Widescreen Gaming Forum

[quote]Do you believe that they are obligated to invest in providing an enhanced gaming experience to an unusual, nonstandard configuration that probably constitutes less than 1% of their customer base and that the game is not advertised as supporting?

No I don't think they are OBLIGATED. But I do think they should have an interest that their game look as good as possible on as many "setups" out there as possible... but there's just ONE thing in the way:

The horizontal width is LOCKED. Therefore the wider the display, the more you have to crop. Now to me, that isn't an ideal way of creating a game "window". Remember that YOUR preferred FOV can still be implemented WITHOUT locking the 4:3 aspect ratio. That's just simple programming!

The fact that BioShock's width IS locked at 4:3 (and it just so happens that nearly all the other recent U3 engine games ALSO lock the 4:3 aspect) stinks of lazyness on the part of the developers.

Okay now, we're going around in circles with regards to the FOV choice by the develops, you like it, I don't, let us say no more about it.

So I'd like to ask you: What are you favourite 3D FPS games, and which of those do you think think 'nailed it' with regards to your desired FOV? (discounting BioShock)

Hey trrll, I'm still waiting for an answer to the above... ;)

trrll ... enough ... that last post shows you clearly aren't getting what I/we are saying or you are just twisting things because you want to play silly buggers ...

Goodbye.

The fact that BioShock's width IS locked at 4:3 (and it just so happens that nearly all the other recent U3 engine games ALSO lock the 4:3 aspect) stinks of lazyness on the part of the developers.

What is locked is not the aspect ratio, but the FOV, so it is not correct to refer to it either as 16:9 aspect or as 4:3 aspect. The solution that they chose provided the FOV that they felt the game needed on all of the monitor configurations that are officially supported by the game. So your complaint is essentially that they did not invest time and money into figuring out how to provide special-cased enhanced support for nonstandard configurations that constitute a negligible proportion of the market. You might call this laziness. An investor would probably call it cost-effective allocation of limited development resources.

So I'd like to ask you: What are you favourite 3D FPS games, and which of those do you think think 'nailed it' with regards to your desired FOV? (discounting BioShock)

Frankly, I don't think any before Bioshock nailed it. I enjoyed playing Black, Doom3, Halo 1 & 2, and F.E.A.R. (and further back, Marathon) although for some of them I found the FOV annoying.

What is locked is not the aspect ratio, but the FOV, so it is not correct to refer to it either as 16:9 aspect or as 4:3 aspect. The solution that they chose provided the FOV that they felt the game needed on all of the monitor configurations that are officially supported by the game. So your complaint is essentially that they did not invest time and money into figuring out how to provide special-cased enhanced support for nonstandard configurations that constitute a negligible proportion of the market. You might call this laziness. An investor would probably call it cost-effective allocation of limited development resources.

Okay agreed it's not locked at 4:3 (the tallscreen examples from GABBO prove that) but the width is locked... and I doubt an investor would call it a "cost-effective allocation of limited development resources" when nearly every other FPS out there can do it just fine!

Frankly, I don't think any before Bioshock nailed it...for some of them I found the FOV annoying.

Well then that explains it, you are in the minority sir, not I. ;)

fyi MoH:A FOV is 75 as well

:?:

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[quote][quote]This whole thread has gone to the birds. Its has degreded into discussions about minor disputes of facts and figures and is being dragged into pettyness.

The argument still remains that BioShock the great game that it is, had widescreen implemented poorly. It was NOT a choice to implement it that way, that is evident. It was an EPIC UnrealEngine3 (UE3) choice, a UE3 implementation as seen with all of thier other UE3 titles. So stop saying it was a design decision and try backing it up with suggestions that calculations could have been used by 2K on thier game.

If there were FOV calcs and other such design decisions made by 2K like you say, then why are they ALL the same with the other UE3 titles?Wouldn't EPIC have left those design descision up to each developer instead of making it default? Clearly it was default, and thus clearly it has something to do with performance of the engine not some artistic design decision. What a crock.

The Unreal engine provides settings to modify FOV. If it didn't, it wouldn't be so easy to hack it to change the FOV. Control of FOV is a basic feature of a 3D engine; without it, a game would not be capable of carrying out the most basic "cinematic" effects such as zoom in or zoom out. So it simply doesn't make any sense to suppose that this choice is somehow being imposed by EPIC. I find it particularly revealing that so many people are willing to embrace the ridiculous notion that this choice is somehow imposed by the Unreal engine, presumably because the obvious explanation--that EPIC did leave it up to developers, and that multiple developers are making similar decisions because they have independently considered how best to handle different aspect ratios and have come to similar conclusions--is so unpalatable that you cannot even bring yourself to consider it.



Where did I say anything was imposed. I pointed out that it was clear that the FOV was left as default. You are spinning things around to give yourself more weight to your argument. It is far more palatible to realise that you are attempting verbal gymnastics for the benefit of your cause.

[quote][quote][quote]
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?

That is precisely what I want to know.



And the answer is quite simple: they wouldn't, and they didn't. The other game you have pointed to, Gears of War, does not use that FOV. Nobody has measured the FOV for Airborn, but I'll bet that it doesn't either. So the only answer that makes sense is what you refuse to believe--that Irrational/2K is telling the truth when they say that they tested dozens of variations, and picked the one that they felt gave the best game experience.

I need to lead you back to where we started again. I am talking about the fact that all the UE3 engines are Vert+ not HOR+.
EPIC Licesensees mostly, if not all use Vert+, by default. This WAS NOT, IS NOT a design decision by 2K.


Side note observing your behaviour:
You keep and should cease chunking down the converstaion into minute details and trying to proove your knowledge on all the different species of ants when we are clearly discussing an elephant. Or is that what you do, chunk down into the most finite detail until you totally lose the people your trying to discuss with as they do not and can possibly not share your knowledge about the make up of a grain of sand and thus proove yourself right by default. A technique labelled as The master of a thousand cuts, continually hiding from the fight when it gets threatening and then continually emerging to attack when no one is looking until eventually the advesary is to tired to continue. This is by no means meaningful to anyone. By doing this you minimalise the pool of knowledge so only you can fit into it yourself.

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I need to lead you back to where we started again. I am talking about the fact that all the UE3 engines are Vert+ not HOR+.
EPIC Licesensees mostly, if not all use Vert+, by default. This WAS NOT, IS NOT a design decision by 2K.


Side note observing your behaviour:
You keep and should cease chunking down the converstaion into minute details and trying to proove your knowledge on all the different species of ants when we are clearly discussing an elephant.

You've slipped into a seductive mode of fallacious thinking--imagining that a bunch of weak arguments add up to a strong argument. One of the things that scientific training teaches is how to break an argument down into its fundamental elements and examine their validity. So let's now put it all back together to examine the validity of your argument. Your claims are as follows:

1) Epic, for some incomprehensible reason, chose default FOVs for the Unreal 3 engine very different from those used by most FPS games in the past.

2) Multiple independent development teams, people with years of experience in FPS game development, and with millions of dollars riding on their design decisions, somehow failed to notice this, simply accepted the default, and never bothered to question it or playtest different FOV options. Statements from a developer that they did in fact test dozens of 16:9 FOV variants before coming to a final decision are lies.

And your total evidence for this unlikely-sounding hypothesis as follows:

1) You don't like the FOV of Bioshock or the way it handles aspect ratios.

2) All Unreal 3 engines use the same FOV and way of handling different aspect ratios.

Except there is one small problem: #2 is false. Gears of War uses a different FOV from Bioshock. Rainbow 6 Vegas is not even "VERT+"

Now here's a test of logical thinking--if similarity of FOV or handling of aspect ratios is evidence for your hypothesis, then aren't differences like GoW's wider FOV or Rainbow 6's handling of aspect ratios evidence against it?

Furthermore, forgetting to change a default is not the only possible explanation for similarities; there is an alternate explanation. In particular, there is a logical reason why developers producing games for widescreen should prefer to maintain the same FOV for the 4:3 version, and why we will almost certainly see this done more and more often in the future:

It is basic economics. As more potential customers come to own wide aspect ratio screens, it becomes less and less cost-effective to invest a lot of money and effort into optimizing the 4:3 display. So what is the most economical way to support 4:3? In contrast to games developed initially for 4:3, games developed for 16:9 are likely to use the full width of the 16:9 display for such things as scripted events. Simply chopping off the sides to fit it into 4:3 runs the risk of cropping off important parts of scripted events. In addition, 4:3 players may be blindsided by enemies that they were supposed to see coming, but don't because of the narrower FOV.

So cropping off the sides means an expensive investment in 4:3 playtesting, perhaps even adjusting scripted events and level design--hardly cost effective when fewer and fewer of your customers even own 4:3 screens. How can you save that money, and devote it to improving aspects of the game that are more likely to increase sales? Simple! Don't crop off the sides at all. Letterbox the 16:9 FOV into the width of the 4:3 display, and open the view up vertically so that it is not so obvious that the 4:3 version is really just a letterboxed version of the 16:9 version.

You realize with Vert-, a TripleHead2Go user sees 33% of the original 4:3 frame instead of 300%? Three monitors more worth of screen real estate... three times as many pixels... three times wider with the same pixel height as the original 4:3 monitor... and they see one third of what a single monitor sees instead of three times as much.

This makes sense to you???

You are playing a game, then all of a sudden you add one monitor to each side of you and expand the game onto them... and your viewable area takes a nosedive and zooms waaay in instead of expanding while keeping the same zoom level. Nothing strange about that?

You'll get a GREAT detailed look at whatever was in the middle of the screen though, with 3x as many pixels dedicated to 1/3 the area...

[quote] I need to lead you back to where we started again. I am talking about the fact that all the UE3 engines are Vert+ not HOR+.
EPIC Licesensees mostly, if not all use Vert+, by default. This WAS NOT, IS NOT a design decision by 2K.


Side note observing your behaviour:
You keep and should cease chunking down the converstaion into minute details and trying to proove your knowledge on all the different species of ants when we are clearly discussing an elephant.

You've slipped into a seductive mode of fallacious thinking--imagining that a bunch of weak arguments add up to a strong argument. One of the things that scientific training teaches is how to break an argument down into its fundamental elements and examine their validity.

Clearly I am not a scientist, and either are you until you proove it, and regardless, that will not make you more qualified to create an opinion. However that does not mean we both cannot develop opinions and arguments, and I appreciate your time and effort you are putting into your posts.

So let's now put it all back together to examine the validity of your argument. Your claims are as follows:

1) Epic, for some incomprehensible reason, chose default FOVs for the Unreal 3 engine very different from those used by most FPS games in the past.

2) Multiple independent development teams, people with years of experience in FPS game development, and with millions of dollars riding on their design decisions, somehow failed to notice this, simply accepted the default, and never bothered to question it or playtest different FOV options. Statements from a developer that they did in fact test dozens of 16:9 FOV variants before coming to a final decision are lies.

That is fairly cose to what I am trying to say. I am more so pointing to the use of VERT+ instead of the usual/expected/tried/traditional HOR+.

And your total evidence for this unlikely-sounding hypothesis

That is where you scientific opinion is about as qualified as mine. Even though you are still not a scientist to me. Regardless, again it wouldn't make you more qualified to construct an opinion. That being said, I believe it is a likely-sounding hypothesis.

And your total evidence for this unlikely-sounding hypothesis
as follows:

1) You don't like the FOV of Bioshock or the way it handles aspect ratios.

2) All Unreal 3 engines use the same FOV and way of handling different aspect ratios.

Except there is one small problem: #2 is false. Gears of War uses a different FOV from Bioshock. Rainbow 6 Vegas is not even "VERT+"

Now here's a test of logical thinking--if similarity of FOV or handling of aspect ratios is evidence for your hypothesis, then aren't differences like GoW's wider FOV or Rainbow 6's handling of aspect ratios evidence against it?

What you are saying is definetly possible, no doubt about that. You also must admit and I am going to ask you too, that what I believe is not impossible either is it?

However, I believe it is far more likey, around the 80-90% more likely mark, that the reason BioShock has VERT+ is because EPIC already developed it like that. The reason Gears has a different look (FOV/aspect ratio or whatever) could be for many reasons, and one is that it is different because it is a 3rd person game with from what I hear and led to believe is a different style of play. Regardless it is still VERT+ much like most if not all of the other UE3 engine titles.

That being said, I still think that BioShock's widescreen was implemented incorrectly, poorly and was not to do with design decision but rather a default or a recommendation by EPIC. Please, also do not insult anyones intellegence and use the media release as some sort of evidence that it was so. Just because 2K said they did it a certain way does make it so. They only thing that is so, is that they will act in the best interest of thier investors, and if they hold more corporate responsibility, they will act in the best interest of all thier stakeholders.

Furthermore, forgetting to change a default is not the only possible explanation for similarities; there is an alternate explanation. In particular, there is a logical reason why developers producing games for widescreen should prefer to maintain the same FOV for the 4:3 version, and why we will almost certainly see this done more and more often in the future:

Now that I nearly totally disagree with. Granted it is possible that they think that, however it would be shortsighted of them and not a sound economic decision for the medium term.

The reason I say this is because the future of visual human interface, ie the screen, is headed in a wider direction, according to Ed Lantz (which is the paper I refered to a few posts ago) The visual human interface is to assimilate immerson and realism. The more immersion and realism the more effective the communication is delivered. The whole point of communication is to get the most effective message across. Media, advertising, movies all follow this principle.

To reach TOTAL VISUAL immerson and realism we have to stimulate all of the visual nerve endings, leave none spared. Obviously this is not an attainable teachnology right now. But in the meantime stimulation of the more important visual nerves is more effective for communication. Those nerves are concentrated on the horizontal plane, as we are surface dwellers and use our horizontal view much more significatanly, of which anyone cannot doubt. So until we are using head mounted displays we are stuck with screens, screens which are getting wider and can also be multi screened to increase peripheral stimulation.

So restricting in game viewing to VERT+ is shortsighted. It means the wider technology tries to go the less someone sees. If they wanted to achieve what you are saying, they could have simply put black bars on either side of the game for widescreen users. But guess what, that would not go down to well at all.

It is basic economics. As more potential customers come to own wide aspect ratio screens, it becomes less and less cost-effective to invest a lot of money and effort into optimizing the 4:3 display. So what is the most economical way to support 4:3? In contrast to games developed initially for 4:3, games developed for 16:9 are likely to use the full width of the 16:9 display for such things as scripted events. Simply chopping off the sides to fit it into 4:3 runs the risk of cropping off important parts of scripted events. In addition, 4:3 players may be blindsided by enemies that they were supposed to see coming, but don't because of the narrower FOV.

So cropping off the sides means an expensive investment in 4:3 playtesting, perhaps even adjusting scripted events and level design--hardly cost effective when fewer and fewer of your customers even own 4:3 screens. How can you save that money, and devote it to improving aspects of the game that are more likely to increase sales? Simple! Don't crop off the sides at all. Letterbox the 16:9 FOV into the width of the 4:3 display, and open the view up vertically so that it is not so obvious that the 4:3 version is really just a letterboxed version of the 16:9 version.

Nup, I don't swallow that, and neither did the other game engine developers who supported HOR+.

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