CB Games and Hardware: How to change your field of view setting for 21:9 and other non standard aspect ratio monitors in WoT

The Ultrawide 3440x1440 and 2560x1080 monitors are becoming more popular. According to the Steam Hardware Survey and other resources 21:9 aspect ratio monitors are greatly increasing in popularity. However World of Tanks does not properly support the proper field of view for 21:9 aspect ratio monitors which can lead to the edges of the image appearing distorted and/or parts of your field of view being cut off on the top and bottom of the screen that would be visible when using the 95 Field of View (FOV) setting with 16:9 aspect ratio monitors. When you use the 120 FOV setting, the edges of the screen still appear distorted. However 120 is the limit of the in game slider in the graphics options.

Another issue is some player who stream World of Tanks play the game in a window and not in full screen mode so they can monitor the stream and have other streaming related apps open on the same monitor. Sometimes the window size they sue for World of Tanks is a non standard resolution if they resize WOT to take up a certain space on the screen.

I found a fix for this issue that takes only a few minutes and can be done by using notepad.

Step 1:

Open file explorer and go to:
C:\Users\**Your User Name**\AppData\Roaming\Wargaming.net\WorldOfTanks

Full Size Image Link

Step 2:

Open preferences.xml with Notepad

Full Size Image Link

Step 3:

Search for FOV

Full Size Image Link

Step 4:

Find the FOV setting that's under your WoT Player Name

Full Size Image Link

Step 5:

Change FOV to 135

Full Size Image Link

Step 6:

Save file as preferences.xml

Full Size Image Link

Notes:

You can use another setting other than a FOV of 135, especially if you play in windowed mode. However a FOV of 127-135 seems to look correct and have minimal to no distortion.

If you change other graphics settings, you may need to close the game and edit the preferences.xml file again. Sometimes World of Tanks overwrites the FOV setting when you change graphics settings.

Screenshots:

Below are screenshots where the replay was paused and the only setting that was changed was the FOV setting. The link to the full size image is below each image.

95 FOV