Widescreen Gaming Forum

Bioshock ...


Medal of Honor: Airborne ...


Same game engine ... same widescreen implementation ... 2 different game developers ... BUT ... they seem to have had the same "artistic decision" ... yeah right !

What I'm trying to point out here is that in my investigations show that the seemingly default implementation of WS in the
Unreal III engine is Vert- instead of Horz +.
Either the engine needs to be modified or every developer will have to take specific pains to do this or this will be a re-occurring problem for all games using this engine when in widescreen.
After all the commotion over Bioshock's bad widescreen implementation I thought we should all try to get this sorted ... please tell epic what you think ...
Please post your displeasure in this thread over at their forums ... http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=24976601&posted=1#post24976601
Please make your posts civil ...

Are games like Unreal Tournament III and Gears of War going to have the same bad widescreen implementation ?

I'm sure there will be many more ...

::TrueWS ... and ... :WWTH2Go

EDIT: ...

From here ... http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/24/joystiq-interviews-bioshocks-ken-levine-about-success-and-harve/

We started the game widescreen. We primarily designed it for widescreen. Then we had to ask, "How do we make it full screen." Your options are to put black bars at the top and bottom, keep same width perspective. Or you allow to ... add pixels to the top and the bottom if you can afford the frame rate -- we could. So the call was made to show those few more pixels.

The above seems to indicate otherwise ... it is the way game engine works and 2K didn't bother with the widescreen just as the designers of Medal of Honor: Airborne haven't.

holy ****... I wonder if anyone could still deny it?

Sorry, I am too tired to write out a thoughtful and meanful responce to this other than oh ff sake.

I will join that forum tomorrow, I really, really hope this is not a sign of how things are going to be as the rule rather than the exception.

I think 2 games is a bit small of a sample size, to make any real revelations about "defaults" ;)


If you want to give WS and 4:3 users the same horizontal viewing area,
then it's either black borders for 4:3 or Vert- for WS. I doubt black borders would be very popular with developers, so it would seem "Vert-" is the way to go.

I think it's conceivable that another game wouldn't want to sacrifice horizontal viewing area for 4:3 gamers, and this is how you would go about doing it.

So it very well may still be a design decision, the very decision above (in italics).

Obviously it's too early to know either way though. As more games come out we should get a better idea, for better or worse.

Aggies

aggies, the problem is 2k stated that they tried 'loads' of different FOV options before 'settling' on the specific one (in WS not 4:3) that they felt artisticaly and immersively enhanced their game in the way they envisioned it.

What are the chances of that FOV number being exactly the same as the standard UE3 4:3 changed to WS without adjustment numbers (as shown in Medal Of Honour)

The whole statement looked like BS anyway and was full of technical faults ( it says 'we tried loads of aspect ratios before settling on the one....' when they should have said 'field of view settings').

We went through dozens of iterations and finally settled upon a widescreen aspect ratio that best suited the gameplay experience.

Could be a typo in the heat of the moment or it could have been a damage limitation BS post knocked up by Liz2k based on some remote producer telling her what to write!

They may have intended to just go with the default 'hack' and felt it was good enough but it makes their statement seem mostly fictional (just like the lack of WS monitors in their office picture does).

@ aggies11 ...

I think 2 games is a bit small of a sample size, to make any real revelations about "defaults" ;)

First off ... I did say ... ...

seemingly default implementation of WS ...

... :wink:

No widescreen user wants to sacrifice anything for 4:3 users ... :wink:
What we would like is for the game to feel right when we play it in widescreen ... the way it is with vert- in widescreen just feels wrong.
That is why this forum has 11644 users all looking to find solutions to get their games to feel right ... and why the Bioshock FOV commotion ensued ... :wink:
The Unreal III engine is perfectly capable of getting the FOV right for both 4:3 and widescreen users ... if only the devs would think about it just a little harder.

If you want to give WS and 4:3 users the same horizontal viewing area

Is not a good design decision ... as clearly widescreen users aren't happy with it ... :wink:

Yeah, apart from competitive games the whole point of this debate is that you can't realistically EVERY give 4:3 and WS users the same horizontal FOV because you are working against the physical aspect ratio of the end display device, in a word, trying to cheat science.

They try to bend it (if it is intentional) and they wonder why eagled eyed players noticed something is wrong, you can't cheat the facts: a widescreen display is a wider ratio that a 4:3 display so you HAVE to go with it if you want to do it right.

They should have used anything else they could to retain their 'vision' except restricting that which they have no real control over (the AR of the players screen).

The Unreal engine definitely seems like the culprit to me.

As far as I can tell, every older Unreal engine game we have on the list is also vert-. Luckily they also happened to have editable FOVs, BUT the FOV setting doesn't apply to the in view weapon. E.g. you could see the right vertical space compared to 4:3 with respect to the environment, but the player's weapon would still be cutoff.

We should be contacting someone at Epic. Perhaps Ken or Elizabeth might help us in this respect. If their implementation was really a result of using UE3's default I bet their none too pleased with Epic due to the all the hubbub over the issue.

Some good points ... Stevedroid ...
BTW ... the FOV stuff is there in the game engine ... it just needs the devs to use it correctly ... or not lock it so the users can't customize to their liking as with the older unreal games.

For example ... in MoHA ... I have been able to change the size of the player and his weapon quite easily in the configs ... I got him so he was small in the center of my TripleHead setup ... but the FOV doesn't change ...

That said ... I can change the FOV when sprinting to whatever I like ... again easily in the config files.

But I cant change the main FOV for the player view it is locked.

Some good points ... Stevedroid ...
BTW ... the FOV stuff is there ... it just needs the devs to use it ... or not lock it so the users can't customize to their liking as with the older unreal games.

I'm concerned if they do make the FOV editable it will work like it does in the older Unreal games and not affect the weapon. I'm not sure why it works like that; when you adjust the FOV in every other FPS engine I know of it affects the weapon and the environment.

Seriously though, I don't remember if it was you or Ibrin was was talking directly to Ken, but we should ask him if he wouldn't mind passing our concerns onto Epic (maybe give him a couple days to elax and catch his breath first). I'm totally unqualified to make this guess, but I'd still be willing to bet that the engine doesn't have anything built-in to automatically recalculate the FOV based on aspect - they're probably relying on the end-user developers to manually change the FOV based on the selected res.