Bioshock: artistic vision - or not as the case may be

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:00

Granted I think the FOV in bioshock is a bit low and dizzyness inducing, but all this nonsense about 4:3 cropping is just silly.

If you've thought the FOV was 'low and dizzyness inducing (to use your misspelling) then you're just as affected by this whole cropping mess as those who actually acknowledge it as a problem. :)

I won't even comment about the rest of the post...

greylantern · Post by **greylantern** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:02

aggies > in your HL2 (or hypothetical) example you are forgetting that at both WS and 4:3 (which you say does the same as Bioshock but the other way around - or something) the FOV is changed to ensure it's not unnaturally zoomed in.

They call them 'FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS' not 'First person but with the head of the first person 2 feet from his body shooters'. Developers kinda made an unnoficial 'standard' of correct field of views in 3D games years ago, it was made because it aproximated the actual human field of view within limited means.

If you read a book on 3D game engine coding it will explain all this to you and it really is accepted as 'conventional wisdom'. It wasn't invented to straight jacket games to not be different, it was arrived at as a way to best immerse the player while *not* causing motion sickness and other issues that some people get with playing 3D games. Whether it was 90degrees or higher (or whatever) is not the point, the 4:3 in bioshock as a very nice FOV (nothing to do with what its showing on screen top and bottom, it could show you a 200 x 200 pixel window in the middle with the rest of the visuals intentionall blocked out but if it retained a natural FOV then it would still feel ok (just look crap and not show much).

WS gamers are not wanting MORE, the 'more' just comes from using a widescreen as its intended. We don't even care about the missing VERTICAL that the 4:3 users get (if that is a design choice)... but what we do care about is the fact they went way below 'conventional standards' on field of view for widescreen and we have this situation now where you feel disembodied (maybe some people don't realise it or feel it, but it's NOT our faults if we do feel it) and where all the info on the screen in this zoomed in field of view is telling your brain to back off your viewing or refocus or whatever, but you *can't* do that because it's not real life, you can't simply move back, or refocus because in this game that zoomed in viewpoint follows you around everywhere.

If we could get past the 'they just want to see extra for their WS money' put downs and concentrate on the screwed up field of view it would make a nice change.

Gabbo · Post by **Gabbo** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:11

I think I have the perfect solution to this whole VERT+ mess...

Play with your head tilted sideways.

Then your peripheral vision is more "in-line" with developers FOV sensibilities.

Problem solved!

Now lets all go get drunk!

JosephJEHancock · Post by **JosephJEHancock** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:12

Do developers have to give everyone what is known as true widescreen support? No. Would it reflect better upon them to have done so, seeing as it is not rocket science? Yes. I am still using a 4:3 monitor (yes, even though I post here quite a bit), as I haven't got around to deciding on a widescreen monitor. I played the demo on my 19 inch CRT, and it is perfectly fine (as are all my FPS games), but it would be nice to know that once I do have my widescreen, that I will see the benefit of it. As has been pointed out countless times, allowing 16:10 and 16:9 options does not affect how 4:3 looks. It will only affect those with widescreen. Half Life 2 did this three years ago, and people praise them here for their forward thinking.

P.S I am thinking about running the Bioshock demo in windowed widescreen mode at 1920x1200 or 1920x1440 (using the widescreen fix you guys made), while my CRT is set to 2048x1536, just for a laugh. Reckon it will work?

mrk · Post by **mrk** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:13

[quote]Just played through the demo. The mouse feels lest fubar with my settings :). Thx for the hack :D .

I hope there will be tweaks to fix fps a bit more. I drop to 30fps in firefights, I don't like that :P. (8800gtx )

I have an 8800 gts and the frame rate is silky smooth (1680x1050 all settings maxed except aa). Athlon 64 single core 4000, 2 megs 3200 ram ... What system do you have?

Dude you got it running on 2megs of ram?

JosephJEHancock · Post by **JosephJEHancock** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:17

Wow, all I have got is 512 Kilobytes. :D

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:18

P.S I am thinking about running the Bioshock demo in windowed widescreen mode at 1920x1200 or 1920x1440 (using the widescreen fix you guys made), while my CRT is set to 2048x1536, just for a laugh. Reckon it will work?

Sounds like a laugh. Do it. ;)

...

Interestingly, Bioshock has another issue - whether disc or Steam, it can only be activated twice. Seems even the Steam version has SecuROM protection build in. Man, do 2K Games not trust us, or what? (Google 'bioshock activation' for more links than I care to count...)

Post by **Paddy the Wak** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:20

Now lets all go get drunk!

Best idea all day ... :D

I am soooo fed up with this whole thing .... and I no longer care ... I with Racer_S's help have a fix to play in TripleHead ... that's what matters to me ... :mrgreen:

And ... I hope along the way a few will enjoy the hack and TRUE widescreen

Hic ... that beer is Kicking in ...

JosephJEHancock · Post by **JosephJEHancock** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:20

Wait a second, did I just put 1920x1440. Doh, that's 4:3 isn't it? 1920x1080 is the other option. :oops:

Low Roller · Post by **Low Roller** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:22

aggies > in your HL2 (or hypothetical) example you are forgetting that at both WS and 4:3 (which you say does the same as Bioshock but the other way around - or something) the FOV is changed to ensure it's not unnaturally zoomed in.

They call them 'FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS' not 'First person but with the head of the first person 2 feet from his body shooters'. Developers kinda made an unnoficial 'standard' of correct field of views in 3D games years ago, it was made because it aproximated the actual human field of view within limited means.

If you read a book on 3D game engine coding it will explain all this to you and it really is accepted as 'conventional wisdom'. It wasn't invented to straight jacket games to not be different, it was arrived at as a way to best immerse the player while *not* causing motion sickness and other issues that some people get with playing 3D games. Whether it was 90degrees or higher (or whatever) is not the point, the 4:3 in bioshock as a very nice FOV (nothing to do with what its showing on screen top and bottom, it could show you a 200 x 200 pixel window in the middle with the rest of the visuals intentionall blocked out but if it retained a natural FOV then it would still feel ok (just look crap and not show much).

WS gamers are not wanting MORE, the 'more' just comes from using a widescreen as its intended. We don't even care about the missing VERTICAL that the 4:3 users get (if that is a design choice)... but what we do care about is the fact they went way below 'conventional standards' on field of view for widescreen and we have this situation now where you feel disembodied (maybe some people don't realise it or feel it, but it's NOT our faults if we do feel it) and where all the info on the screen in this zoomed in field of view is telling your brain to back off your viewing or refocus or whatever, but you *can't* do that because it's not real life, you can't simply move back, or refocus because in this game that zoomed in viewpoint follows you around everywhere.

If we could get past the 'they just want to see extra for their WS money' put downs and concentrate on the screwed up field of view it would make a nice change.

Exactly. 2K is keeping the horizontal FOV the same for both 16:9 and 4:3 modes, and changing the vertical FOV. This is commonly called cropping.

HL2 correctly supports 16:9 and 4:3 resolutions by using different horizontal FOV's for each mode.

aggies11 · Post by **aggies11** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:27

Re: Greylantern

Agreed. Remember I mentioned that this might not be the case for Bioshock, as I'm personally not qualified to tell :)

However am I safe to assume that - given the implementation of 4:3 that bioshock uses (zooming out until WS, WS + vertical, or whatever you want to call it) - only one (WS or 4:3) can have the proper field of view (so it feels right, doesn't induce nausea etc)?

If the above is true (that if you do it that way, only one can be "right", the other must be "bad") then the whole point of my last post is that it is possible to design it in such a way that the WS setup feels "right", and the 4:3 is unnatural.

Again I myself can't really tell, but based on your and other's experiences it looks like that they choose 4:3 to "feel right" and WS to be "off"?

I'm still pretty new to WS gaming, having only had my first WS display for about a month now. But I do find the whole thing rather interesting :)

Aggies

Gabbo · Post by **Gabbo** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:28

I am soooo fed up with this whole thing .... and I no longer care ... I with Racer_S's help have a fix to play in TripleHead ... that's what matters to me ... :mrgreen:

Yeah. I feel ya.

My head hurts from arguing this topic from all possible angles. I was never THAT upset in the first place. Remember the days where games didn't support widescreen resolutions at all and we dealt with the ol' stretch-factor?

Since the Racer_S solution exists, it's almost a non-factor. I am simply still posting in this thread because I really think I can hit the 900 post mark in this thread alone!

Watch out... I JUST may get there!

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:32

Watch out... I JUST may get there!

Go for broke, man! 8)

Gabbo · Post by **Gabbo** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:36

I ask you this..what is the the ratio of widescreen to 4:# in their offices...if they say they developed it in widescreen:

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/irrationalvisit1.html

Wow.

That's a whole bunch of 4:3 monitors. It's almost like a time machine going way back to the year 2000.

Osuperman · Post by **Osuperman** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:39

Interestingly, Bioshock has another issue - whether disc or Steam, it can only be activated twice. Seems even the Steam version has SecuROM protection build in. Man, do 2K Games not trust us, or what? (Google 'bioshock activation' for more links than I care to count...)

What if you have to re-install windows more than twice? It won't activate and therefore it won't work?? What if people get a virus, or windows stops working...? Explain what you mean plleassse I'm already regretting my purchase enough as it is...

D3mon_Hunt3r · Post by **D3mon_Hunt3r** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:42

Just registered to say thanks to Racer_S and Paddy and all the people at WSGF. I am not yet a WS user but plan to be very soon.

I have tried Racer_S's bisockdFOV and ran the the game at 1680x1050 and ajusted the FOV's with the utility and i have to say it works like a charm.

Great Work. :bowdown

kahjah · Post by **kahjah** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:46

Good job guys, im gonna test it when i go home. Anyone got this to work with dx10 or with. I play with controller on PC so im gonna try it before i put on the controller settings.. If anyone can test it let me know.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:50

What if you have to re-install windows more than twice? It won't activate and therefore it won't work?? What if people get a virus, or windows stops working...? Explain what you mean plleassse I'm already regretting my purchase enough as it is...

It means precisely what it says: the SecuROM activation only allows you two installations.

I'm seeing conflicting info on various forums (Google is your friend!) about whether or not uninstalling it on one system (and allowing the uninstall program to talk back to the SecuROM activation server) allows it to be installed on a 'third' after one of the two installs is removed.

Of course, if your HDD dies, or you get a virus or whatever, and you don't uninstall Bioshock first, that's one of your activations up shit creek without a paddle.

And Steam users have the joy of both Steam anti-piracy, and SecuROM, too...

...

And Gabbo, yeah, you're absolutely right - for a place that does all their work on widescreens, they don't seem to have a great number of them, now do they? :roll:

Post by **Tamlin** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:52

Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so, we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people’s displays. (This way, everybody is happy…) This does mean that people playing on a standard def display see slightly more vertical space, but, this does not significantly affect the game-play experience and, we felt that it best served our goal of keeping the game experience as close as possible to the original design and art vision on both types of displays. Reports of the widescreen FOV being a crop of the 4:3 FOV are completely false.

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/home.html

Translation:

"We made the game in widescreen resolution, while keeping the horizontal FOV optimally to 4:3(FOV=75). Then we increased vertical FOV for 4:3 users, so that they would not get black bars. The result:
The same as if the game were made in 4:3 and then cropped vertically when widescreen resolution is chosen.
Now we can claim widescreen support, even though TRUE widescreen support means that going from 16:9/16:10 would actually crop the image horizontally, since the widescreen ratio itself dictates horizontal plus. " :roll:

For us widescreen gamers, this means that if you choose a widescreen resolution of 1920x1200, you see less then if you choose a 4:3 resolution of 1600x1200. Even though the vertical resolution is identical. And they call this "widescreen support"?????

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 22 Aug 2007, 20:57

And they call this "widescreen support"?????

Yeah, they do.

Funny, ain't it? :lol:

Widescreen Gaming Forum