trrll's justification of Bioshocks bad FOV

Elios · Post by **Elios** » 12 Sep 2007, 23:46

you still not getting it are you
i dont care about viewing distences i want to see MORE

like the one dev at 2k said you would see MORE with wide screen

now when some one says to me i will see MORE it means more then 4:3
not less

if he meant i would a more DETAILED screen he would of said that

2k lied end of story
they were cought in there lie and are now fixing it (slowly)

i dont thing it any thing to do what the devs intended other then the 360 cant handle hor+ widescreen with out a large drop in frame rate

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 12 Sep 2007, 23:50

@ trrll ... stop double posting !
Edit you previous post if you decide you have something else to say.

Osuperman · Post by **Osuperman** » 13 Sep 2007, 01:21

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)

trrll · Post by **trrll** » 13 Sep 2007, 05:44

The half life series have over 15 million copies sold.
http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=news&id=648

Comparing the aggregate sales over years of multiple games in a series to the sales of Bioshock alone over 3 weeks? Do you really imagine that to be a valid comparison?

If anything Bioshock got MORE sales due to bad FOV implentation and all the publicity it received around it.

Oh yes, I always run right out and buy a game when I hear people complaining about it. It must be the complaints that created those 1.5 million sales, it can't possibly be the widely reported strong reception of early versions of the game at game shows, or the virtually unanimous rave reviews from gaming magazines and major web sites, or the demo. You certainly have a high opinion of your own impact on the market...

There is probably a lot of 4:3 users within the 1.5 million copies sold too, don't you think? ;) And they are not complaining about FOV being too wide....

Based on the statistics, widely reported here that show how wide screen gaming is taking over, I doubt if that had a major impact. A lot of those copies were XBox 360, and the big selling point of the platform has been its support of widescreen HD gaming.

Talking about the sales of Bioshock is a waste of time, unless for publicity reasons. It does not reflect whether or not the FOV was bad and if you really were a scientist, you'd dismiss that as evidence.

On the contrary, sales are the closest thing that we have to an unbiased survey. Word gets around pretty quickly if a game doesn't live up to the hype.

People are not complaining about the game being bad, but that the FOV implentation of it was bad

Aside from here, I haven't seen much of anybody complaining about the FOV. Can you find me any professional game reviewer who complained about the FOV? But I do agree that the average user does not judge a game based upon a single rigid criterion such as FOV, or whether his monitor shows "more" than somebody else's, but rather upon the total experience--whether all of the esthetic and gameplay choices of the developer combine to create an exciting, immersive game experience. And people who are willing to judge the game as a whole seem to regard it as a hit.

This is the same formula as the other one you have referred to earlier, just put in another way. I wasn't asking for the formula on how to calculate the FOV based upon the distance you are sitting. Bioshock have a locked horizontal FOV and its not adjustable to where you are sitting. As I have mentioned earlier, 75 degrees are too narrow for desktop widescreen gaming.

75 degrees corresponds to an optimum viewing distnce that is 2/3 of the width of the screen. Do you really think that many PC users sit closer than that?

Since we are talking about a locked FOV which you defend with this formula saying its optimal, I am asking you once again: Whats the relevance of the given "optimal" angle compared to human eyesight?

The relevance is that it is an angle at which an undistorted, correct perspective, actual size image can be provided at typical viewing distances.

To give you some insight upon human vision, since you, despite calling yourself teacher, are operating with a 75 degrees optimal angle despite how the human vision functions.

The human visual system functions very well with a limited field of view. We look out of windows, we drive cars, we fly airplanes, we wear glasses that provide clear vision over only a portion of our visual field, and yet we judge sizes and distances accurately.

I think you misunderstand. We EXPECT to see more horizontal [hor+). The size of the objects registered with our brains are based upon our depth perception as mentioned earlier.

When we look out of a window, we expect to see what we should see, based upon the width of the window and how far we are away from it, and that expectation informs our perception of size and distance.

This is where you don't understand the mission for first person shooters and people. We don't want to look through a window or stand at a doorstep. We want to be in the world. Our lifetime experience differ from yours. we are not looking at the world through a window or AT a window if to use Bioshocks FOV.

But it is hard to perceive yourself as being in the world if what you see is distorted, unlike everything that you see in the real world. Short of a true virtual reality system, there are only two choices: a view that looks like a window into a real world, or a view that looks like a distorted picture in a frame.

JohnnyWakko · Post by **JohnnyWakko** » 13 Sep 2007, 05:55

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.

Yeah sure 2K said it was meant to be that way. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that was a calculated media comment, which doesn''t mean it was true. It was a media release comment meant to save face, I mean, what else do you think they would have said against such a furore?

Stop arguing semantics you lot.

Post by **Ryom** » 13 Sep 2007, 07:36

Trrll, for the last time buddy... NOBODY IS ARGUING AGAINST YOU. You want a default FOV of 75... it's all yours. We want to be able to change that FOV to suit us at will. There is no dilemma here. We want Horz+, as a default, if you are playing as the developer intended, THIS DOES NOT AFFECT YOU. And if we get our ability to change FOV at will, you get the ability to undo Horz+ if you don't like it, and the ability to undo "un-window-like" FOV's if developers use the FOV's we prefer! See why this is a win-win?

This is why it is so baffling as to why you continue to argue. What do you have to gain when you've already got everything you want, and can't possibly lose it if we "win" anyway?

trrll · Post by **trrll** » 13 Sep 2007, 18:17

you still not getting it are you
i dont care about viewing distences i want to see MORE

like the one dev at 2k said you would see MORE with wide screen

now when some one says to me i will see MORE it means more then 4:3
not less

if he meant i would a more DETAILED screen he would of said that

2k lied end of story
they were cought in there lie and are now fixing it (slowly)

i dont thing it any thing to do what the devs intended other then the 360 cant handle hor+ widescreen with out a large drop in frame rate

Developers sometimes forget that a tentative remark made during development will be taken by some players as some sort of ironclad contract, and that any subsequent deviation from those early plans will result in outraged accusations of betrayal and lying. In this case, however, it sounds that they were trying to be careful. Chances are that when those comments were made, the final FOV for 4:3 hadn't even been decided upon. So he carefully avoided answering any questions about "vert-" or "horiz+", and said the one thing that he absolutely knew to be true--the widescreen display was being generated at the full resolution of the monitor, without stretching, and since widescreens typically have more pixels, that necessarily meant that widescreen users would see more--more pixels of game information.

I doubt if the power of the 360 has anything to do with it; the computational cost of rendering a 3D image has more to do with the pixel resolution than with the FOV, and there are plenty of 360 games with wider FOVs than Bioshock.

trrll · Post by **trrll** » 13 Sep 2007, 22:20

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.

Yeah sure 2K said it was meant to be that way. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that was a calculated media comment, which doesn''t mean it was true. It was a media release comment meant to save face, I mean, what else do you think they would have said against such a furore?

They could have said, we'll release a patch to let you change it the way you like. In fact they did say that.

Here again, what I find particularly revealing is that you are so willing to embrace the notion that a developer taking a multi-million dollar risk in game development, one with extensive experience in 3D game development, one with the artistic and game design expertise to produce a game that goes immediately to the top of the charts, would somehow forget to think seriously about something so very elementary as FOV. Indeed, you are so desperate to believe this that when they say that they did what even the most rank beginner would do--try out various alternatives to decide what works best--you immediately presume that they must be lying.

And by the way, is it even true that all Unreal games are using the same FOV? The fact that other state-of-the-art 3D games are using the same approach of keeping the same FOV for all aspect ratios and opening up the game vertically is hardly evidence that the FOV itself is the same as Bioshock's. 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?

Elios · Post by **Elios** » 13 Sep 2007, 23:10

[quote]you still not getting it are you
i dont care about viewing distences i want to see MORE

like the one dev at 2k said you would see MORE with wide screen

now when some one says to me i will see MORE it means more then 4:3
not less

if he meant i would a more DETAILED screen he would of said that

2k lied end of story
they were cought in there lie and are now fixing it (slowly)

i dont thing it any thing to do what the devs intended other then the 360 cant handle hor+ widescreen with out a large drop in frame rate

Developers sometimes forget that a tentative remark made during development will be taken by some players as some sort of ironclad contract, and that any subsequent deviation from those early plans will result in outraged accusations of betrayal and lying. In this case, however, it sounds that they were trying to be careful. Chances are that when those comments were made, the final FOV for 4:3 hadn't even been decided upon. So he carefully avoided answering any questions about "vert-" or "horiz+", and said the one thing that he absolutely knew to be true--the widescreen display was being generated at the full resolution of the monitor, without stretching, and since widescreens typically have more pixels, that necessarily meant that widescreen users would see more--more pixels of game information.

I doubt if the power of the 360 has anything to do with it; the computational cost of rendering a 3D image has more to do with the pixel resolution than with the FOV, and there are plenty of 360 games with wider FOVs than Bioshock.

yes but if you note NONE of them use the UT3 engine
seems to its some thing that engine

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 13 Sep 2007, 23:21

Look, I'm all for free discussion, but Trrll: stop double posting nearly all the time. You're supposedly intelligent, so use that intelligence and pay attention to warnings.

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 13 Sep 2007, 23:58

If it didn't, it wouldn't be so easy to hack it to change the FOV.

Please show us how just easy it is to hack Bioshock ... :wink:

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.

Yes ... most widescreen owners want to see more ... widescreens are wider not cutdownscreens ... most developers know this and that is why we are beginning to see an increase in games that do widescreen correctly ... horz + ... but not with the Unreal III engine ... :wink:

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:

JohnnyWakko · Post by **JohnnyWakko** » 14 Sep 2007, 01:24

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.

How easy was it to hack trrll?

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.

They could have said, we'll release a patch to let you change it the way you like. In fact they did say that.

Not without declining to admit poor implementation.

Here again, what I find particularly revealing is that you are so willing to embrace the notion that a developer taking a multi-million dollar risk in game development, one with extensive experience in 3D game development, one with the artistic and game design expertise to produce a game that goes immediately to the top of the charts, would somehow forget to think seriously about something so very elementary as FOV.

Now you are catching on, that is exaclty what I am proposing.

Indeed, you are so desperate to believe this that when they say that they did what even the most rank beginner would do--try out various alternatives to decide what works best--you immediately presume that they must be lying.

Here we go again, making the other party seem desperate and irrationale. I must be desperate if I beleive something contrary to a yours.

And by the way, is it even true that all Unreal games are using the same FOV? The fact that other state-of-the-art 3D games are using the same approach of keeping the same FOV for all aspect ratios and opening up the game vertically is hardly evidence that the FOV itself is the same as Bioshock's.

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. 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.

Osuperman · Post by **Osuperman** » 14 Sep 2007, 03:27

Why's he not answering my question? come on trrll! keep up!

JohnnyWakko · Post by **JohnnyWakko** » 14 Sep 2007, 04:11

Why's he not answering my question? come on trrll! keep up!

I reckon! This is obsurd! He is trying to baffle us by not replying to all of our questions at once! :lol:

Trrll is a good sport though, I like him.

BlueMak · Post by **BlueMak** » 14 Sep 2007, 04:26

[quote]Why's he not answering my question? come on trrll! keep up!

I reckon! This is obsurd! He is trying to baffle us by not replying to all of our questions at once! :lol:

Trrll is a good sport though, I like him.

Why and how?
He refuses to answer any questions that are going to put him in a difficult spot. Whenever someone else has a very very good point, trill just continue like it was never mentioned.
The guy is a troll in a suit with an fitting name.

ToryS · Post by **ToryS** » 14 Sep 2007, 04:27

All i know is that when i stare straight ahead, i can see my hands wiggling while their 90 degrees off from my eyes...

thats a 180 degree field of view...

Maybe its tactical players who like the bigger monitors most ( and those who really get use from the extra real estate ie, strategy gamers). I know i have a huge desire for tactical realism and being immersed into a virtual setting, feeling all the tension. I certainly don't hear many people discussing Pacman in the board.

Perhaps its the more "visual learner/person" whos looking for a sense of being there that they can't quite get from a 75 fov, and/or the other way around; they get something non-visual people can't get. (Which would just be a simple fact, not something to boast about...)

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 :lol: )

trrll · Post by **trrll** » 14 Sep 2007, 05:46

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.

JohnnyWakko · Post by **JohnnyWakko** » 14 Sep 2007, 06:09

[quote]...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.

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. That is what I have been sayin, it is a non standard default, and it was used by EPIC and I don't think that it had anything to do with what 2K wanted, I think they merely just adopted it like all the other licesensees. As I have said before, I think it is related to games that are designed to port to consoles.

All your other comments are irrelevant to me.

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 14 Sep 2007, 07:59

[quote]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 reportedThe game demo was hacked within 24 hours after I asked him to hack it and he and I spent hours testing and sorting it out for release.
I was the first to post about it both here and on the 2K forums ...
This does not mean it was easy just that he is very clever ... :wink:
As I say if it is so easy ... you show us how ... :wink:

and you actually said ...

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.

If it did I wouldn't have had to ask Racer_S to hack it ... :wink:
Racer's methods for hacking FOV aren't anything to do with any "settings" that come with the game.
How little you know about these things ... :wink:

[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.:

What ? .... my post about the Unreal III engine doesn't say they all have the same FOV it suggests that the game engine handles the FOV in a certain way vert - in widescreen ... and maybe just maybe the makers of Vegas tried to get the FOV right for the 360 and widescreens despite this.
Of course Gears of War has a wider FOV it is 3rd person ... :wink:
Again you twist things ... :roll:

trrll · Post by **trrll** » 14 Sep 2007, 13:54

[quote]

[quote]...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.

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.

If it did I wouldn't have had to ask Racer_S to hack it ...

Except greylantern then found out how to use the engine's FOV commands to modify the settings, proving that the engine has FOV settings.

Racer's methods for hacking FOV aren't anything to do with any "settings" that come with the game.
How little you know about these things ...

No, I expect that Racer figured out where the game stores the values of the FOV setting parameters, and wrote a patch to change that directly. But the fact that the FOV is not somehow implicit in the geometric code of the game, which would take months to disentangle without the source code, but determined by parameters stored in a few locations, would suggest to anybody who has done any programming that the engine also provides a straightforward way to modify those parameters. Which greylantern has now proved.

What ? .... my post about the Unreal III engine doesn't say they all have the same FOV it suggests that the game engine handles the FOV in a certain way vert - in widescreen ... and maybe just maybe the makers of Vegas tried to get the FOV right for the 360 and widescreens despite this.
Of course Gears of War has a wider FOV it is 3rd person ...

But I thought that the issue for you was not whether 4:3 players get more vertical FOV, but whether the horizontal FOV is adequate. So the fact that developers are modifying the FOV to meet the demands of the game suggests a) the Unreal Engine provides a way to do so, and b) developers are using that control to provide a FOV that fits their particular game.

So what makes you think Bioshock's FOV is the default? Could it be Gears of War's? Or Rainbow 6's? Or could it be that they are all games from experienced, competent developers who are not merely accepting a default setting, but using the Unreal engine's options to select the FOV that best provides the widescreen game experience that they are hoping to create?

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