State of Decay 2: How to Customize FOV

Since the first PC release of State of Decay 2 in May 2018, there have been a few ways to deal with the need to adjust FOV to preference or to compensate for the decreased vertical FOV at 21:9 and wider resolutions. Some – like the trainers based on Cheat Engine – have been more effective but are no longer up to date, while others – like the YFOV command – would not allow for any fine-tuning. There’s a better way.

We’ll be assuming the game has been launched at least once to create a config file.
• Navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\StateOfDecay2\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\
  (it can be pasted into the address bar of the file explorer)
• Open Engine.ini in a text editor
• Add the following lines:
  [SystemSettings]
  r.FieldOfView=95

  The provided value is arbitrary but it is also the value needed to compensate for the decreased FOV at a 21:9 resolution to match the default 80 of 16:9.
  For 32:9, go for 118.
  For 48:9, set it to 137.
  Needless to say, it can be set to any reasonable horizontal value without breaking the game!

The FOV-related commands previously shared by others are the known go-to commands for all games built on Unreal Engine 4 but have their severe limitations.

[/script/engine.localplayer]
AspectRatioAxisConstraint=AspectRatio_MaintainYFOV

This one is the most common in conversations and guides on State of Decay 2.
There are also hilariously random modifications like AspectRatioAxisConstraint=90
The game will read it as AspectRatioAxisConstraint=.
Any of them including AspectRatioAxisConstraint=IdontKnowWhatImDoing will work as the result.

The only thing they do is set the hardcoded FOV of 80 to vertical rather than horizontal, meaning an FOV of 112 at 16:9 or roughly 126 at 21:9 – arguably too much and no way to adjust it.

[/script/daytongame.daytongameusersettings]
FOV=90

FOV is a native Unreal Engine 4 command but there is no documented evidence of it working in State of Decay 2.