Widescreen Gaming Forum

[quote][quote][quote]Thanks cancerman... That makes it the 3rd time someone has posted that in this thread.

my bad; i guess i did not read through those pages where it was posted. I will remove it ASAP :)
Ah well, that can happen when there are so many postings in a single thread. It's hard to read everything so double posting occurs fast. No worries.

I said move along!

Yeah I realize that the thread is getting out of hand in regards to length. I didn't mean to come off as a dick.

no worries. Its all good :D

Thank you guys for bringing this to the attention of the wider gaming community. It's very good that many news sites have picked up on this, hopefully 2K Games will now get some negative publicity and they will fix this in an official patch.

More importantly, I hope that other games properly support widescreen from the start. It's completely unacceptable for a game to come out in 2007, to be called an official "Games for Windows", and to not have widescreen support.

Heck, maybe we can start pressuring MS to rectify their WS specifications for GfW so that cropping is not an option.

Part of the problem seems to be that some people are defining "wide screen support" based not upon how well the resolution of the screen is employed in support of the artistic and gameplay goals of a game's designers, but instead by a nonsensical comparison of how much stuff you see on the sides compared to a 4:3 display.

Yeah I agree 100%. There's no inherent reason wide format should display a larger FOV than 4:3; this is purely an opinion and a design choice.

Granted I think the FOV in bioshock is a bit low and dizzyness inducing, but all this nonsense about 4:3 cropping is just silly.

The rest of your post was on target too. Thanks for explaining the issue thoroughly.

I'm by no means someone who understands ALL of the inner workings of wide screen displays vs. 4:3, but I understand enough to be able to comment on it and that response is unbelievable. Apparently the developers of this game have a different definition of wide screen than, I don't know, every other person in history? It's like they're essentially changing how they think it should be on the fly, for their particular "vision," or whatever.

I mean maybe I'm just an idiot and someone can kindly tell me so if I am, but I thought one of, if not the absolute MAIN benefit of a wide screen experience is to be able to see MORE of the movie/show/game? Whether it's horizontal or vertical, is really not the point. But one way or the other, if I'm playing/watching something on a wide screen display, my expectation is to be able to see just as much as a 4:3 screen, and even more so on the sides. I understand in this game, that notion is essentially reversed, we're seeing less on the top and bottom. But the fundamental argument is unchanged in that the entire POINT of presenting something in wide screen is for people to be able to see more of what is being presented. To say "that's the way it was intended," I mean what is that? If that's the way you "intended" it, then you shouldn't be claiming from the beginning that it's true wide screen implementation, because it is just not.

I seriously can't believe that response. I mean talk about total blindness and unwillingness to admit a problem.

There is widescreen support and there is widescreen support.

2K do the second kind, I think...

[quote][quote]2K intentionally gives 4:3 screens more visual information

Part of the problem seems to be that some people are defining "wide screen support" based not upon how well the resolution of the screen is employed in support of the artistic and gameplay goals of a game's designers, but instead by a nonsensical comparison of how much stuff you see on the sides compared to a 4:3 display.

Yeah I agree 100%. There's no inherent reason wide format should display a larger FOV than 4:3; this is purely an opinion and a design choice.

Granted I think the FOV in bioshock is a bit low and dizzyness inducing, but all this nonsense about 4:3 cropping is just silly.

That's fine, you can have your opinion.

For me, HL2 is a shining example of how widescreen support is properly done. 2K's mistake is using the same horizontal FOV for the 16:9 aspect ratio as 4:3. Valve doesn't do this, nor do other developers that, IMO, have a better understanding of the issue.


That said, I'll still buy Bioshock. I am encouraged 2K is looking into allowing the user to change the FOV. However, its hard for me not view the "extending the vertical FOV for 4:3 displays" is spin for cropping for 16:9 resolutions.

A major misunderstanding going around the web is that Bioshock does NOT support widescreens.

It DOES support widescreens, but it is HOW it supports widescreens that has some upset.

Do you like my usage of CAPS?

You're easily becoming one of my favorites on the forum Gabbo :oops: .

hehe.

Just played through the demo. The mouse feels lest fubar with my settings :). Thx for the hack :D .

I hope there will be tweaks to fix fps a bit more. I drop to 30fps in firefights, I don't like that :P. (8800gtx )

I have an 8800 gts and the frame rate is silky smooth (1680x1050 all settings maxed except aa). Athlon 64 single core 4000, 2 megs 3200 ram ... What system do you have?

Haha, I love 2K's response, it's almost poetic. A true argument of semantics.

To paraphrase:

"It's not that WS sees less than 4:3, it's that 4:3 sees more than WS". Because those are two totally different things... :P


I can understand their reasoning though.

They wanted a WS (wide horizontally) game experience. They didn't want to cut down on the horizontal view for 4:3. This is like watching WS movies on a 4:3 display. To maintain the whole horizontal view, you will lose some vertical space (black bars on top and bottom).

However they didn't want black bars to "mar" the 4:3 experience. And, unlike a movie which is fixed on film, a game can give you any viewpoint, viewing angle, etc it wants. So they effectively just "removed" the black bars from top and bottom and let you see what was behind on 4:3. This is the "unecessary" extra info that 4:3 sees, that isn't really part of the "true game experience". So WS isn't missing anything, it's just that 4:3 has some extra "useless" visual area only to avoid the dreaded black bars. But the whole game was designed/balanced without it, so WS users shouldn't miss it :P

A bad PR move on 2k's part, as whether this was your intention or not, it's a dangerous game of semantics that will only serve to irritate their users more.

The only solution at this point is to give the end user the freedom to choose what "view" they want, regardless of what the "true design" of the game was.

Aggies