no it wont hurt 4:3 users you just letter box scripted events not hard to do
and then make that anamorphic thats an easy fix right there
Every change costs money and must be playtested. As is the trend with top-quality games, scripted events are no longer videos that play at fixed points; they are implemented in game with the game engine. So you are talking about numerous changes scattered all through the game. That's going to cost a significant amount of money, coming out of a fixed development budget. Why spend that money on a dying aspect ratio, when it could be used to improve other aspects of the game that all players will appreciate?
if the game is well thought out it should be a problem HL2 for one was targeted at 4:3 at the time and works fine with widescreen and CS is the most played on line game ever and has H+ and no one bitches about it
You reinforce my point; it is much easier to take a game that was originally targeted for 4:3 and expand the sides to make it 16:9, because you can be confident that nothing important will be lost. This was a reasonable approach when widescreen displays a small part of the market, and developers were more concerned with optimizing games for 4:3 and didn't want to spend a lot of money on widescreen, but these days, it is the other way around. Games are optimized for widescreen, and the cheapest, safest way to adapt them to 4:3 is to retain the same FOV and let the view expand vertically to fill the screen.
and at LANs were money is on the line every one uses the same setup any way
Not really an issue for a single-player game such as Bioshock
if widescreen is done right multiscreen works fine out of the box
But multiscreen is an insignificantly small part of the market, so which approach supports multiscreen best simply is not an economic consideration.
lets look at Quake Wars for a bit it has a wide FOV in 4:3 my guess is about 90
in 5:4 its Vert+ since 5:4 is taller then 4:3
then theres 16:10 and 16:9 both use 4:3 vert + ....
Different games, different constraints and economic incentives. Quake Wars may well have been developed initially for 4:3, but even if it was not, the Quake series has always emphasized multiplayer action, which imposes concerns related to maintaining balance in competitive play when players may have different displays (not a concern in a single player game such as Bioshock, of course). Also, it appears to involve outdoor action with long sightlines. In such a case, too wide a FOV for your monitor's resolution can be a detriment, since it makes things smaller, and can impair distance vision (not a concern in indoor games such as Bioshock, of course).
then we come to driving games were H+ is a must imo
ever use the in car view it makes the car feel narrow in 4:3
DiRT in wide screen is a sight to behold
Yes, driving games benefit well from a very wide, even multiscreen, display, because in an actual car you can's see very far up or down, but you can see out the side windows. Again, different games, different design issues.
WIDE screen should have a wider fov then 4:3 or it would be called shortscreen
Wide actually refers to aspect ratio--so it's relative. Obviously, a 4:3 display can be physically wider than a "widescreen" display. It's only wide relative to its height, so shortscreen is equally correct, even if "widescreen" sounds better from a marketing prespective. Developers have to consider for each individual game how best to take advantage of a display that is so short relative to its width, or so wide realtive to your height.
some of us dont give a damn what the devs want
Not everybody is going to like every game. Tastes differ, and a developer's vision of a game may not match yours--in which case you may choose to buy something else instead. A developer is primarily interested in selling the product, which means giving a large number of people something pretty close to what they want. Based on sales, Bioshock seems to be doing that.
i want to be looking threw the eyes the the person im playing
no a window
i want to see as i would see if standing there
and if that means a bit of distortion on the edges so be it
Except of course that when you are actually standing there, the perspective is right, angles are correct, objects are the size they would actually appear if they were real, and there is no distortion at the edges of your vision. All of these are cues to your brain that you are not standing there looking at a real scene, but only at a picture of one.
1.) Horz+ can easily covers all available aspects the wider you go from 4:3 without zooming in or out relative to the 4:3 frame. And it looks natural and makes sense! You triple the width, you see 2 screens more worth on the side... not 2 screens worth LESS on the sides.
Zoom refers to a change in FOV. Since the 4:3 and 16:9 displays have the same FOV, neither is zoomed in, and each will show perfect and identical perspective when viewed from a distance 2/3 of the width of the screen. The game is designed to play on screens that are 4:3, 16:9, or 16:10, not on "triple width" displays. Note that a projection 4:3 display may be double or triple the width of a typical 16:9 monitor, yet nobody is insisting that such a display should show 2 or 3 times as much on the sides.
2.) Vert+ covers all aspects taller than 4:3 (there is only one that I've ever heard of someone using... 5:4.
While people can assemble all sorts of odd aspect ratio displays, there is no reason to expect developers to support them, since they are a minuscule fraction of the market. The standard aspect ratios are 16:9, 16:10, and 4:3. Some games may fortuitously work OK on odd aspect ratio configurations, but it is not reasonable to expect developers to make that a major criterion in development.
They can both exist (horz+ and Vert+) in the game, it's not a one or the other choice... see quakeworld for example.
Of course they can. No one approach is right for all situations. The skilled developer will choose an approach that best enhances the gameplay experience for his particular type of game.
Narrow FOV's give me headaches (I'm even gaming on a 37" screen from 3 feet away... should be super according to trrll) and make other people sick. But fine, let the dev use a "window" FOV, they just better not lock it down unless...
And distortion gives some people headaches. Some people have had problems with every FPS game ever created. Many people are unable to play any FPS game for more than a short period of time. Scientific research into the matter shows that a wide FOV is associated with a greater frequency of such problems than a narrow FOV, but there will always be exceptions. No one approach will be perfect for everybody, but based on sales, Bioshock seems to be coming pretty close.
Both FOV planes need to be locked if competitive fairness is the reason NOT to use Horz+... because using Vert- gives widescreeners an even bigger advantage with a massive vertical FOV. So the only fair competitive implementation is to pick an aspect and box the frame for display on other aspect ratio monitors.
This does not apply at all to single player games such as Bioshock. Even for multiplayer games, whether one display or another gives a competitive advantage depends upon the details of the game's design. A greater vertical view is obviously more of an advantage in mountainous terrain. Once again, there is no single best approach; it has to be determined experimentally on a case-by-case basis.
If the developer absolutely wants you to see something, that is what cut-scenes are for. Valve doesn't seem to have any trouble with cinematic lead-throughs without using cutscenes and while supporting multiple aspects.
Old technology. Modern PCs and consoles are powerful enough that cut scenes can be implemented within the gaming engine without having to set them apart