Please show us how just easy it is to hack Bioshock ... :wink:
The game was hacked within a couple of weeks of release by Racer S, and greylantern reported
Actually you can change the FOV using the console command SetFOV 90 for example. You have to bind it to a spare key in the user.ini file.
So I think that it is quite clear that the engine includes support for changing the FOV.
[quote]You guys have been claiming that it is all about adequate FOV, not about being jealous of 4:3 screen owners seeing more "stuff" on the screen than you do. So why do you so readily fall back on comparing 4:3 and 16:9 displays? Why would a forum devoted to widescreen gamers even care about what 4:3 players are seeing?
Because it is the best way to show what is going on ... you really are making your self look foolish now ... stop twisting things ... :wink:
It's not that hard to figure out FOV. Just position a character in an open area, and count how many screens it takes to make a full rotation. I took a look at Gears of War, and the FOV is clearly greater than Bioshock's 75 degrees, probably close to 90. It isn't even the case that all Unreal 3 engine games keep the same FOV for 4:3 and 16:9:
Rainbow 6 Vegas cuts down the FOV for 4:3. So the notion that everybody is simply using an Unreal Engine default collapses.
Not without declining to admit poor implementation.
Why would they "admit" such a thing? As we've already discussed, their choice is reasonable based upon geometric and perspective considerations, providing a perspective-correct, actual-size window into the game at typical viewing distances. They made the choice based upon extensive playtesting of different FOVs to maximally enhance the game experience, and that choice has been validated by rave reviews and massive sales. Do you really think that a few dozen people complaining on a web site, many of whom do not even seem to have given their version of the game a fair shot, are going to convince them that they were wrong?
No, but it is does point towards your unpalatable argument that it was a design decision. It is far more likely that is was a tried method by UE3 and that the game developers left it that way because they did not want to reinvent the wheel.
I suppose that if Bioshock used the same FOV as every other FPS game, that might be (barely) plausible. But in fact, everybody is complaining tht Bioshock uses a narrower FOV than almost any other FPS. So why would Epic use such a nonstandard default? And why would a skilled developer, experienced with FOV, choose to accept such a nonstandard default if it was not what they wanted?
Your the scientist, why would a game developer start fluffing around with science of how a human would view the engine? They are there to create the game, the story, the levels, the characters, the look, not get into the nitty gritty techinical side of figuring out how a human eye works and interacts with the screen interface, that is why they bought the liscense, as it comes prepacked so they would not have to to all that work. Well, it seems as thought some of the work was not done properly, as they discovered from the populace.
They don't have to "fluff around with the science." As I pointed out before, this is not rocket science. Pretty much any reference book on 3D graphics will explain that you get the most realistic view when the screens FOV matches the size of the screen in the viewer's FOV. It goes back at least to Bruce Artwick's classic book "Microcomputer Displays, Graphics and Animation," one of the first books to lay out the principles of 3D graphics for game design.
But these are expert 3D game designers. I wouldn't expect them to take the word of a reference book, no matter how authoritative, or base a decision on some academic idea of vision theory, any more than they would simply accept a game engine's default. Any experienced game designer would do exactly what they said they did--experiment with different choices of FOV and find out which gives the best game experience.
In the deleted thread i mentioned playing Doom3 6 inches from the screen with a 140 degree fov and it was interesting. It really felt like i was there with the screen filling up my real fov, everything looks correct. Jerking the mouse around though, takes something away, but im still forming an exact opinion about the whole experience, I can tell you one thing though, i will be playing immerse games 6-10 inches from the screen with a 130 -140 fov from now on...(i think )
Yes, this is really the only way to get a wide FOV to look right. Since the human visual field is close to 180 degrees, the screen would have to occupy almost 80% of your visual field for the perspective to look right with a 140 degree FOV. The problem is that most people simply aren't willing to nose up that close to their screens. So Bioshock's developers chose an approach that offers that realism to typical viewers who sit a little bit further back, even though it meant that they had to sacrifice showing quite so much on the sides.