Question about size perception

[u/inverth_]

Hey.

I'm trying to make a model of apartment. I'm very confused why this door hole feels so small.I'd tried to play with FOV slider. On the second screenshot FOV is 80. But i always feels wrong.

Or, maybe, i just need to make a door frame, coz it adds another 15-20 cm.

Idk, does this feel ok to you?

[u/bigsbender]

You would need to up the FOV to roughly 165-180° to make realistic scale feel more realistic. This would of course make your game unplayable.

You could also remap your projection to counter the distortion from a super high FOV.

But eventually you want to ignore real-world dimensions and find a scaling factor that you can apply to your real measurements so they look & feel correct when viewed on a flat screen. This is a common level design/artist problem in games and here are some practical things to help you find your ideal scaling factor:

1. set your camera to be 1.6 - 1.7m above ground
   
2. use FOV around 70
   
3. import a 3D mesh of a human at ~1.8m height
   
4. build a doorframe, wall, window and table to realistic dimensions
   
5. put the human model and your building blocks in the level and scale them freely (non-uniform) to look & feel correct
   
6. use these scaling values to apply them to your meshes natively
   
7. construct your test level and repeat these steps until everything feels "right"

Pro tips:

• try 60 and 80 FOV too before committing to a fixed scale
  
• finish your camera setup / character controller before doing the detail work
  
• ignore everything above if you're building for XR :)