On the Subject of Bioshock 2

Some model or other

Today got off to a positive start, with me enjoying a good old chuckle over the latest developments in the Bioshock 2 widescreen fiasco. Of course I haven't bothered with buying the game itself, on account of the first one being a mediocre effort and all indications suggesting that this one is more of the same.

But that's neither here nor there. The important point is that Bioshock 2 shipped with the same console-oriented field of view as the original game. That's amazing enough in itself, given the furore that 2K faced first time around. Sure enough, once again people started mistaking widescreengamingforums for some sort of important authoritative organisation rather than the random collection of self-important twats it actually is. Once again they began bitching and moaning about "horizontal+" and overlooking the actual issue, which is the limited fov which was designed for people sitting on a sofa playing games on their tv, not for the more sophisticated PC gamer.

Unsurprisingly, 2K developed a patch to address the issue. Again. What struck me as particularly amusing is how they have chosen to address the "problem". Bear in mind that when they patched Bioshock the first time, they never really admitted that they were fixing a bug, instead choosing to have a sly dig at the naysayers, suggesting they found the game too "intense". According to reports, the new patch for B2 does indeed apply a "horizontal+" logic to the widescreen cropping. So it's all good, right? Surely all those fucking idiots who raged about people on 4:3 displays being able to see more of the game world than them, the oh-so-select few with their fancy widescreen monitors, can shut the fuck up and crawl back under their rocks.

Seriously, how many people even game on 4:3 displays now? Surprisingly, looking at the latest Steam survey reveals the most common resolution is the 4:3 1280x1024. But if you start summing the results by ratio (which I can't be arsed to do throroughly) then it looks like more are playing at 16:10 resolutions. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the 1280x1024 players are actually playing at the wrong resolution for their display. The idiots. In any case, widescreen monitors are far from some sort of exclusive luxury item available only to a privileged few, as some people seem to believe.

Unfortunately, rather than expanding the horizontal fov with increased aspect ratio, 2K choose to close it down as the aspect ratio diminishes. So players on 16:9 displays experience no change, players on 16:10 see a bit less than they did before, and 4:3 see a lot less. The reason I find that so chucklesome is because it really highlights the two-pronged nature of the problem. All those fucking cocks who moaned about the unfairness of people with 4:3 displays seeing more should be satisfied, but of course they're in the uncomfortable position of realising that the cropping wasn't the actual problem in the first place.

Who gives a fuck what people on different displays see when they play the game? Really, if the game is comfortable and immersive to play, what does it matter to you if someone else sees a bit more at the top and bottom of the screen? Especially in a first-person shooter which a) is not multi-player oriented in the first place, and b) features most of the action on the horizontal ground plane, not above or below you.
So yes, I do think the fov should be adjustable, because people's situations and preferences vary. But beyond that, why do you fucking cunts even care about cropping? If the fov was adjustable within some mad range, like 60-150 degrees, what difference would it make if the 4:3 image was vert-? It wouldn't make any fucking difference, but you can guarantee the same shit-munchers would still bitch about it being "wrong". Or to look at it another way, if the fov was simply more sensible in the PC version, but the cropping was still vert-, why should widescreen players complain? Of course they shouldn't, it should be the 4:3 owners who are up in arms about the fov being too high on their displays but you can bet you'll never encounter that complaint.

On the Subject of Bioshock 2

Evie Delatosso

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It looks like Bioshock 2 features the same widescreen cropping as (pre-patch) Bioshock. Which is to say "vert-", which as I've previously discussed, involves widescreen aspect ratios having the same horizontal field of view as lower ratios (i.e. 4x3, or 1.333), with the top and bottom cropped.

Now on the off-chance that someone stumbles across this while they're out and about with their flaming torch and pitchfork, hunting for 2K devs to string up to the nearest tree, let me clarify that it's not 2K I'm laughing/crying about, it's the fucking retard bandwagon-jumping reactionary cunts who continue to claim that Bioshock's widescreen support is "broken" or "wrong".

Aspect ratio support is only "wrong" if the image comes out distorted (i.e. stretched) due to the game essentially rendering through a camera set to one aspect ratio, and drawing the image to a display with another.

That aside (and it's relatively rare, if not unheard of, for a game's aspect ratio support to be genuinely broken in that way), there are actually two separate issues involved when people talk about widescreen support. One of those is the choice of aspect ratio support, whether it's "vert-" or "horizontal+". There is no fucking right or wrong way to do it. But try telling that to some fucking bottom-feeding cock who believes that widescreengamingforums is some sort of official widescreen architecture review board. "Waaaah, I have a widescreen monitor, therefore I should see more than some loser who doesn't, waaaah". That stupid argument, which essentially boils down to "entitlement", can easily be thwarted with the simple example of a widescreen monitor vs a physically larger, 4x3 display (for example, one which has the same physical horizontal width as the widescreen display). Why should the 4x3 display, which offers a considerably larger screen area, display less of the camera view than the smaller monitor? Should someone on a 3x2 eyefinity display have to put up with a narrower horizontal fov than someone on a 3x1 setup? Should someone on a 16x9, 23" display have a wider fov than someone on a 30" 16x10?
In other words the fov should be a function of the physical size of the display relative to the viewer, and that might result in either form of cropping, depending on the circumstances. Why is it the widescreen mode that's wrong, why not the 4x3 mode? Have fun trying to get some cunt who's determined to rage against 2K to even acknowledge that argument. They're much too full of ignorance and entitlement to respond to logic.

The problem is that a lot of people seem to be unable to differentiate between the issue of cropping, and the confusingly similar issue of field of view. It's increasingly common for games which are primarily designed for consoles to appear on the PC without any compensation for the different viewing geometry. A game designed to be played by someone sitting on a sofa 6' from their TV will not offer an optimal viewing experience for me, sitting 18" from my 30" monitor*. So there's a perfectly valid argument that PC games should in general offer a wider horizontal field of view than a console game, in order to maximise immersion and also reduce potential motion sickness in those people who suffer from it. But that is nothing to do with widescreen cropping. It's like when religious idiots try to entwine their bullshit sky wizard fairy tales with common sense notions like people not killing each other, the implication being that if you don't believe in their particular magic beardy man you must be some sort of child-raping murderer. "If you don't agree that all widescreen modes should be horizontal+, you can't possibly agree that the fov should be wider, because they're the same thing". They're not, you're a cunt.

That said, it's quite staggering that 2K have chosen to implement the same design a second time (especially given that they eventually patched the original game). Not because it was ever wrong, but because of the shitstorm it caused last time around. It is (probably quite rightly) being seen as a symptom of general laziness and disinterest when it came to porting the PC version of the game.

In any case I didn't think Bioshock was all that in the first place so I never had any intention of picking up the sequel.

P.S. Maximum respect to kotaku commenter saifrc who is the only other person I've ever seen offering a rational and informed rebuttal to the "controversy".

* incidentally, since most TVs are now 16x9, but most widescreen PC monitors are 16x10, does that mean the fov should actually be narrower on the PC than on the consoles? Obviously not, you cock.

The Field Marshal's Guide to Widescreen

Megan Fox

Revised and newly-illustrated for 2008!

It may be hard to believe, but there are still some idiots out there banging on about Bioshock's implementation of widescreen being "broken". It's an issue I've covered, and a notion I subsequently dismissed, in a previous discussion.

The situation is simple. You are trying to render a view of a 3-dimensional virtual scene onto a 2-dimension window, namely your computer's monitor. The problem is that computer monitors are available in widescreen (WS) and non-widescreen (which I'll call "standard def" or SD) formats.
Given that we don't want to distort the image by squeezing it, there are essentially two options for how the image that's displayed on a WS device will relate to that on an SD screen. You can either keep the horizontal field of view constant and vary the vertical field of view according to the aspect ratio of the screen, or vice versa.
This is where the contention arises. Let's look at how Bioshock approaches the problem, with the aid of some pretty pictures.



In Bioshock, the horizontal field of view is kept constant, and an SD device (green line) displays more of the game world at the top and bottom of the screen than the widescreen display (red line).

Note that this is similar to what happens when you letterbox a widescreen movie on an SD TV, or even a 2.35 format movie on a widescreen TV, which anyone who's interested in preserving the original theatrical format will tell you is preferable to "pan and scan" cropping.

The difference is that while dvds or TV signals are encoded at a fixed resolution, a computer game is essentially resolution-independent (within the computer's performance limitations). So a computer game doesn't need to worry about black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, and can just fill them in with an extended view of the game world. In fact a similar effect occurs with some movies which are produced in a 1.85 format for widescreen TVs, and then cropped to 2.35 for the theatrical release. So you're actually seeing more of the film on the "narrower" display device.

Some people believe this is unacceptable. Some people believe it is wrong. Some people believe that widescreen implies wider field of view. It doesn't.
For completeness here is the alternative method, keeping the vertical field of view constant and displaying more of the game world on the left and right of the screen on a widescreen display.



Personally I consider the horizontal field of view to be the more important axis, but contrary to what some people might claim that does not mean it should be greater on a widescreen display.
My favourite example is to consider the situation where you have a WS and SD monitor with the same physical width. For example a 17" widescreen and a 19" SD. In that case, why should the horizontal field of view be any less on the SD display? The answer is, of course, there's no reason why it should. If the monitors have the same width, the SD screen has the larger area and so in that case it would make sense for it to display more of the game world.



Just as I concluded in my previous discussion on this subject, there really is no right or wrong solution. It's a matter of personal preference. However, it is wrong to claim that Bioshock's implementation is broken. It plainly isn't broken at all. You might be used to a different implementation, and you might have read some hyperbolic, outraged righteous indignation drooled onto web forums by simple-minded widescreen owners who think they're being short-changed by the developers, but the fact is those people are just too stupid or ignorant to understand the issue they're complaining about.

I was particularly gratified when 2K stood their ground and quite rightly denied there was anything wrong with their code. They even confirmed that they do indeed develop on widescreen monitors and so what you're seeing in-game is absolutely what they intended and not some sort of mistake. Although they did add a "Horizontal FOV Lock option" (note "option", not "fix") as a concession to all the bleating, witless morons.

The next time you encounter someone making unfounded claims concerning Bioshock and widescreen camera geometry, feel free to point them in the direction of this article and then proceed to tut, shake your head and mutter "you idiot" at them in a suitably disdainful manner.

On the Subject of Wide Screen

Salma Hayek

Admittedly this is somewhat overdue, but with the recent release of the Unreal Tournament 3 Beta/Demo I am once again seeing the hordes of ignorant little fools crawl out from under their uninformed, reactionary rocks.
The issue is widescreen and specifically Bioshock's notoriously divisive implementation. Of course by "divisive" I mean the division between people who have a solid grasp of camera geometry, and drooling half-wits who will believe any bullshit that a bunch of educationally sub-normal yahoos choose to spew onto web forums.
Quite simply, a wide screen monitor does not imply a wider field of view.
If you understood that assertion, there is little reason for you to continue reading. For anyone else, let me try and put it into simple terms that even you can grasp.
Firstly, a hypothetical situation. That means pretend, in case I had lost you already. Like when you pretend to have the faintest idea what's going on in the big scary world around you.
Imagine you have two monitors. One is a wide screen monitor and the other is a traditional shape. Imagine that if you took a tape measure and measured from one side of the screen to the other that both monitors are the same width. Yes, that's right, the wide screen monitor wouldn't be as tall, would it? Very clever. But that's beside the point. Now imagine that you're playing the same game on both monitors. Which monitor should let you have a wider field of view? Which monitor should let you see a wider view of the game world? Remember, the monitors are the same width. Consider that if the wide screen monitor offered a wider field of view, objects would appear smaller on that monitor. Think about it.
The number of people who instinctively believe that because they (or, more likely, their parents) bought a fancy pants wide screen monitor that they are for some unfathomable reason entitled to see more of the game world, is staggering. If they can't see more of the game world or if, god forbid, they actually see less because the picture is cropped vertically, then they think they are somehow being short-changed by the game designers.
A question to ask yourself: do you think that modern game developers use wide screen monitors? The correct answer is, of course, "yes". Because wide screen monitors are no longer exclusive or special, in the same way that you're not special for having one. So the game developers are seeing the exact same cropping and field of view that you are, and they are in a much better position to judge what is "correct" than you are, because it's their game. Just because you read that it's wrong on some forum, or because another game did it differently doesn't make it wrong. What the fuck do you know? Getting all indignant because you believe you know better than the game designers when in fact you are much too stupid to ever be capable of developing a game yourself.
Of course there are other whiny, smug little arses who like to point out that some people are sensitive to the field of view and that if it's too narrow it makes them motion sick, as if that's some sort of excuse. That is in fact entirely irrelevant, not only to the discussion of wide screen field of view, but to any discussion of field of view at all.
For now I will skip over the issue of self-righteous, elitist, self-styled FPS veterans whose argument is essentially "I have wasted more hours of my life playing FPS's than you so my opinion is correct". That is a subject that deserves special attention and will no doubt receive it in due course.
There really are people who refuse to buy what is in reality an excellent game, simply because they're too ignorant and closed-minded to understand the issue they're complaining about. An issue that isn't actually an issue at all, if only they weren't too stupid to realise. It's laughable.
Get a fucking grip.