Widescreen Gaming Forum

Read this section in the UDN for the UDK

Widescreen

We design our games for one FOV (16:9) so it's going to look differently on the other (4:3). Having fixed horizontal FOV seems like a good choice for games that don't have a lot of vertical, so 4:3 is still playable and you don't get tunnel vision. It means that at 4:3 you will see more compared to widescreen, but we haven't seen that as an issue if the game is designed for 16:9.

If you design your game for 16:9 locked vertical FOV, you don't get a wider FOV for 16:9 but a narrower for 4:3. Properly balanced this means you get tunnel vision on 4:3. If you don't want that, having a wider than normal FOV with 16:9 means that you not only render more pixels, but also most likely more triangles/ geometry for mostly horizontal levels, causing perf to take an extra hit. From our design standpoint, locked vertical FOV is not a good approach if your main focus is 16:9.

We've shipped with locked vertical FOV for past PC games as most folks had 4:3 screens and it also made first person weapons easier, but focusing on 16:9 means fixed horizontal is preferable, which is what we are using nowadays.

I officially hate Epic right now :x

Edit: Honestly, this method makes sense and works perfectly fine if Eyefinity/TH2G/Nvidia Surround goes Hor+ and the 16:9 FOV is not extremely zoomed in to begin with, however most ports have super zoomed in FOV's to begin with on 4:3, making 16:9 even worse. What's stupid is that (as far as I could find while using the UDK) theres no easy option to go Hor+, forcing you to hack it in via UnrealScript. Theres going to be many that wont agree with Epic though, so I think they should just put an option like BioShock. Play they way the dev's want (Vert-) or play the way you want. (Hor+)

Also, the UDK is possibly the only reason I don't actually completely hate Epic right now.

[We design our games for one FOV (16:9) so it's going to look differently on the other (4:3).]

Remember fov and aspect ratio are the same.


[Having fixed horizontal FOV seems like a good choice for games that don't have a lot of vertical, so 4:3 is still playable and you don't get tunnel vision. It means that at 4:3 you will see more compared to widescreen, but we haven't seen that as an issue if the game is designed for 16:9.]

Keep your fov low and you have less work to do. You can also focus on one aspect ratio and ignore the rest.


[If you design your game for 16:9 locked vertical FOV, you don't get a wider FOV for 16:9 but a narrower for 4:3. Properly balanced this means you get tunnel vision on 4:3.]

Or you could use a fov that is playable in 4:3. Or you could letterbox if you truly have a game that needs a 16:9 aspect ratio. Or you could give users a fov range to select from. But this requires a marginal amount of work.


[If you don't want that, having a wider than normal FOV with 16:9 means that you not only render more pixels, but also most likely more triangles/ geometry for mostly horizontal levels, causing perf to take an extra hit. From our design standpoint, locked vertical FOV is not a good approach if your main focus is 16:9.]

Because performance is best achieved by using easy to implement design decisions that are only detrimental to minor number of users.


[We've shipped with locked vertical FOV for past PC games as most folks had 4:3 screens and it also made first person weapons easier, but focusing on 16:9 means fixed horizontal is preferable, which is what we are using nowadays.]

Because once again it is easier and less performance intensive than actually doing it right.

For TVs, I think this approach is the preferable one, because letterboxing on a 4:3 screen can be really annoying some times (NFS: Hot Pursuit, Bulletstorm,) however, Hor+ is much better on PC due to the general annoyance. If they really want people to "play it there way" they should really offer a choice in the options.

This is bad news for games in the future because the UDK is so prevalent in the industry as the go-to licensed engine. Thankfully the engine can be modified to the developer's liking, but probably at a higher cost. Even then it is exceptionally difficult to find an Unreal engine game that have proper aspect correction.

If you design your game to use a 65-70 degree FOV in 16:9, then of course you're going to have tunnel vision in narrower aspect ratios. At that viewing angle the FOV will be 50-55 degrees in 4:3. This is why screens are scaled horizontally, typically with 4:3 as the base and a FOV in the range of 75-90 degrees.

I'd like to know what they have to say about Eyefinity and Surround displays. Are they just going to ignore the more mainstream viability of surround gaming? Or do they feel that situations like Alpha Protocol are the engine working as designed?

Thankfully the only Unreal Engine game I buy nowadays is Mass Effect, and even then it is the Xbox 360 version. Going back to my first paragraph, it really isn't Bioware's fault for the game lacking proper aspect correction. I guess Epic is the second publisher/developer to go onto my boycott list next to Activision. It's not like they have put out anything good in the last seven years anyway.

We design our games for one FOV (16:9) so it's going to look differently on the other (4:3).

Read: look wrong.

I still often game on a 4:3 display unfortunately and I much prefer Hor+ even on there.

Design your games for all FOV's (read: Aspect Ratio....) please.

What they are really saying is that they don't care about PC gamers who don't like console FOVs on their screen which isn't across the room, but only a few feet from their eyes.

Just a quick question for anyone else using the UDK, is there any easy way to set your game to Hor+ without using any stupid UnrealScript hacks, like a setting in the level editor or somthing. Also, I think they dont do Hor+ because they just dont care about Eyefinity/TH2G/Nivida Surround and are only focused on cheap console ports at this point. Even though I play a lot of games on PC and PS3, I do think that the rampart consoleitis is pretty sad for PC gaming.

Well even if they don't care about surround screen setups, their implementation of aspect correction is wrong. They're saying they lock the horizontal FOV instead of the vertical FOV, which is what I was taught and believe is right and I hope other gaming degrees out there teach. Plus the fact that it's called WIDEscreen, not shortscreen.

This isn't a design decision. This is rationalization after the fact. Unreal Engine has defaulted to vert - since Unreal 1.

The engine isn't default vert - because the designers thought that was ideal behavior for widescreen. It's default vert - because they didn't feel like changing it.

We've shipped with locked vertical FOV for past PC games

Which past PC games? Not one game in the Unreal series ever had locked V-FOV. What else has Epic done that they could be referring to? One Must Fall 2097?

Man, the bile in my gut is just rising with Epic's behavior right now. It's even worse because not only was it objectively wrong, now they're claiming it was allegedly on purpose instead of laziness. And frankly their 16:9 design already gives me tunnel vision even when playing on a single screen.

It seems like professional developers would want to plan ahead for the future by going Hor+ with locked vert FOV... but they're deliberately setting back the entire industry with this. No one is going to want to revist "classic" games when they're impossible to mod into displaying correctly on whatever crazy Minority Report monitors we have 20 years from now.

This isn't a design decision. This is rationalization after the fact. Unreal Engine has defaulted to vert - since Unreal 1.

The engine isn't default vert - because the designers thought that was ideal behavior for widescreen. It's default vert - because they didn't feel like changing it.

We've shipped with locked vertical FOV for past PC games

Which past PC games? Not one game in the Unreal series ever had locked V-FOV. What else has Epic done that they could be referring to? One Must Fall 2097?

Seeing as how Diversions Entertainment developed OMF 2097, not Epic in any part (Epic only published), your point is quite correct.

I don't necessarily see a problem here. Epic is saying this about themselves. So Epic has Gears of War which is their big thing. They're not bringing it to the PC so what does it matter? As a game developer they really haven't done much lately.

The choice is still entirely up to the developer. It's a simple change in the PlayerController class. I guarantee you 100% of the games using UE3/UDK will edit, modify, rewrite, or extend the PlayerController class. This is where everything to do with the camera, player movement, etc. is set.

This is bad news for games in the future because the UDK is so prevalent in the industry as the go-to licensed engine. Thankfully the engine can be modified to the developer's liking, but probably at a higher cost. Even then it is exceptionally difficult to find an Unreal engine game that have proper aspect correction.

There is no change in cost. You can change the behavior of this easily in UDK. There is nothing in the license agreement that says you cannot modify it or they will charge you extra.

For the full UE3 license, you not only get access to everything included with UDK (where you can already change the behavior), but you also get access to the full engine source code and editor source. You can change the behavior in any way you see fit then.

Going back to my first paragraph, it really isn't Bioware's fault for the game lacking proper aspect correction. I guess Epic is the second publisher/developer to go onto my boycott list next to Activision. It's not like they have put out anything good in the last seven years anyway.

Wrong. This was BioWare's decision. They could have easily changed the behavior and made it work on surround. This was likely a decision by the publisher not to put the extra cost into supporting Surround, as it would have created more work for the artists, QA team, etc. and likely delayed the release.

Just a quick question for anyone else using the UDK, is there any easy way to set your game to Hor+ without using any stupid UnrealScript hacks, like a setting in the level editor or somthing.

UnrealScript hacks? You do realize those are not hacks. That's where everything about the game happens. Using Kismet is more of a hacky/easy way to do it (which I don't think you can do it via Kismet, but then again why would you?).

Modifying that behavior is very easy in UnrealScript. Just look at PlayerController.uc.

There is no change in cost. You can change the behavior of this easily in UDK. There is nothing in the license agreement that says you cannot modify it or they will charge you extra.
...
Wrong. This was BioWare's decision. They could have easily changed the behavior and made it work on surround. This was likely a decision by the publisher not to put the extra cost into supporting Surround, as it would have created more work for the artists, QA team, etc. and likely delayed the release.

I think there was a breakdown in understanding here with the way I worded my statement. You thought I was talking about the cost of licensing the engine when I was, in fact, talking about development costs increasing as you have suggested. Although I don't see why artists have to bitch about this, since things like the HUD are easily positioned and scaled through code if the assets were properly designed in the first place.

Now I've only done asset production in the UDK, but what I have read on their forum and elsewhere suggests that it is difficult to change the presentation of the viewport with the engine as it is designed due to the way control and a lot of other things are tied into it. It may very well have been Bioware's decision, but I wouldn't put past them not wanting to put in the extra time for proper widescreen support using the Unreal engine as part of that decision.

It seems to me that no matter how easy it is to make an Unreal 3 engine make hor +, simply making it default to vert - means that some devs won't even think to change it. And changing it to hor + might not be all that simple necessarily - look at Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's usually hor +, but cinematic camera angles (such as when you perform finishing moves) are vert -. I highly doubt that's by design. More likely, alternate camera types come with their own "hor +" switch and they forgot to flip some of them - an oversight they wouldn't have made if the engine defaulted to hor + like Source does.

Likewise, if the engine defaulted to hor +, I'm sure Mass Effect would have supported surround just fine implicitly, no "extra cost" involved. I'm certain that not one aspect of Half-Life 2 was created with surround in mind, and yet it's pretty much perfect for it.

The point is that what Epic said was in regards to their own personal decision, not anyone who licenses the engine. You can easily change how the FOV works with both UnrealScript and, of course, the full engine source code if you have the license. So if a developer doesn't support it properly, that's still the developers fault for not checking or modifying it correctly. I'd hardly blame Epic for that. That's the publisher or developer just focusing on consoles.

I do blame Epic for that. Aspect ratio control is an engine feature, not a game-specific one. Game developers shouldn't have to worry about it, and I'm sure most of them don't. Defaulting to incorrect AR behavior is a bug in the engine, and developers who license an engine shouldn't be held responsible for fixing bugs in the engine, even if they do have that ability. If Unreal 3 Engine had a bug in it that crashed the game on February 29th's, would you blame game developers for not fixing it?

And I don't buy that this is a "personal decision" from Epic. Unless someone can tell me what games they are referring to with their last paragraph, they flat out lied to justify this "personal decision." The engine has always defaulted to vert -, and most likely they just didn't want to bother changing it.

You can easily change how the FOV works with both UnrealScript

If it's so easy, why does Batman: Arkham Asylum have mistakes?

100% of the games that use UE3 modify the camera controls, player movement, etc. in some way. You cannot do this without going around the PlayerController and Camera classes. The code they modify is right there in front of them. It's up to the developer how they want to support it. It's even commented in the source how it behaves. There's no way the developer can miss it. They can overlook it, it can be a low priority of changes by the publisher, any reason can be in place that they didn't change or fix it. Seeing as how much they focus on console games, a lot of them are just designed to operate in 16:9 and anything else is just whatever.

I couldn't tell you why Arkham Asylum as mistakes. I don't have access to their source.

It's so easy, even HaYDeN has found a simple fix for existing games that not only fixes the behavior of the FOV, but also fixes the HUD, cutscenes, menus, etc. in all kinds of different UE3-based games.

It is that simple. Blame the publishers and developers of the games.

Everything you've said in defense of Epic is that this flaw is easy for devs to fix. My point is that an engine bug that's easy for devs to fix is still an engine bug. Just because it's easy to fix (and Batman: Arkham Asylum raises doubt that it really is that easy) doesn't mean devs should have full responsibility for fixing or working around a flaw in the engine.

The only really disturbing thing to me is how Epic, who supposedly has been working closely with both AMD & Nvidia as a developer and as a publisher, appears to be in complete denial of Eyefinity/Surround.

The only really disturbing thing to me is how Epic, who supposedly has been working closely with both AMD & Nvidia as a developer and as a publisher, appears to be in complete denial of Eyefinity/Surround.

Indeed, I agree with cranky it really is just unacceptable for it to be Vert- by default and I really don't blame the end users, The whole point of using something like an Unreal Engine is so that you do not have to muck with such things unless you actually want to.

EPIC is just all about the $$$ from licensing their engine for console games now. I doubt they don't know about surround. It's just a matter of us being .008% of their potential buyers and not being enough of the bottom line to give a crap about.