Having a reaction to how a game looks especially when you’re playing in a new environment is totally understandable.

It happens to the best of us; most of the time, when we buy a new gaming PC or when we’re playing CSGO somewhere else. We suddenly ask ourselves the question, is the monitor just different and too big or is the game view too zoomed in? Maybe it’s just me?

It might actually be because your old settings aren’t in place and the perspective is actually zoomed in. This can be really uncomfortable and may even cause you to lose, especially in a fast-paced game like CSGO where vision and response time are important.

It isn’t the end of the world, there are certain things that we can do to change the FOV in CSGO. Manage your expectations though, there isn’t actually a way to zoom out the entire frame, just the placement of the weapons and hands. There’s really only one frame and it’s the standard that the developers have set.

What is FOV?

In technical terms, FOV, or field of view, is literally what we can immediately see. It is the observable area that’s right in front of us. Because of today’s technology, FOV isn’t just limited to our eyes but also through other devices such as various types of optical devices, gadgets like cameras and phones, or even a monitor.

Which leads us to our second question – what is FOV in games? It’s really quite the same, except the observable world depends on the kind of game you’re playing. Not only that, the kind of monitor, the resolution, and the ratio can all affect what you’re seeing in your game.

Normally, the subjects that you’re seeing on-screen do not change, only their proportions do. However, there are cases where certain parts of the screen do get cut.

In the case of CSGO, there is technically no way to completely zoom in or out of the standard field of view. There might actually only be a very minor zoom-out. However, there’s still a lot that can be done to tweak what one sees.

Through the console

Arguably one of the best things about CSGO is how modifiable it is, just like its predecessors. This is all thanks to the console.

The first thing you ought to do is to set the console to your preferred key. This can be done on the game settings under the “Keyboard & Mouse Settings”. Scroll down until you come across the UI Keys section. By default, the console shortcut is the backtick or ” ` “.

Once the console appears, type the command “viewmodel_fov ##”. Replace the hashtag sign with values between 54 and 67. You can also do it manually through the command “viewmodel_offset_x #”, “viewmodel_offset_y #”, and “viewmodel_offset_z #”.

CSGO viewmodel 54
viewmodel_fov 54
CSGO viewmodel 67
viewmodel_fov 67
CSGO viewmodel offset z 1
viewmodel_offset_z 1

What this command does is basically change the hand position. You can make it in such a way that the arms can be seen, or you can also completely remove the arms if that’s your preference.

We recommend that you do this in the workshop as it will allow you to see the FOV and hand position that you like the most.

Modify the hand bob cycle

CSGO bobhead

Though this doesn’t exactly change the FOV, what it does is help the stability of your vision and prevent the hands from moving up and down too much. Conversely, this could also be a way to really open up your screen.

On the console, type the command “cl_bob_lower amt ##”. The minimum amount is 5, with virtually zero hand movement, while the maximum is 30 where the hands almost disappear towards the stomach.

Change the video display settings

In the game settings, there are a couple of video display settings that you can tweak including the aspect ratio, resolution, and display mode.

In this particular setting, we will be looking at the aspect ratio and the display mode that will fully change your FOV in CSGO.

In CSGO, there are three aspect ratios, namely: normal or 4:3, widescreen or 16:9, and another widescreen which is 16:10. For the display mode, players have the option of windowed, full screen, and fullscreen windowed.

While aspect ratios are pretty self-explanatory, there are vast differences between windowed, full screen, and full screen windowed. Windowed is, well, not fullscreen and you’ll see the edges of the game window. Obviously, if you lower the resolution, the game window will turn smaller and smaller.

On the other hand, fullscreen is the most ideal display and basically gives the game full usage of the screen. It is ideal because it provides the most optimized setting in terms of graphics and performance. The downside is that it hampers access to other computer functions, which is why doing an alt+tab while in full screen is slower.

The last one is fullscreen windowed which isn’t technically fullscreen. It’s simply a window that has been stretched to the edge of the screen to give the illusion of a full screen. It’s way easier to access other computer functions with this display setting.

Now onto the FOV, we can safely recommend 16:9 full screen or windowed settings. Fullscreen windowed will automatically give you a 16:9 ratio. We’ve noticed significant changes in the range of the perspective as seen below.

CSGO 4 3 aspect ratio
4:3 aspect ratio
CSGO 16 9 aspect ratio
16:9 aspect ratio
CSGO 16 10 aspect ratio
16:10 aspect ratio

As you can see in the left and right parts of the screen, there are elements and enemies that are not present in the 4:3 aspect ratio whereas everything was fully seen in 16:9.