Widescreen Gaming Forum

I checked out 2k, 54 pages of ignorance and no solution. DX9 should be able to get us a hack/crack...sounds like we have another EA company on our hands...the LAST thing we needed was another crappy Non-widescreen bigbudget crap producing profiting moronic company.

I'm kind of surprised no one has posted about this yet, as it's been annoying the crap out of me since I first loaded the game up... The HUD is stretched. It looks like they assume any widescreen resolution is 16:9 so on a standard PC 16:10 display, all the hud elements are stretched out vertically. Here's a 4:3 and 16:10 shot to show what I mean.

4:3 - scaled down from a 1280x960 shot


16:10 - scaled down from a 1680x1050 shot


To me, this is just as annoying as the FOV issue.

[quote]i cant play it. it makes me sick. as it has others, and other reviewers.

I don't know why it would make you sick. First person games sometimes produce a kind of motion sickness in susceptible persons because the screen shows you moving, which conflicts with the signals that you are getting from your inner ear. But there is no particular reason why one field of view should be more nausea-inducing than another, so long as it is not so excessively wide as to produce noticeable distortion as you turn. If you position yourself at a distance from the screen such that your own hand at arms length appears the same size as your hand on the screen, then what you see on the screen will correspond to what you would actually see if looking through a window of the same size. Do you really think that walking around looking through a window would make you sick? Do you get sick walking around wearing a swim mask, which restricts your field of view to roughly the same extent? I suspect that much of the nausea that people are reporting is basically power of suggestion.

For the people who still don't get how the widescreen looks zoomed in in comparison to 4:3, part of the problem is that it's not really obivous when you see the widescreen screenshot scaled down and placed within the 4:3 screenshot. Here's a 4:3 and 16:9 screenshot at the same height side by side, hopefully this should making the "zooming" effect much more apparent:



These screenshots are taken from Gabbo's report on the game.

If anyone claims that 2K Boston developed the game first in widescreen format, with reduced viewable area AND a hand model cut in half, and then they developed the 4:3 and added the rest of the hand, he/she must be either work for 2K, or be a complete.....noob, not to use the word I should use.

Wow, this really makes no sense. Both images are obviously generated from the same geometry model, including the hands. You just see more or less of your hands depending upon the field of view. On a widescreen TV, you see less of your hand in the "ready" position, but many of the animations show a good part of the arm.

I checked out 2k, 54 pages of ignorance and no solution. DX9 should be able to get us a hack/crack...sounds like we have another EA company on our hands...the LAST thing we needed was another crappy Non-widescreen bigbudget crap producing profiting moronic company.

Thats taking it a little far. Game is far from crappy. I'm annoyed about the lack of proper widescreen too. Give it a chance for the dust to settle.

Originally Posted by irrationallevine View Post
Hey guys-

Sorry about all the conflict. IG development people (specifically Chris and Rowan who are both on vacation) were trying to take a day off today (we've been working about six months 6-7 days a week). I'm trying to see what everybody's concerns are and consult with the staff.

I know people are frustrated, but we are dealing with internet time here. It wasn't until 7 pm EST that I was able to even talk to anybody in our Australian studio, which is open today (9 AM their time).

I hear you that not everybody was thrilled with the PC launch. And I'm trying to collect information and see what the facts are. PC game development does not function in a matter of seconds or hours, especially when most of the team is on vacation. But I hear you, and we're looking into the issue. I'll only ask you have a bit of understanding as to the time scale that software development issues must occur in.

Best regards,

Ken Levine

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=122353&postcount=622

If I had to guess, I'd assume that they developed for 16:9, because that's what the 360 is, and that's where they're likely to get the majority of their sales.

The majority of their users are 4:3! Just because someone owns a 360 does not mean they're running a HD televion. Just the opposite is the most common case.

The point of proper widescreen support is so that you see more than a 4:3 display... with their method if widescreen you see less of the game!

It's a hack, unforgivable when ALL new displays for the past few years have been widescreen. I can run Quake3 unmodified (released in 1999) properly in widescreen, why can't games released almost a decade later support widescreen properly?

you would THINK that is the proper way to support it... but even some movies run that way. James Cameron has been quoted as saying he likes fullscreen better and actually films it as such and crops it the same way for "widescreen" at the theaters.

does not remove the massive LAME sticker on the idea, but "technically" it is widescreen format. Just for all sensible movie/game buffs it is the worst way to go.

Hey, very cool on the KL response. Always knew there was something special about that guy based on interviews with him I have read. rockin.

Proper widescreen support (Horz+) does NOT affect the view of 4:3 users. 4:3 users would see the same frame if the game was vert- as they would if the game was horz+ or if the game didn't support widescreen at all! And why should a vert- be forced on widescreen users which shows them 44.5% less of the frame than what a horz+ widescreener would see and 25% less than a 4:3 user. It makes no sense to support widescreen that way :/

[quote]If I had to guess, I'd assume that they developed for 16:9, because that's what the 360 is, and that's where they're likely to get the majority of their sales.

The majority of their users are 4:3! Just because someone owns a 360 does not mean they're running a HD televion. Just the opposite is the most common case.

I was going to say the same thing and even offer some data to back up what I said (something he fails to do every time he posts).

Only 30% of Xbox 360 users were aware of the HD capabilities of the machine.

http://gamer.blorge.com/2007/08/09/wii-wins-because-microsoft-and-sony-cant-explain-xbox360ps3-benefits/

They don't even know what HD is!

Just like PC gamers get the shaft with console ports being tailored to for the lowest common denominator it's more likely that 360 HD users are having the same thing happen to them, either because they're catering to the 4:3 majority or because of a performance hit. But quite frankly I don't care about that. I just want to see them implement WS support like other developers do, such as Valve (see numerous screen shots demonstrating this).

I want to thank WSGF for informing the public of this problem and letting 2KGames know aswell.

Keep up the great work. =)

For the people who still don't get how the widescreen looks zoomed in in comparison to 4:3, part of the problem is that it's not really obivous when you see the widescreen screenshot scaled down and placed within the 4:3 screenshot. Here's a 4:3 and 16:9 screenshot at the same height side by side, hopefully this should making the "zooming" effect much more apparent:



These screenshots are taken from Gabbo's report on the game.

This is it, in a nutshell. I believe we may have a troll or two on this thread, people who are determined not to understand what is staring them directly in the face, but Gabbo's screens make it crystal clear. In this case, seeing definitely is believing.

Widescreen users prefer that format because, among other things, it lets us see more, not less. And in the screens above you can clearly see two things:

1) Portions of the image are cropped in order to simulate an actual widescreen image, and ...

2) The main effect of this cropping is to lend the image a permanently zoomed-in look. Unlike some of my fellow posters, this hasn't made me nauseous (although I haven't played the demo for more than five minutes so far) but it does make the experience of playing the game feel somewhat unpleasant and cramped for me. There are many (mostly console) FPS that give you the option to toggle a zoom-in key while in a gunfight, in order to better target enemies. More than once I've used that option, forgotten that I left it on, then wondered why the image looks so odd ... But then I realize I just left the zoom toggle on, and no wonder it looks odd-- the game wasn't meant to be played zoomed in the entire time! (As I said before, I'd compare it to holding my face a few inches away from the screen.)

There's a guy on here trying to argue that this might have a deliberate design decision, and that this is a perfectly acceptable widescreen solution, etc etc. And he's right. It is a perfectly acceptable widescreen solution ...

... if you don't give a damn about widescreen.

I am cancelling my amazon order right now, unbelievable :cry:

There's a guy on here trying to argue that this might have a deliberate design decision, and that this is a perfectly acceptable widescreen solution, etc etc. And he's right. It is a perfectly acceptable widescreen solution ...

... if you don't give a damn about widescreen.

unsure if you were talking about me, but it WAS clearly a design decision... else we would not even have the widescreen option there is currently.

what I was NOT trying to say was that it was "perfectly acceptable" (never used those words) but rather using examples of other mediums where that same decision has been made to show that it "technically" IS widescreen. But only in the lamest of ways.

my point was that there is enough ignorance out there that thinks it is all the same and no one will notice the diff... when clearly if you care about it at all you will notice.

I am a movie and game nut, which naturally implies that I would rather watch a movie like ben-hur in it's original 2.76:1 ratio on a 19" 4:3 TV than see it cropped and lose the splendor. It is aggravating the way that they implemented the widescreen, but it is a good thing that Levine responded fairly quick and gave something for us to look forward to.



If you were not refering to me as the aforementioned troll, then let the above serve as just more fuel for this thread and rock on...

...if you were, well... uhh, dunno what else to tell you man. 8)

[quote]There's a guy on here trying to argue that this might have a deliberate design decision, and that this is a perfectly acceptable widescreen solution, etc etc. And he's right. It is a perfectly acceptable widescreen solution ...

... if you don't give a damn about widescreen.

unsure if you were talking about me, but it WAS clearly a design decision... else we would not even have the widescreen option there is currently.

what I was NOT trying to say was that it was "perfectly acceptable" (never used those words) but rather using examples of other mediums where that same decision has been made to show that it "technically" IS widescreen. But only in the lamest of ways.

my point was that there is enough ignorance out there that thinks it is all the same and no one will notice the diff... when clearly if you care about it at all you will notice.

I am a movie and game nut, which naturally implies that I would rather watch a movie like ben-hur in it's original 2.76:1 ratio on a 19" 4:3 TV than see it cropped and lose the splendor. It is aggravating the way that they implemented the widescreen, but it is a good thing that Levine responded fairly quick and gave something for us to look forward to.



If you were not refering to me as the aforementioned troll, then let the above serve as just more fuel for this thread and rock on...

...if you were, well... uhh, dunno what else to tell you man. 8)

Ak, now you're going to force me to go through and try to find the "acceptable" quote (hopefully I didn't imagine it). But no, sojrner, I wasn't talking about you--twas the evil cornbread guy I was referring to.

Wasn't F.E.A.R. released with no WS and later patched for WS support?

Weren't there a few other games that were released with FakeWideScreen that were later patched to support true WS?




8)

Yo Paddy, well done on finding that one out. I must confess I didn't notice any problems as I was playing the demo on both 360 and PC in widescreen and never even bothered going into fullscreen. Nice find!

Ah well, I am sure 2K will get their backsides in gear and release a proper patch to fix this issue, they aren't EA after all ;)

I posted about this issue on PCZone's technical site under the bioshock thread...


http://forums.dearwandy.com/viewtopic.php?id=23527

Page 3 near the bottom. Their reviewer replied with a very interesting point, namely



"This wasn't mentioned in the PC Zone review because we didn't know about it. We didn't know about it because we played through the entire game in widescreen without noticing anything wrong, or feeling that the screen was cramped in any way. It's just not an issue. Although if I owned Widescreen Gaming Forum, I'd probably take it upon myself to be outraged."

"Would you have picked up on this had you not read about it on Kotaku? I doubt it."

My reply....
Er wrong... I was at the WSGF that broke this tidbit before it even hit that site.. In fact that site nicked our pic from our thread on that forum the same as several other sites are doing including shacknews

http://www.shacknews.com/

about fourth article down now... And anyway since when do hardware concerns not get reflected in a review? Just because it's a monitor issue shouldn't relegate it to the 'not interested' bucket should it?


And so it continues on that site

Wow.. some people have no idea do they.

Yeah we only find out about stuff off of Kotuka..... give me a break...

Some people need to learn to keep there mouth shut....

To all the people on here saying that there isn't a problem, please look at the screenshots. Its obvious the screen is cropped and that is not how widescreen works.

I also have thought maybe 4:3 is actually a FOV overshot, but after thinking about it, why is there a perfectly created wrist on the character in 4:3. It seems to me its suppose to be seen all the time, otherwise why is it there in 4:3 at all.

Take a game like battlefield 2, when thats in Vert- widescreen you can still see the characters gun/hand completely just like in a normal 4:3 resolution. So why in Bioshock do we only see half his hand?