Not sure if I’d call this a bug or part of how it’s intended to work. The V command does not go beyond the normal view range it seems. I don’t know exactly how far it goes, but I know that there are things on my screen (with the extended view) that do not show in the V command. This may be intentional, which is why I placed this in the suggestions section. I’d like to suggest that it be expanded… if you want to have balance, expand it based on perception, binoculars, vision conditions, and bionics.
Its indeed intended to have a fixed range. Before the viewport change it was 12/12 which was the area visible to the player when the camera was centered. And anything higher than that would mean a shifting of the current view, which would make the screen very jumpy. Although using a bigger viewport shouldnt give too big of an advantage.
In the latest release 0.1 its calculated like this.
Base minimum range is 12.
If you have set your viewport to 30 its: 12 + ((30-12) / 2) = 21
So even though you see 30 tiles wide, only items up to 21 tiles away will be displayed.
Its like this for the moment at least. I did play a few games with this range and never felt i wouldnt be enough.
I thought about using perception somehow as well but dont know how exactly. To extend it with Binocular and other things is a good idea ill see into that.