what gorath means is that when you play in first person, you got a set viewfield, for example 90° (possibly what you actually have)
in games like quake or unreal tournament you can higher the degrees, so you can have like 180° of viewfield, which looks pretty awkward on my monitor actually, i cannot play with something likes this
everything just gets thinner and you can see more around you - with 180° you should see everything from your left to your right shoulder
i personally have never seen anything like this in m&b, though i don't play first person ever so i never cared about that - even if i played first person i wouldn't care about it cos it just feels strange having an 180° viewfield on a 17' Monitor