DescentBB

I like the view of from inside the ship for its FOV, but I also like the uncluttered view with minimal hud.
However, the minimal view is very 'zoomed in' for me - i was wondering if the fov adjustment was possible, or if there was a way to disable the 'overlay texture' of the virtual cockpit -thanks!

In all the Descent games, you can remove the ship interior by pressing F3.

In Descent 3, you can adjust the resolution and aspect ratio with command-line parameters (e.g. "-height 1680 -width 1050 -aspect 1.6"). However, anything wider than 4:3 will actually reduce your vertical FoV angle because D3 always keeps the horizontal FoV angle constant.

To sum up, you can get rid of the ship interior overlay, but you cannot increase the FoV angle.

[Note: Personally, to maximize my FoV on my 1680x1050 monitor, I run D3 at 1400x1050 (4:3) with black bars on the side, instead of widescreen.]

I'm not seeing any settings to actually tweak FOV (probably for good reason) but there are three modes that subtly affect it.
1) Cockpit view. Relatively wide FOV, but occluded.
2) Status bar mode (from cockpit view, press F3 then - if it doesn't already show). Wide FOV, unoccluded, more limited vertical FOV obviously.
3) Full-screen mode (F3, then keep pressing + as far as it will go). Bit more limited horizontal FOV - better vertical - but makes the best use of the screen for displaying the mine.

I stand corrected. I thought all of them had the same FoV.

Maybe in Descent 3 - I remember experimenting with this many years back in D2 and found that there is a subtle difference - the status bar mode was downscaled vs full-screen - slightly wider view but smaller.