CS2 is a highly competitive game. As such, tweaking your settings to get every competitive advantage is very important. In fact, that’s what most players do. You will often see new metas or settings popping up and there, and that’s just players experimenting to get the maximum competitive edge they can over their opponents.

Sensitivity and graphic settings are the first thing that you tweak. Of course, both can highly impact your performance in the game, sensitivity with your aim, and graphics setting with visibility and framerates.

But there is another setting that beginners often skip, and it’s called the viewmodel. It’s not highlighted in the settings, which is why it’s easy to miss. But, from a competitive standpoint, it’s one of the most important settings you need to figure out.

What Is the Viewmodel in CS2

To put it simply, viewmodel basically describes the position of your gun on screen. Whether it’s center or at the corner of your screen, it’s all controlled by viewmodel settings.

CS2 allows you to tweak this, and control where you want the gun model to be. Ideally, you want the maximum field of view possible, as the gun model somewhat blocks visibility. So, tweaking this is a way to achieve this. But you also don’t want to put the model somewhere that feels awkward! So, the goal is to find the perfect balance of FOV and comfortability.

Why Is It Important to Set Your Viewmodel

I am not saying that the default viewmodel is bad, but it is far from optimal. The main reason you would want to tune your viewmodel settings is for better visibility.

Because your gun takes a small portion of your screen, it makes that section a blindspot. Essentially, you could miss an enemy camping just because the enemy and your viewmodel aligned and you didn’t see him. So, visibility is a major concern for why you should perfect your viewmodel.

Lastly, there is also a factor of comfort. It’s the same as your crosshair. There is no perfect crosshair, it differs from person to person. However, if you swap two players' crosshairs, they will feel uncomfortable playing the game and might even perform worse. The same goes with viewmodel, there is an aspect of personal preference and comfort.

Best Viewmodel Settings

There are three ways to go about setting your viewmodel

• Configure it through the settings;
• Configure it through the console;
• Use a Workshop map

Configure It Through the Settings

Tweaking your viewmodel through the in-game settings is the fastest and easiest way but it does not offer a lot of customization. You can choose from three preset viewmodels: Couch, Classic, and Desktop. All are good to get started, but if you want a bit more customization, the other two ways are better.

Configure It Through the Console

To configure the viewmodel through the console, you first need to enable it. Go to Settings > Game > Game > Enable Developer’s Console.

Then all you need to do is use the following commands to tweak your viewnodel. If you haven’t used the console before don’t worry, we will explain what the commands mean and how to use them.

• Viewmodel_offset_x - Controls the position from left to right. The value ranges from -2 to 2.5
• Viewmodel_offset_y - Controls the forward and backward position of the gun model. The value ranges from -2 to 2.5
• Viewmodel_offset_z - Controls where the gun model is vertically. The value ranges from -2 to 2.5
• ViewModel_fov - Controls how much of the gun you see. The value ranges from 54 to 68
• cl_prefer_lefthanded - Left-handed gun or right-handed gun. Set 1 for left-handed and 0 for right-handed.

If you are confused no worries, here is a good viewmodel to try. Of course, you can tweak these values to your liking

ViewModel_offset_x 2.5

ViewModel_offset_y -2

ViewModel_offset_z -2

ViewModel_fov 54

cl_prefer_lefthanded 0

Using a Workshop Map

If commands are not your thing, then the recommendation is Crashz Viewmodel Generator. It’s undoubtedly the best Workshop map for this task. Simply put, it visualizes everything and makes it easier to customize your viewmodel.

All you need to do is download the map and go into it. You will see a board with all offset values and all you need to do is shoot them to set your model. There are also community-made viewmodels to try out, mstarr is a good one.

Left vs Right-Hand

The last important thing to configure is where you want the gun to be, the left hand or the right hand. Now, this ultimately depends on whether you are right-handed or left-handed, or what you generally prefer.

However, the interesting thing is you can actually use both while in the game, and it’s actually better from a competitive standpoint. You can quickly switch your gun from the left hand to the right hand or vice versa with the press of a button.

For example, if you are peeking an angle from the left, having a right-handed is better as the model won’t block the enemy. Similarly, left-handed is better when peeking from right to left. All you need to do is run the following command with your preferred bind.

bind “C” “toggle cl_righthand 0 1“ - Replace C with whichever button you want.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much everything you need to know about viewmodels in CS2, what they are, and why they are important for ranking. There is no perfect viewmodel that works for everyone, there is some amount of personal preference that goes into selecting your viewmodel. Just experiment as much as you can, and be sure to go into a bot lobby and try your viewmodel out before taking it into actual matches.