terms
of your field of view.
When we compare the truck size, we can see that they are both exactly the same width
but the 16:9 image is taller, giving you a larger target.
So if you really want the strongest possible zoom effect and the largest possible targets
on screen, the first thing you should adjust is your FOV, not your aspect ratio.
Playing on a low aspect ratio but high FOV is not only going to look ugly and squashed
but will actually result in smaller targets compared to going for a smaller FOV and normal aspect ratio.
And come to think of it… why is 4:3 supposed to be the gold standard for competitive gameplay.
The graphics options in Rainbow Six also offer and even smaller ratio of 5:4, so if you’re
going for maximum squishedness, why not go ahead and use this ratio instead?!
So when it comes to the current trend of using 4:3, my conclusion would be that yes, it can
stretch your targets out a bit but the only situation in which it makes sense to go for
any of the smaller aspect ratios is if you combine it with the minimum FOV setting.
And when you do end up going for a ratio of 5:4 with an FOV of 60; yes you will definitely
get a zoomed in picture but this will come with a massive loss of peripheral vision.
Can you get used to this? Sure you can!
But is it objectively better than having more view to the sides?
I don’t think so.
At the end of the day, it’s down to each individual player to weigh up the equation
of field of view versus zoom factor.
For me personally, the optimal is somewhere between the two extremes.
I don’t want to sacrifice all of my FOV to get maximum zoom… this kind of feels
like walking around while using low powered binoculars.
You know that feeling, right?
When you get cheap 3x binos and then try walking around the house with them?
RIGHT??
Oh ok… maybe it’s just me who does that….
Anyway, weird past times aside, in Rainbow Six I also need a decent zoom factor to be
able to see, identify and hit my targets, so going all the way to a 90 degree FOV is
not my thing either and I certainly don’t need to go to a larger ratio than my native 16:9.
The bottom line to all of this and the conclusion is that if the 60-90 degree FOV settings are
not enough for you to achieve your desired zoom and peripheral view balance, then you
can take you image to greater extremes by choosing an aspect ratio that is either larger
or smaller than your screen resolution but you should never combine a small aspect ratio
with a larger field of view or conversely a larger aspect ratio with a smaller FOV.
It just makes no sense.
But of course, that is just my conclusion, based on the tests I ran to compare the different settings.
Given how many people swear by the 4:3 ratio I almost wonder if there is more to the topic…
Did I miss something?
Do you use 4:3 or even 5:4?
Let me know in the comments section below, I would really love to get your input on this!
And finally, in addition to the aspect ratio experiments, I have also been testing out
all of the other graphics settings in Rainbow Six Siege, so if you are interested in a full
guide to the best settings for performance and competitive advantage, make sure you watch
the next video coming out soon.
Until then, thanks for watching; I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!