One of the aspects of Sonic X-Treme that intrigues me the most is the ‘fish-eye lens’ camera that one build of the game boasted. This particular system would have revolutionised 3D games (or so I’m told) by widening the field of vision, which would have been a universal panacea against the camera problems which dog games to this very day.
Has anyone ever seen a fish-eye lens camera actually in operation? If so, is the effect on gameplay and navigation truly as radical as some people claim?
I think the biggest issue would’ve been disorientation then. XD It can be a bit loopy to see shots filmed with a fish-eye lense. Disregarding, it seemed to be more of an aesthetic feature, from the shots that I remember the level design seemed to be more like Bug’s than anything else… and they also looked rather barren.
You can actually get a similar effect in games like Quake and Unreal Tournament by increasing the field of view. Normally it’s locked at 90 degrees (a quarter of the way around you), but you can raise it to pretty much whatever you want. It’s a VERY strange effect, you can literally see all the way around you, but it’s really disorienting and hard to work with when it’s set too high. But at around 100 or 110 it can help a little, and only mildly distorts the view. I wouldn’t want to see that in too many games, though.