[rokweom]

">It may shock many VR game players that want 120+ degree FOVs, but SMTPE, which sets the recommendations for movie theaters, says the optimal viewing angle for HDTV is only 30°"

The reason VR enthusiasts want wide FOVs is not because they want to watch movies stretched to 120°. Nobody does that. They want wide FOVs because even at relatively high FOV, like the 106 of Quest Pro, the edges of the display are still easily visible and the image does not fill eye's FOV fully. Yes, the resolution of what we can see towards the edges of our vision are much lower than what we can see in the center, but it's about getting rid of the visible boundry that messes with immersion.

[gpm]

And it's also ok if the pixels-per-degree (PPD) towards the edges is lower.

Which makes PPD analysis based on counting pixels suspect. Good optics can cheat by moving pixels from the peripheral field of view to the central field of view.

Simulavr claims to go from 24.48 PPD (pixels / field of view) to 35.5 PPD (actual pixels per degree near the centre) by doing this.

They also have a great blogpost on it: https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/