I undertsand that you enjoy the FOV found in BioShock, I'm happy for you. I agree it's a matter of taste, you prefer the default FOV and I don't. However, the method in which they have implemented your favoured FOV, basically ruins the experience for users on wider monitors, such as triple head (and those of us who sit close to the screen)... That's hardly fair is it?
It certainly would not be fair if 2K had advertised the game as providing optimized support for nonstandard ultrawide display configurations. But so far as I know they have not made any such claim. I don't personally own a triple head configuration, but am I correct in presuming that it is possible to simply turn off the two side monitors? In that case, Bioshock provides triple head owners with exactly the same experience that it provides owners of standard configurations, which hardly seems unfair.
In its current state, BioShock also prevents the game from ever being run on superwide monitors, wouldn't you rather it were flexible and could cater for future technologies?
I certainly think that it is reasonable to request such support, although I am astonished by the sense of entitlement that I'm hearing from people who own such configurations. Do you believe that they are
obligated to invest in providing an enhanced gaming experience to an unusual, nonstandard configuration that probably constitutes less than 1% of their customer base and that the game is not advertised as supporting?
But if you head read Paddy's thread detailing the fact that almost every recent U3 engine game uses exactly the same FOV/widescreen implementation method as BioShock, then you would know that your arguments on the side of 2K with regards to the "artistic" aesthetics was nonsense. Any man can see that, why you can't, a scientist, is beyond me.
I read the thread. I don't think his argument makes sense. I think that there are very good reasons why the vert+ approach to supporting 4:3 monitors is becoming more common; I predict that it will become the rule rather than the exception. With more and more people owning 16:9 and 16:10 displays, and with games being developed specifically for that aspect ratio, developers are going to be less and less inclined to invest large amounts of money in optimizing the game to support 4:3 displays. When a game was developed and optimized initially for 4:3, expanding the view a bit for widescreen was not a huge risk--it might make the game too easy, but it wouldn't make it too hard. But now that games are being developed initially for wide aspect ratios, a developer is likely to worry that chopping off the sides for 4:3 will chop off key parts of in-game videos, and perhaps even make the game unplayably hard. So keeping the same FOV for 4:3 is cheaper, and effectively the path of least resistance. And since nobody likes letterboxing, they just open up the game vertically. From Levine's comments, it is clear that this is what happened with Bioshock. They went through "dozens" of possible FOVs for 16:9, but he wasn't even involved in deciding what to do for 4:3; it sounds like somebody showed him the game running in 4:3 and he said, "fine."
Although the people complaining are mainly widescreen owners, this is actually more of a problem for 4:3 owners. For many games, a horiz- solution might well provide a better 4:3 gaming experience. A wider FOV makes everything smaller and less dramatic on the screen, and 4:3 screens often (although not always) are physically narrower. This means that 4:3 players may have to sit uncomfortably close to get a perspective-correct playing experience. In addition, smaller images also suffer more from the frequently lower resolution of 4:3 displays, a well known problem with letterboxed display of widescreen movies.
He is literally arguing against someone gaining something while nobody else loses anything... and he already has what he wants, so where does the motivation to rally against others stem from? It seems a bit self-centered and selfish to me.
As I've said many times, I have never argued against the use of the wide-FOV hack (although I do recommend that people give the original FOV a fair trial), nor against the release of an official 2K approved patch. My only argument has been that the FOV of Bioshock is a valid and reasonable artistic decision, that actually provides most players with more correct perspective than conventional ultrawide FOV displays. It is perfectly reasonable for players who prefer a wider FOV to request this; however, they should recognize that they are asking the developer to accommodate a personal preference, and that there are no reasonable grounds to insist that the original display is in any sense incorrect or buggy.
It is certainly true that just like many people around here I am self-centered to the extent that I would like more games to cater to my own personal taste, and for me I find that a perspective-correct FOV such as that of Bioshock provides a superior playing experience. However, I have never objected to developers providing options for players to customize the FOV of a noncompetitive game such as Bioshock.
Most people around here already have what they want, too--a working patch, and the promise of an official one. Yet quite a few are still interested in debating the issue with me. Nobody is in danger of losing anything, so we are arguing not about what should be done about Bioshock (a settled issue) but about general matters of perspective, geometry, and game design.
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