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Aspect Ratiogate 07: BioShock Widescreen Working as Intended, Says 2K
by Nick Breckon, Aug 22, 2007 9:59am PDTIn the continuation of a shockingly divisive story of many aspects and epic proportions, 2K Games has responded to allegations that BioShock's widescreen view is flawed, asserting that the various display modes are showing nothing but what was intended by the developers. "We went through dozens of iterations and finally settled upon a widescreen aspect ratio that best suited the gameplay experience," said 2K community manager Elizabeth Tobey in response to the scandal. "Once this FOV was established, we chose to keep exactly the same horizontal FOV for standard def displays, so as not to in any way alter the gameplay experience. "Instead of cropping the FOV for 4:3 displays and making all 4:3 owners mad in doing so," she continued, "we slightly extended the vertical FOV for standard def mode: we never wanted to have black bars on people's displays... 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. "We did what we thought was the best thing for the game: developing and optimizing it for widescreen displays, and making the decision not to do the usual crop for 4:3 displays. As a consumer, you certainly have the right to disagree." Some folks have already taken up arms in opposition, releasing an unofficial patch for the demo that increases the widescreen field of view. Despite the controversy, Shacknews stands by its BioShock review score. We pledge to keep you updated from the Widescreen Situation Room as the Story of the Week continues.
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Perhaps the answer is an in-menus option to go with a different FOV in case you insist on it...
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http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/8606/fovdemonstrationyh6.gif
"By keeping the same horizontal FOV, but cropping off the top and bottom of the screen, your viewpoint is being artificially altered. In widescreen, the camera appears to be hovering about two feet in front of your character. In terms of gameplay, you might think you're standing in a doorframe, but in reality, your character is not quite there, leading to frequent running into walls, etc. Or you may think a splicer is well-within range of your wrench, but you might end up swinging at air."
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sensationalist reporting ftl
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How can she (Elizabeth Tobey) say "... so as not to in any way alter the gameplay experience". This is exactly what they're doing. Wide screen users are seing X percent less of the available screen data than 4:3 users are. I cannot see how this can possibly be anything other than a disadvantage. Any foe attacking you from a high or low position will move into your field of view later on wide screen than on 4:3. How is this not altering the gameplay experience ????
I heard/read something about another Unreal-tech game with similar problems. Utter crap they say it's a gameplay decision. It's not !! This decision is about not wanting to spend the money programming the game right for wide screens.
Elisabeth Tobey and 2K are lying. It's as simpel as that.
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http://home.comcast.net/~richeyk/quake4_comparison.jpg
These were taken at 1280x1024 (5:4) and 1280x720 (16:9) at the default 90 FOV. Nothing is lost when switching to the 16:9 view, instead the horizontal view is increased as expected.
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Get this tool from Racer_S:
http://dl.tocaedit.com/bioshockdFOV.zip
Read this thread but specifically the post on Pg 14 from Googlestater:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=108750#108750
And then pick the FOV you like and go love the shit out of this game.
Screen shots to show the difference, I went with 100FOV for my 16:10 display, no more motion problems for me. Nothing spoilerish but from Medical. Also shots are 1920x1200 so fairly big.
http://smacknca.shackspace.com/narrow_1.jpg
http://smacknca.shackspace.com/wide_1.jpg
http://smacknca.shackspace.com/narrow_2.jpg
http://smacknca.shackspace.com/wide_2.jpg
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So what are the positives of the 75 degree field of view?
1. increased accuracy in projectile shots (could be helpful for the 360)
2. more detail displayed of items at a distance
3. cramped feeling (your underwater in some creepy place, maybe you should feel uncomfortable)
4. enemies feel like they are on top of you when they get close, super scary!
5. less information on the screen to render at once, so you can incude more detailed models. (also helpful to the 360)
Lets look at it from the point of view of a 360 user experiance:
Would you want them to change the FOV to 105 degrees if you had a 20-30% frame rate drop? If the frame rate drop is unacceptable, then possibly the models and textures could be reduced to make the game run the same, but this would make the game 20-30% less pretty, and would cause tons of work for the dev team, not to mention a gigantic patch when complete.
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That's an honest question I hope gets answered sufficiently.
It doesn't give me a headache but I do have to take my eyes of the screen for a minute every once and a while. Gives me a sort of claustrophobic feeling.
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Yes that's right would anyone here be happy with FOV 25 on 4:3 and not, why not?
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A design decision that me and other people don't share.
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While I don't think it's a huge deal (and thus I love Nick's tone), if it was a game I was particularly excited about I'd be disappointed.
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I'm not a fan of this decision but I wouldn't go that far. The gameplay and graphics aren't affected.
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but as hard as i tried to convince it was probably something like this in that htread yesterday, that doesn't mean i like it. after playing the game for a while the fov gave me headaches and made me queasy. guess i just have to suffer through that, wouldn't be the first time.
the game is still awesome, no matter what the ratio or fov.
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http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=14979035#itemanchor_14979035
"Wow ... I just tried it in Vista 64bit DX9 and it works for me too ...
The thing is don't just run the game and disable the DX10 stuff in the game ...
Right click the game shortcut and run it in DX9 with the DX10 stuff turned off in the game ... and it works ..."
I'm on Vista64 and tried right-clicking on the shortcut, but there's no option to run it in DX9 mode. There's no more information in the threads, either. What am I missing?
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These guys would fit right in at Blizzard.
It's nice how this reply comes in after the community fixed it. They probably figure we already have a work-around, so why put any time into it.
They should develop their next game around 13" Monochrome monitors and let the community take care of the rest.
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