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**RoadKillGrill** · 03-28-2009, 03:45 AM

Originally posted by Dopefish View Post

Nobody cares about the fact that you see more with widescreen. There is hardly any advantages to having the extra sides.

Its a rather large advantage to have more horizontal vision, why do think even 4:3 owners are wanting over 100 degrees. Capping the horizontal fov is fair, its just a little low for most people's preference.

HL2 was 75 degrees by default, that game is nauseous to play without cheating and setting the fov higher.

**Sharpfish** · 03-28-2009, 05:12 AM

My god there are still people in 2009 who still don't 'understand' widescreen... I can't believe we've had to try and educate so many people thanks to UE3 games and their inept projection matrix code/widescreen handling.

I'd say leave them to it Dopefish, it really is THEIR loss in the end...

One thing I will say is everytime this discussion comes up, the people who do not understand the problem insist on dwelling on the 4:3 difference. Even if 4:3 didn't exist, the WS implementation would still be far from ideal for an accepted 'natural' FOV.

You just have to load up any game that does it 100% 'correctly' and you will see straight away how obvious it is when done 'wrong' in the way MOST (if not all) UE3 games did it.

**shombowhore** · 03-28-2009, 05:46 AM

This is ridiculous. People are arguing about fairness when the 'advantage' of a higher fov would be available to anyone, widescreen or not. Sure, it would be slightly more fish-eyed, but that never stopped me from playing with 120 fov on a 4:3 aspect ratio in UT2004.

If anyone is at a disadvantage, it's the widescreen players who are losing some vertical fov... but really, that's a negligible amount of viewing area. Ultimately, increasing fov provides no consequential advantages because it is available to everyone, and is merely a matter of preference.

Honestly, I don't care much about the vertical clipping implementation; as a programmer I don't consider it a correct implementation, but it doesn't really bother me as a player. However, the fov cap of 100 is just unecessary, and to continue to claim increasing fov provides anyone with unfair advantage is not only beating a dead horse, but is just plain wrong.

**Benfica** · 03-28-2009, 07:19 AM

Originally posted by Sharpfish View Post

My god there are still people in 2009 who still don't 'understand' widescreen... I can't believe we've had to try and educate so many people thanks to UE3 games and their inept projection matrix code/widescreen handling.

I'd say leave them to it Dopefish, it really is THEIR loss in the end...

Or not. Before being educated, I'd like to see a reply to my post. Even considering that I don't like the fov limit either, it should be free. I don't even care if I had another disadvantage if the game was designed that way, I play with high ping so I'm used to them.

I can understand a problem of "zoomed in" view, if it's like the game renders a bit in front of the position you are now.

But I can understand the ver-/hor+ drama too, where a few WS players demand the advantage that they keep whining about. Becuase I suspect that some are not asking to remove the fov cap, but keep the max at 100 for 4:3, and an wider 110 for 16:9

**Dopefish** · 03-28-2009, 07:36 AM

Originally posted by Benfica

FAQ from your forum: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ

That's not my forum. If you actually dig through some of my posts, I actually disagree with a lot of how things are handled on those forums.

Originally posted by Benfica

I see. 3 screenshots then, 2 from your forum.

Ignore those shots on the forum.

You can't actually use a correct 16:9 FOV in UT3 so it's not a good comparison.

To put it simply. The game uses a FOV of 90 by default. This is good for 4:3. However it definitely crops the view for 16:10. To match the vertical area, you need to bump the FOV up to 100.388. You can't set 100.388 since 100 is max, but 100 will do. This will give you your matched vertical area, while providing extra on the sides. However, just to kind of show how it feels, leaving 16:10 at a FOV of 90 is like setting 4:3 to 79.611. You can't go that low since 80 is minimum, but go ahead and set your 4:3 view to 80 and tell me how it feels. Does it not feel awkward and zoomed in? It only gets worse the higher the aspect-ratio that you run the game in. Looking at screenshots won't really show it off because you don't get to feel the movement and how the camera moves. It's just wrong.

Originally posted by RoadKillGrill View Post

HL2 was 75 degrees by default, that game is nauseous to play without cheating and setting the fov higher.

HL2's FOV setting is vertical. This means that 75 in 4:3 will match the same vertical area as 75 in 16:9. 16:9 users still see more horizontally.

Setting HL2's FOV to 90 will adjust it vertically, again, matching both 4:3 and 16:9, with 16:9 extending out horizontally.

Originally posted by Benfica

Even considering that I don't like the fov limit either, it should be free. I don't even care if I had another disadvantage if the game was designed that way, I play with high ping so I'm used to them.

I agree. There's hardly an advantage to having more on the sides in such a small amount.

Originally posted by Benfica

But I can understand the ver-/hor+ drama too, where a few WS players demand the advantage that they keep whining about. Becuase I suspect that some are not asking to remove the fov cap, but keep the max at 100 for 4:3, and an wider 110 for 16:9

I am not asking for a different cap. I am asking that the FOV be adjusted by vertical instead of horizontal. The horizontal will not be adjustable and will be automatically calculated based on the vertical FOV and aspect-ratio.

This way, they can still keep the 80-100 cap if they want, since it will be matched up vertically for everyone no matter what aspect ratio, and widescreen users will still get to see more on the sides.

**Benfica** · 03-28-2009, 11:20 AM

Originally posted by Dopefish

To put it simply. The game uses a FOV of 90 by default. This is good for 4:3. However it definitely crops the view for 16:10. To match the vertical area, you need to bump the FOV up to 100.388. You can't set 100.388 since 100 is max, but 100 will do. This will give you your matched vertical area, while providing extra on the sides.

And now it's 4:3 that has the view "cropped"! This is what you don't seem to understand, it's relative. Do the other way around, pick 16:9 as baseline and now the 4:3 are the ones that have the view cropped horizontally. Yeah sure, someone buys a widescreen in order to see more, but now I'm going to start a thread saying how unfair it is and demand my vertical advantage back!

However, just to kind of show how it feels, leaving 16:10 at a FOV of 90 is like setting 4:3 to 79.611. You can't go that low since 80 is minimum, but go ahead and set your 4:3 view to 80 and tell me how it feels. Does it not feel awkward and zoomed in? It only gets worse the higher the aspect-ratio that you run the game in. Looking at screenshots won't really show it off because you don't get to feel the movement and how the camera moves. It's just wrong.

I agree with you here, low fov feels wrong. And I can understand that 100 may not be high enough for you. I got this part

I agree. There's hardly an advantage to having more on the sides in such a small amount.

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that I wouldn't mind if the advantage were a game limitation, I wouldn't ask for a change that would give me an advantage. But it isn't small, the OP is claiming 35%. From the forum (sorry I misunderstood, I thought it was yours):
[shot]http://turtlegt.planetaclix.pt/ut3/ws.png[/shot]

I am not asking for a different cap. I am asking that the FOV be adjusted by vertical instead of horizontal. The horizontal will not be adjustable and will be automatically calculated based on the vertical FOV and aspect-ratio.

This way, they can still keep the 80-100 cap if they want, since it will be matched up vertically for everyone no matter what aspect ratio, and widescreen users will still get to see more on the sides.

It's the same. You have 100 for all gamers but the end result is that WS has gameplay advantage. When are you going to understand that asking to see more than 4:3 players is completely unnaceptable and as unfair as what you claim you have now?? There's no way around it: you must make a fair request. One thing is upgrading to 16:9 to see more on the sides, other is see more than someone you are competing against.

Let me ask you something: if the fov were uncapped or set way higher, would that be enough for you, would it solve the problem? If not, you should ask for some sort of mid term adjustment, such as WS gets a bit more horizontal but standard still has some vertical advantage to compensate. I admit I'm not sure if this even makes sense, but you get the idea.

**Dopefish** · 03-28-2009, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by Benfica

And now it's 4:3 that has the view "cropped"! This is what you don't seem to understand, it's relative. Do the other way around, pick 16:9 as baseline and now the 4:3 are the ones that have the view cropped horizontally. Yeah sure, someone buys a widescreen in order to see more, but now I'm going to start a thread saying how unfair it is and demand my vertical advantage back!

Of course 4:3 gets cropped. But it won't suffer from a horrible low FOV like widescreen users do. There's more widescreen users than 4:3 users or 5:4 users (via Steam stats). It's a natural progression of things. Widescreen is becoming normal, and those that haven't upgraded yet are worried that some extra viewing area is going to make players GODLIKE or something.

Originally posted by Benfica

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that I wouldn't mind if the advantage were a game limitation, I wouldn't ask for a change that would give me an advantage. But it isn't small, the OP is claiming 35%. From the forum (sorry I misunderstood, I thought it was yours):

16:10 is more common than 16:9 when it comes to PCs. 16:10 has a 20% advantage over 4:3, 10% on each side. People rarely focus on the very edges of their screen, and even if they do, the other player has probably already seen you, or you won't be able to adjust in time, or whatever. Take the 10% per side and factor in what people will actually do with it. It's basically no advantage. Video cards, latency, processors, etc. have more of an impact on "fairness" and "advantages" than 10% per side.

Originally posted by Benfica

It's the same. You have 100 for all gamers but the end result is that WS has gameplay advantage. When are you going to understand that asking to see more than 4:3 players is completely unnaceptable?? You must make a fair request. One thing is upgrading to 16:9 to see more on the sides, other is see more than someone you are competing against.

What do you think should happen? Maybe we should just display 4:3 on 16:10 and have it stretched so it's the same view? The screens are wider, so should be the image displayed. You don't see Microsoft cutting off the task bar. There's more games out there that expand horizontally than those that don't. The fixes I've made for other games are even unofficially supported by the game makers themselves. No matter how you look at it, someone is going to see more. With the natural progression towards widescreen, and all of the major development for the consoles being done in 16:9, it's only right that it should accommodate widescreen.

Originally posted by Benfica

Let me ask you something: if the fov were uncapped, would that be enough for you, would it solve the problem? If not, you should ask for mid term adjustment. In such a way that WS gets a bit more horizontal, but standard still has some vertical advantage to compensate.

If it were completely uncapped, it would almost be fine. The picture is still cropped.

All I personally care about is having a default view that matches vertically for each aspect ratio. If a user wants to go and adjust the FOV from there to his or her liking, that's up to them. The way it is right now, weapons get cropped off, and adjusting the FOV does not fix that. It also still uses 90 as the default for when changing resolutions, which is not good. What they should do is make it so everything matches. Make the FOV a vertical adjustment instead of horizontal, don't crop the weapons, and whatever they want to do with the cap, I don't really care for.

**Paddywak** · 03-28-2009, 12:34 PM

Widescreen is wider ... else it would be called "not so tall screen" ...

**Xyx** · 03-28-2009, 12:44 PM

The purpose of a widescreen monitor is not to provide a gameplay advantage; it is to provide a more ergonomic aspect ratio. The 4:3 aspect ratio is a legacy of the time when monitors still had to be made of roundish glass tubes.

When the first widescreen TVs appeared on the market 10 years ago, you could buy a 4:3 TV that was 21" wide for $1500 or a widescreen TV that was 21" wide for $2500. Both regular and widescreen TVs had options to switch to the other's aspect ratio, adding some black bars and making the overall viewing area smaller, so for a widescreen you'd just pay $1000 extra for less viewing area. Yay.

An extra inch of view on the sides is worth a lot more than an inch on the top and bottom. In order to keep things fair, FOV has to be based on the horizontal viewing area. If that means you lose some vertical viewing area when you buy a widescreen... then that's a tradeoff. It is entirely up to you whether you want a viewing area advantage or an ergonomic aspect ratio. You cannot have both.

What if I were to buy a 32:10 aspect ratio screen? Would I be entitled to double FOV? After all, I have twice as many pixels to spare as you have on either side of the screen. Or how about I buy the 30' King Of Pixels(yes, feet, not inches!) screen? Would I be entitled to FOV 500?

Originally posted by Dopefish View Post

You don't see Microsoft cutting off the task bar.

And you don't see UT3 cutting off the buttons at the bottom of the menu either. That's a 2D interface, not a window into a 3D world. That's a totally different thing that FOV does not even apply to.

**Paddywak** · 03-28-2009, 12:58 PM

lol ... shakes head in disbelief ... lol

It is nothing to to do with being fair ... advantages or disadvantages ...
Gaming has never been about being fair ... advantages or disadvantages ... it is all about who has the most money ...
To buy the best CPU ... the best GPU ... the best mouse ... the best network connection ... the best screen ... etc. ... giving the gamer the best immersion for their money.

I repeat ...
Widescreen is wider ... else it would be called "not so tall screen" or "Cut Down Screen"...

**Benfica** · 03-28-2009, 01:27 PM

Originally posted by Dopefish View Post

Of course 4:3 gets cropped. But it won't suffer from a horrible low FOV like widescreen users do. There's more widescreen users than 4:3 users or 5:4 users (via Steam stats). It's a natural progression of things. Widescreen is becoming normal, and those that haven't upgraded yet

They are even. But yes, it is a natural progression of things, it is a reason to be careful about providing widescreen gamers with an pleasant experience, but it's not a reason to give an advantage. "majority", "upgrades", and other arbitrary reasons don't make sense. You should try the reverse, even it as much as possible regardless of hardware. That's the point of asking for code optimizations, tweaking tips, flexible advanced display settings, anti-cheating and others. btw, this arms race is one of the reasons why people migrate to consoles or ditch PC gaming altogether, but whatever.

are worried that some extra viewing area is going to make players GODLIKE or something.

Exactly, that how this thread started, but the other way around.

16:10 is more common than 16:9 when it comes to PCs. 16:10 has a 20% advantage over 4:3, 10% on each side. People rarely focus on the very edges of their screen, and even if they do, the other player has probably already seen you, or you won't be able to adjust in time, or whatever. Take the 10% per side and factor in what people will actually do with it. It's basically no advantage. Video cards, latency, processors, etc. have more of an impact on "fairness" and "advantages" than 10% per side.

Ok, the full table:
16:10 vs 4:3 = 20%
16:10 vs 5:4 = 28%
16:9 vs 4:3 = 33%
16:9 vs 5:4 = 42%
Then there are the screenshots that you dismissed and the black boxes.

What do you think should happen? Maybe we should just display 4:3 on 16:10 and have it stretched so it's the same view?

Huh, are you serious? This:

Originally posted by Benfica

Let me ask you something: if the fov were uncapped or set way higher, would that be enough for you, would it solve the problem? If not, you should ask for some sort of mid term adjustment, such as WS gets a bit more horizontal but standard still has some vertical advantage to compensate

The screens are wider, so should be the image displayed.

By the same logic I can say that 4:3 is taller, so should be the image displayed.

You don't see Microsoft cutting off the task bar.

Neither do you see UT3 cutting off the HUD, do you?

If it were completely uncapped, it would almost be fine. The picture is still cropped.

Ok then. Now with a mid term adjustment it would be almost almost almost fine. It's not so hard to find a fair and much better solution that what you have now, without conflicts of interest.

Make the FOV a vertical adjustment instead of horizontal, don't crop the weapons, and whatever they want to do with the cap, I don't really care for.

But again, it's exactly what you don't care about that kept preventing you from getting what you want. A slight gameplay advantage for 4:3 would become a big disadvantage, since horizontal matters way more than vertical.

Bah, whatever. This is running in circles and I not even defend keeping it the way it is. I agree that it's unfair and pointless to have a limited fov and not doing anything to improve the game for widescreen players. What's more, I don't want to go on and post stuff that screws a valid opportunity to rethink all this, just because I don't agree with the arguments of some posts.

**sea** · 03-29-2009, 03:34 AM

I'm glad to see that this thread is still going strong. I'm frankly astounded how many people here don't seem to understand how and why widescreen works, even after repeated explanations... I'm assuming all of these people have never used a widescreen display for an extended period of time and/or haven't actually compared multiple aspect ratios. I didn't read all of the buffer, so some of these points may have already been stated, but I think they need to be stated again.

Originally posted by Benfica View Post

Please show me why the 2nd shot is extremely zoomed and gives you an awkward feeling

Those screenshots you posted are not accurate to how Unreal Tournament 3 handles FOV scaling. See this example from Far Cry 2:

[screenshot]http://wsgfmedia.com/uploads/paddywak/screenshots/farcry2/FC2-WS.jpg[/screenshot]

The red areas there represent the screen space that is lost when running in widescreen. The top and bottom of the screen are completely cut off and you actually see less with widescreen than you do without. This is precisely how Unreal Tournament 3 handles widescreen, and it is incorrect. Even though it allows you to scale the FOV to 100, this is not enough for 16:10 displays to accurately replicate the default 4:3 90-degree FOV, and if a 4:3 user sets his or her FOV to 100 degrees, he or she will still see more than a 16:10 user at 100 FOV. Furthermore, users of 16:9 monitors, who require an FOV of approximately 106.5 degrees, are not even able to come close to the 4:3 90-degree ratio as it is currently implemented; that is, if you are using a 16:10 or especially a 16:9 monitor, you will always see less of the screen than a 4:3 user. This is not a hard concept to understand.

A widescreen monitor is wide, not short, as has been pointed out already. By cutting off the top and bottom of the screen, you create a strange zoomed-in effect that is completely unnatural and for some (including myself) can result in motion sickness. Furthermore, it's a matter of principle: there is a standard correct method of implementation, and currently the method used is incorrect.

I would argue that the gameplay advantage brought by a widescreen monitor over a 4:3 monitor is not at all significant. It creates a more immersive, "landscape" feel. However, even with a 16:10 display (which is not as wide as other ratios), the eye does not occupy all screen space at once; in fact, it is almost always directed towards the centre of the screen. While the added peripheral vision is useful, it is not going to turn a bad player into a good player, or even a great player into an excellent player. Peripheral vision is highly sensitive to movement, but it is not particularly accurate when it comes to identifying detail; for that, you would need to change your point of focus anyway, either by moving your eyes or the mouse. While there is a chance that the 10% extra FOV on each side with a 16:10 monitor would contribute to faster target identification, that does not equate to a 20% greater chance of identifying targets period, because of the aforementioned characteristics of peripheral vision, as well as things like level design and the way a standard shooter's control scheme works.

Furthermore, and this is the most crucial point, all problems regarding "users of X or Y monitors see more/less" would be completely negated by allowing for a manual adjusting of field of view for any resolution, while maintaining the same fixed vertical FOV. This might mean that a 4:3 user will get a fishbowl effect, but that is the price you pay for getting a new monitor; it's not that pretty, but it's also no different than not having a new enough video card to max out the in-game settings, and the degree your framerate might suffer from using that older video card is going to impact your game far more than a slightly larger monitor will. Hell, you'd might as well argue that Unreal Tournament 3 fix the real-world dimensions it can display to eight by ten inches, because people with larger monitors will have an "unfair" advantage due to being able to see more clearly.

I hope that my post has helped to quell any mistruths and inaccuracies. Most arguments I have seen here have been founded upon those and they needed to be effectively dispelled - not that they haven't been already, but reiteration always helps.

**FragTastic** · 03-29-2009, 04:27 AM

BTW i ran a poll on this http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=662678 and 70% of UT3 users used widescreen. We are not the minority, we are the majority. I understand the arguments that CRT is superior, nonetheless the current FOV arrangement discriminates against the majority of UT3 users NOT the minority

**Crotale** · 03-29-2009, 04:40 AM

Yeah, okay, all you widescreen players are correct and the rest of us are wrong. Feel better now? Here's the real ticket. It is true that 16:10 and 16:9 gamers are getting a slightly raw deal in the viewing department, but the simple fact is that humans see in widescreen makes it an even worse deal to tie the view to a purely vertical position. By vertically locking the view, 4:3 gamers lose about 25 percent of horizontal information and 5:4 gamers lose about 30 percent. If you honestly feel that that amount of horizontal information loss is more acceptable than your 22-25 percent vertical loss, then you aren't looking for a fair solution, just one that benefits yourself.

Now, in light of this, I will agree that opening up the FOV to perhaps 110 should be an equitable solution for this issue. Until the majority of gamers are in fact playing on widescreens, any other solution in my opinion is unfair. After all, we are talking about a fast-paced first person shooter, not World of Warcrack. I remember in the old days how much we, the UT community, harangued over FOV settings when we participated in ladders and tournaments. Yes, it is much more complicated now that there are more choices than just 5:4 and 4:3, and that is why there needs to be a fair standard for the time being. Epic has met that standard with UT3. Yeah, it sucks for the widescreen gamers, no doubt about that, but vertically locking the view should not be an option at this point in time.

Originally posted by FragTastic View Post

BTW i ran a poll on this http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=662678 and 70% of UT3 users used widescreen.

As with any non-scientific poll, it only accounts for those who participated.

**Paddywak** · 03-29-2009, 02:30 PM

A capped FOV ... causes issues/problems as many are handicapped by their screens aspect ratio and the forced FOV.
An uncapped FOV ... removes the issues/problems as everyone can change their FOV to suit their screens aspect ratio or any screens aspect ratio and so no one is handicapped by their screens aspect ratio.

High profile games that have a horizontal scaling FOV ... no particular order ...

FEAR 2 ... fixed by the devs once they knew it is a big problem for the majority.
Bioshock ... fixed by the devs once they knew it is a big problem for the majority.
Far Cry 2 ... fixed by the devs once they knew it is a big problem for the majority.

Left 4 Dead
GTA4
HAWX
Fallout 3
Dead Space
Crysis
Crysis Warhead/Wars
Burnout Paradise
GRID
Oblivion and expansions
MotoGP 08
Overlord
Dirt
Gothic 3
Team Fortress 2
HL2 - EP1 - EP2
Prey
Stalker SoC and CS
GRAW 1/2
Pure
FSX
Couter-Strike Source
Portal
Lost Planet
WoW
Price of Persia
World in Conflict

Even good old ... UT2004 ... had horizontal scaling of the FOV (albeit via an ini tweak)

Most UE3 engine games are without a horizontal scaling FOV !

UT3
Mirrors Edge
Mass Effect ... although there's a console command that can change the horizontal FOV the HUD scales vertically !
R6 Vegas 1/2
Bioshock before the devs fixed it ...
Gears of War ... although a console command can change the horizontal FOV the HUD is not perfect.

Enough said.

Announcement

Hm, why is there no FOV over 100?

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