Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have been browsing these forums for a long time, and I love the solutions you guys have come up with. The place has been an invaluable resource since I bought my Acer AL2216W (Beautiful monitor, btw). However, the whole Bioshock debate recently has caught my attention, and 2k's forums are littered with trolls who don't understand why people might object to the lower FOV in Bioshock. They honestly believe we are just whining elitists upset that we aren't getting our money's worth.

I have a suggestion. We have an FAQ describing what widescreen is, but it doesn't really go into a lot of information about why it is that way (at least, not all in one place), and this seems to be the main point of confusion for people who don't need widescreen support like we do. Therefore, I suggest we write a very simple explanation of why FOV should be the way it should be in a wide aspect ratio, and then put it in one place where people can easily see it and link dissenters to it without anyone having to fish through the entire FAQ.

Something to this effect:

Why do people own wide screens to begin with? Human beings have two eyes, a right and a left. So human eyesight tends to naturally be wider horizontally than it is vertically. Now, we see everything going on in front of us, obviously, but what do we see off to the sides, in our peripheral vision? Things look a bit off, but we can generally see odd movement and other things that we aren't focus on. And while we can live without these things, not being able to see them makes the stuff we do see seem sort of unnatural.

When a person buys a wide screen monitor, they generally do it because the shape of a wide screen more accurately simulates real human vision. And since humans focus on the action in the center of their vision, shouldn't these screens also do so? And this is why the standard accepted idea of widescreen is to take what the user can see in a fullscreen, and add to the sides: because full screens contain all the action, and the extra space is used for peripheral vision. This is the only REAL representation of a human's wide vision.

Why does a game like (unfortunately) Bioshock fail in this? It's simple: Even though it has a widescreen mode, it fails because the width of vision the player has is no wider than it is in standard full screen (between 75 and 90 degrees). So this means that, instead of seeing the action in the middle with extra periphery on the sides, the way a REAL human would, we instead see the action fill the screen. In fact, because Bioshock cuts off visual information from the top and bottom of the screen, we actually see LESS of the action than we normally would anyway. So not only are we cheated out of the periphery (which is the whole point of widescreen to begin with), we are also cheated out of more than 20% of what fullscreen players would see. This creates a feeling of being "zoomed in" to the player that can make him feel completely detached from what he sees, and make a game harder and/or less fun for widescreen users.

:welcome

Thanks for feedback! Its in development as we speak! :D

I have only dabbled into the widescreen realm using my 26" HDTV to play a few games and my 4:3 CRT monitor to occasionally capture them with Fraps in 16:10.

Thus given the reason for this thread I have to ask one question. Of all the games that offer widescreen resolutions, what percentage would you say have this incorrect FOV problem where cropping rather than actual widening occurs?

Aside from FOV issues I think about it more and more and often wish there were a standardized consumer widescreen ratio much less drastically reduced from letterbox than 16:9 or especially 16:10 is.

Considering letterbox is about 22.5:9, I would think 18:9 would have made a lot more sense for both TVs and monitors. 18:9 would be an easy 2:1 ratio and right in between 16:10 and letterbox.

I am considering an Acer monitor myself, maybe even the 22". Reason being I don't want to spend a lot on one when it looks like LED tech may become popular soon, and hopefully more affordable.

Oh, and yeah, welcome pdusen, just noticed your join date, and nice thread btw. :wink:

I have only dabbled into the widescreen realm using my 26" HDTV to play a few games and my 4:3 CRT monitor to occasionally capture them with Fraps in 16:10.

Thus given the reason for this thread I have to ask one question. Of all the games that offer widescreen resolutions, what percentage would you say have this incorrect FOV problem where cropping rather than actual widening occurs?

Aside from FOV issues I think about it more and more and often wish there were a standardized consumer widescreen ratio much less drastically reduced from letterbox than 16:9 or especially 16:10 is.

Considering letterbox is about 22.5:9, I would think 18:9 would have made a lot more sense for both TVs and monitors. 18:9 would be an easy 2:1 ratio and right in between 16:10 and letterbox.

I am considering an Acer monitor myself, maybe even the 22". Reason being I don't want to spend a lot on one when it looks like LED tech may become popular soon, and hopefully more affordable.

Oh, and yeah, welcome pdusen, just noticed your join date, and nice thread btw. :wink:

Thanks for the welcome.

Someone more informed than I can probably guess at the percentage of games with FOV problems. As to your question about aspect ratios, I read on a wikipedia article some time ago (which I am having trouble re-locating for confirmation) that 16:10 was supposed to be roughly similar the the actual aspect ratio of human vision (which, if true, is in keeping with my belief that widescreen should have wider FOVs to include peripheral vision.)

As to your question about aspect ratios, I read on a wikipedia article some time ago (which I am having trouble re-locating for confirmation) that 16:10 was supposed to be roughly similar the the actual aspect ratio of human vision (which, if true, is in keeping with my belief that widescreen should have wider FOVs to include peripheral vision.)

Interesting, I always thought and read in a few places that 16:10 was preferred by many because it exactly fits two 8.5x11 documents side by side. Whether it has anything to do with the actual reason for 16:10 I don't know. It would make sense that office work would factor into it just as much if not more so than gaming though.

Wikipedia never ceases to amaze me with it's wealth of knowledge. If you manage to relocate that article let us know. You have to wonder though, with an industry as large and money/advertisement driven as films are, why they would choose 2.4:1 (22.5:9) or "Lettterbox" as the common aspect ratio for it.

Industries with large pockets typically get deep into advertising research including the psychology behind it. Everything from the shapes and colors of items are scrutinized over even on cereal packages in the common grocery store just to lure people in. I would think a huge indusrty like films would scrutinize even more, including aspect ratios our eyes see naturally.

That being said, it may be that they knew full well people would see Letterbox less naturally than 16:10 and used it just to accomodate scenes with two or more characters and/or landscapes better. They can also make theaters wider and pack in more people. Sometimes the bean counters win over the psychologists when giving their spiel to the wealthy.

Horizontal FOV for both eyes is an approximate ellipse that is 130 degress vertical by 200 degress horizontal.

This means 200:130 = 1.54 which is close to 16:10 = 1.6.
This would be pefect if your nose was touching the screen. As we sit 2 feet away, any one screen is only a small fraction of what we see. So I don't think the human FOV has anything to do with the 16:10 ration we see. I do however think it has everything to do with immersion, as why the widescreen was developed, as why sound was introduced into media, as was why CGI was also introduced. Immersion.

As surface dwellers our visual cognition has evolved to be much more sensative to motion in the horizontal plane so the wider we can go the more deeper we can engage our visual senses. Ideally, we would have a screen that is 200 degress wrapped around our head, and one that is 8 feet tall. Until then, we can wakk a helmet on, or buy TH2G or failing that buy a widescreen which is certainly a fair distance further towards immersion than a standard television standard 5:4 - 4:3.

"It doesn't take a cognitive scientist to see that there is more to our visual perception than is stimulated by staring at a television."

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Horizontal FOV for both eyes is an approximate ellipse that is 130 degress vertical by 200 degress horizontal.

This means 200:130 = 1.54 which is close to 16:10 = 1.6.
This would be pefect if your nose was touching the screen. As we sit 2 feet away, any one screen is only a small fraction of what we see. So I don't think the human FOV has anything to do with the 16:10 ration we see. I do however think it has everything to do with immersion, as why the widescreen was developed, as why sound was introduced into media, as was why CGI was also introduced. Immersion.

As surface dwellers our visual cognition has evolved to be much more sensative to motion in the horizontal plane so the wider we can go the more deeper we can engage our visual senses. Ideally, we would have a screen that is 200 degress wrapped around our head, and one that is 8 feet tall. Until then, we can wakk a helmet on, or buy TH2G or failing that buy a widescreen which is certainly a fair distance further towards immersion than a standard television standard 5:4 - 4:3.

"It doesn't take a cognitive scientist to see that there is more to our visual perception than is stimulated by staring at a television."

Of course everything you say is true. I was just expressing my belief that, for me, the greatest advantage of high FOVs is the ability to see things to the sides of the screen, out of my central viewing area, that would normally be further out from the center, thereby simulating my peripheral vision, in a way.

Of course everything you say is true. I was just expressing my belief that, for me, the greatest advantage of high FOVs is the ability to see things to the sides of the screen, out of my central viewing area, that would normally be further out from the center, thereby simulating my peripheral vision, in a way.

I am fully there with you on that one too. I prefer the highest FOV possible that doesn't start looking stupid.

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moboP8P67-M-PRO-V3 cpuI5-2500K-3.3GHZ ramOCZ8GB gpu260GTX hddOCZ-VERTEX II-SSD psuNEOHE550W hudBENQ20"