Widescreen Gaming Forum

Nice !

==Cut-scenes==

Only FMVs - they are forced 640x480, with hard letterboxing. This means windowboxing in widescreen.

==Grading==

FMV windowboxing is a blemish.

I don't get it. Forced 640x480 = no FMV correction at all, so how would it be graded ? :?
Windowboxing only happens if your display supports 1:1 scaling. If your monitor could only display 640x480 stretched, would FMV correction be stretch ? Regardless of each user's setup, any screenshot taken during FMVs will always be 640x480 and include the same letterboxing.
Absence of correction may be considered a blemish per se, but it can't be rated "flawed" if you get my meaning.

Since the only cut-scenes are each campaign's intro/outro and given the original game's age and ws support, I know I'd certify this one...

I'm assuming that users have their graphics cards set to perform aspect scaling, which is pretty much the best case scenario here. Stretched FMVs would be a blemish too.

Regardless of each user's setup, any screenshot taken during FMVs will always be 640x480 and include the same letterboxing.

It's not just about the screenshots - it's about what actually appears on the screen. In this case, these aren't the same thing, and a widescreen user will see black bars on all four sides.

Absence of correction may be considered a blemish per se, but it can't be rated "flawed" if you get my meaning.

I'm not sure I get your meaning.

This theoretical image:


is objectively preferable to this simulated image of what a widescreen user would actually see:


The fact that it looks like the latter instead of the former means there is a flaw in how the FMVs are handled. The flaw is that the 16:9 FMVs have hard-letterboxing, and are forced 640x480. It would have been better to have them at 640x360, and to have the game's video player scale them to native res, preserving aspect ratio. In fact, it's within Rebellion's capacity to fix this... if they and Valve are OK with all the customers having to redownload about 200MB of data.

My point was, the game doesn't "add" windowboxing to cut-scenes, it just draws a 640x480 picture, always. To me this is quite different from, say, the FMV in Zeno Clash. Anyway, I see now that the Wiki draws no such distinctions, so nevermind.

Rebellion have been doing a great job of bringing the original game's content to modern PCs, but why oh why did they leave the stupid 640x480 menus and FMVs untouched ? :(

We've had this debate before with the movies... as long as they look as intended in widescreen I think they should be fine, but I know others disagree.

The important thing is someone can read this report and know it's an "A" experience, despite the "B."

My point was, the game doesn't "add" windowboxing to cut-scenes, it just draws a 640x480 picture, always.

That would be fine if the FMVs were 4:3, but since they are 16:9, drawing a 640x480 picture is a flawed approach.

The important thing is someone can read this report and know it's an "A" experience, despite the "B."

Only if they don't care about the FMVs. The original intent was for FMVs to use the full width of the screen, but that doesn't happen if your screen is wide.

That would be fine if the FMVs were 4:3, but since they are 16:9, drawing a 640x480 picture is a flawed approach.

Well, considering when it came out they obviously wanted to have black bars to make it more cinematic.

Black bars don't make things more cinematic. Wide aspect ratio does. Black bars is just a byproduct that must occur when video AR exceeds screen AR.

The FMVs are indeed 16:9 (640x360) bink files, designed to be letterboxed and play at 640x480... So windowboxing is indeed the best case scenario in widescreen, and marking this as a blemish makes sense.
Thanks for explaining.

Black bars don't make things more cinematic. Wide aspect ratio does. Black bars is just a byproduct that must occur when video AR exceeds screen AR.

At that time, when most everything was 4:3, adding black bars was a technique used to make things appear more cinematic.