Widescreen Gaming Forum

Not only all that, but also having a larger, widescreen monitor should not mean you see LESS.

I agree with sweetz that games like Wheelman are made with 16:9 in mind, and I play Wheelman in "Vert-," but as a widescreen forum and rating site it makes sense not to reward games which show us less in widescreen.

Not only all that, but also having a larger, widescreen monitor should not mean you see LESS.

I agree with sweetz that games like Wheelman are made with 16:9 in mind, and I play Wheelman in "Vert-," but as a widescreen forum and rating site it makes sense not to reward games which show us less in widescreen.

Ah but it's not a matter of widescreen seeing less. It the game was designed in 16:9 and the developer chose the FOV for that aspect, and the FOV does not adjust appropriately based on aspect, then it's a matter of 16:10 and 4:3 actually seeing too much.

I'm not defending vert-/+ behavior, I agree that, for the most part, it's not the right way to do things. What I don't like is that right now the DR and the grading system says that, as is, when playing the game in 16:9 it's "wrong". This is not the case. 16:10 and 4:3 are "wrong", with 4:3 being more compromised from the intented vision than 16:10.

I wish a verbiage was used the judged the implementation without also impliying that widescreen resolutions were compromised.

I've got a bit more to add to this, but unfortunately I've got to go right now so I'll have to cut it short.

I remember thinking the same thing when Bioshock came out... people were going haywire and news site were posting stories like "Bioshock widescreen broken" and the whole time I was like "they started with 16:9, then opened it up... what's the problem?"

Then they released the patch which made it Hor+ and I must say, the game looks a lot better that way.

I'm sure it depends on the title, and I agree with you it can send the wrong message. Wheelman is not a "D" experience, you have a point there. I think the problem is that once you open up the detailed report system to writer opinion, as in "this game is Vet- but the FOV is fine for widescreen so I give it a B+," you make the whole system questionable. One man's great FOV is another man's terrible zoomed in FOV.

"they started with 16:9, then opened it up... what's the problem?"

The problem is that they did not start with anything. Epic Games started it many many years ago. Its camera code probably has not changed all that much from the first Unreal Engine. Which also scaled vertically by default. The Field of View does not even cross the mind of i'd say over 50% of major developers these days because everyone using third party engines that already have it taken care of for them. And thats exactly what happened with bioshock. They probably did not even open up the file containing the camera code.

[quote]"they started with 16:9, then opened it up... what's the problem?"

The problem is that they did not start with anything. Epic Games started it many many years ago. Its camera code probably has not changed all that much from the first Unreal Engine. Which also scaled vertically by default. The Field of View does not even cross the mind of i'd say over 50% of major developers these days because everyone using third party engines that already have it taken care of for them. And thats exactly what happened with bioshock. They probably did not even open up the file containing the camera code.

I know, I was just saying that was my first reaction as well... once I saw the difference with the patch I became a convert.

[quote][quote]"they started with 16:9, then opened it up... what's the problem?"

The problem is that they did not start with anything. Epic Games started it many many years ago. Its camera code probably has not changed all that much from the first Unreal Engine. Which also scaled vertically by default. The Field of View does not even cross the mind of i'd say over 50% of major developers these days because everyone using third party engines that already have it taken care of for them. And thats exactly what happened with bioshock. They probably did not even open up the file containing the camera code.

I know, I was just saying that was my first reaction as well... once I saw the difference with the patch I became a convert.

Yeah, I just needed to get that off my chest.

[quote]"they started with 16:9, then opened it up... what's the problem?"

The problem is that they did not start with anything. Epic Games started it many many years ago. Its camera code probably has not changed all that much from the first Unreal Engine. Which also scaled vertically by default. The Field of View does not even cross the mind of i'd say over 50% of major developers these days because everyone using third party engines that already have it taken care of for them. And thats exactly what happened with bioshock. They probably did not even open up the file containing the camera code.
I can't say what files were or were not opened by the devs for Blacksite (UE3), but after posting my Hor+ fix for that game I can say with reasonable certainty that a single dev/programmer could have implemented perfect WS Hor+ support for all ARs in 2 hours or less.

For whatever reason, it was either ignored or deemed unimportant.

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VirtualDub Game Recording Guide | BFME2 & RotWK Widescreen/Triplehead Mods

I'm sure it depends on the title, and I agree with you it can send the wrong message. Wheelman is not a "D" experience, you have a point there. I think the problem is that once you open up the detailed report system to writer opinion, as in "this game is Vet- but the FOV is fine for widescreen so I give it a B+," you make the whole system questionable. One man's great FOV is another man's terrible zoomed in FOV.

I know that subjectivity is a concern, but at the same time I think people are too "scared" of subjective ratings. If a few people disagree, so what, that doesn't invalidate the usefulness of the subjective rating for everyone else.

The present grading system may not be subjective, but it also doesn't always accurately represent the quality of the widescreen experience. A vert-/+ implementation doesn't always mean that it's the widescreen experience (at least at 16:9/16:10) that is compromised - which is the case if a game's FOV was chosen based on a widescreen aspect being the "target" aspect.

I wish there was some way you could say the aspect change implementation is a "C", but the game is actually intended for widescreen resolutions and the widescreen experience is really an "A".

As asterisk, a secondary grade, I don't know, something that makes it clear that it's just the FOV change behavior that we don't like and that the FOV isn't necessarily "wrong" at widescreen resolutions. I realize there's some subjectivity and guessing there, but is it not better to have some subjectivity and yet have a grade that's more representative of the actual widescreen experience than be completely objective and yet have a misleading grade?

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Independent of all that, the grade Wheelman (and a few other vert -/+ games) games being lowered because of the presence of a hack to make them hor+ seems wrong. For one, if we do assume the game's FOV was chosen for 16:9 and not 4:3, then we're actually messing up the experience by telling people to use the hack. And second, if we are saying that we're grading the implementation, then we should just grade the game's implementation. The presence of external hacks shouldn't be a factor.

Honestly, widescreen gaming is a mess, even today. No standards in the industry, no consensus among players about "what feels right"... And you wish to add subjectivity to the mix - well, we all do. Which is why we need compromises. Objectivity. A clear line to follow. Because it's a mess out there, mate ! :lol:

The Wheelman is a beast of its own - it may be Vert- from 16:9 on only, and a Vert+ 16:10 might not hurt the gameplay experience, it still needs a hack for TripleHead. What can we do, simply bend the rules for this one ?

The thing is Sweetz as I pointed out, While I agree that Wheelman was probably developed for 16:9, they did NOT select the FOV. It runs on the UE3 engine, which is vert- by default, they probably did not think about the field of view what so ever.