Widescreen gaming

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Pred** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:32 pm

IronHide wrote:
consolegaming wrote:
IronHide wrote:Moving off topic slightly, does anyone else find the horizontal borders on 16:9 ratio DVDs which remain there even when viewed on a 16:9 TV utterly ******* irritating and distracting?

Annoying yes, but happy that they implemented this as this was the ratio at which the film was shot at. For years we had stuff on tv that basically showed us less than half of the film if you get what I mean!

That's only true for a 4:3 screen, A 16:9 picture should fit a 16:9 screen without borders.

On my TV I get huge black borders when watching films. I think only half of the screen is used.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Cropolite** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:44 pm

iT'S BETTER NOW

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Mogster** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:46 pm

Pred wrote:
IronHide wrote:
consolegaming wrote:
IronHide wrote:Moving off topic slightly, does anyone else find the horizontal borders on 16:9 ratio DVDs which remain there even when viewed on a 16:9 TV utterly ******* irritating and distracting?

Annoying yes, but happy that they implemented this as this was the ratio at which the film was shot at. For years we had stuff on tv that basically showed us less than half of the film if you get what I mean!

That's only true for a 4:3 screen, A 16:9 picture should fit a 16:9 screen without borders.

On my TV I get huge black borders when watching films. I think only half of the screen is used.

A lot of movies are filmed with a wider aspect ratio than 16:9, hence the borders. 16:9 is only a standard for widescreen TV.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **SchminkyPinky** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:37 pm

Widescreen doesn't have the borders, that's the point and yes I love it too. Every console and PC game should be widescreen nowadays. There is absolutely no excuse or valid reason not to have a widescreen option.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **SEP** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:29 pm

Steve wrote:
LongHairStu wrote:Widescreen exists because cinemas needed a way to draw in customers who had been enchanted by their home TVs.

Eyes are sort of lemon shaped so widescreen exists because it's a better way to view.

The hole the light goes through is round, though. Your logic fails.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **LongHairStu** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 11:24 pm

The Alchemist Penguin wrote:
LongHairStu wrote:games haven't had a compelling reason to turn to widescreen.

Here's one. Take a 4:3 display and look at the image on it and then blow that image up to, say, a 100 inch 4:3 TV (in theory), now look at it. It's the same "viewing area", just on a bigger screen , right? Now look at a 16:9 image, and do the same. It shows more of the game, no matter the size. (Bioshock is the only time a game has actually went backwards, and even then it was quickly patched out).

How can seeing more of the area in a game, in which a large portion of the screen can be taking up with the HUD, not be a huge, huge benefit? Final Fantasy XII is the time I noticed it the most as the game is packed with HUD information, meaning you get only a tiny bit in the centre of a 4:3 display to actually view the action. The same game on a 16:9 display is beautiful, as the HUD has been moved away to the side. Surely seeing more of a game is an unarguable plus?

Now films are a bit of a different beast as they aren't the same widescreen ratio as widescreen TVs but for games I can't see how anyone could even begin to suggest that widescreen isn't a far superior format to 4:3, it's a far greater impact on games than HD (imo).

I've seen your argument about aspect ratios before but Stu do you realise that games (at least the Xbox development kits) scale everything automatically? For a HUD you tell it how far in from the side of the screen you want it to be and it'll always be (say) 10% from the left on all displays. There isn't really any design problem, as the development kits seem to handle all the different aspect ratios automatically. Apart from it being awkward for the developer (which it isn't), why do you want everyone to be forced to one aspect ratio?

That's a very good way of looking at it actually.

My point back in the early days of widescreen gaming (when Jak and Daxter was in widescreen but Halo wasn't) was that people should think about which ratio was in use, and I was clinging on to reasons like the TV-cinema dichotomy. You have certainly defused my argument in that respect, but the point about fixed aspect ratios remains.

First of all, let's throw HUDs right out of the equation. Your point about them is good, so we can assume that HUDs always prefer widescreen.

Take the aformentioned Resident Evil 4. I suspect we may have heard complaints at the time about the borders at the top and bottom of the screen. But Resident Evil 4 was designed that way. The 'second person' perspective means that Leon sees the world in a particular way. I may be giving benefit of doubt to Capcom here, but the way the camera does occasionally pull back to show Leon's full height suggest to me they knew what they were doing. So we have to ask whether we would have lost anything of that game if it had featured a 4:3 mode. We could debate that all night, but I actually like to think that Capcom have built the game in a particular way.

So that's second person covered. First person gives complete camera control to the player, but surely there are moments that will be better seen - better designed - in widescreen. Think of those first person moments you wouldn't want to knock it down to 4:3 for - coming out of the sewers, seeing the citadel towering over the city (an interesting one given the verticality of the centrepiece), the control room of the ark sprawling below you as a scarab storms over you. Why should anyone be deprived the chance to see these things in this way? For the sake of a couple of black bars? So if I'm destitute and stuck with a 4:3 TV, developer give me a letterbox mode.

The same probably applies for third person games in which you effectively have first person controls. Like Halo's vehicles, or something like Crackdown.

Third person fixed camera surely speaks the strongest for one aspect ratio per game. Screen furniture and environmental hazards are placed in a specific way which could be compromised by lazy screen chopping. And 2D games, if they sit anywhere, sit here.

It's not that I want to make everyone here operate in a certain way, it's that I want to be able to think that developers have created something that isn't dictated by a standards sheet which says "Must contain 4:3 and 16:9 options".

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **<]:^D** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:16 am

Apart from editing config files for old games, which is a bit of a chore, widescreen gaming (got mine connected to my PC & 360) is amazing. Everyone should get it now as every new game is natively Hor+. With a lot of these new technologies you get them because they're new, but getting my widescreen monitor and playing CoD4 on it blew me away.

Black borders on films on TV is another matter, really pisses me off. On PC you can modify the picture in Media Player Classic, but I don't have that sort of option on my TV. I watched American Psycho on Film4 and whatever aspect ratio i chose I only got about half the screen as the film, the rest was black bars :fp:

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Pilch** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:35 am

MCN wrote:
Steve wrote:
LongHairStu wrote:Widescreen exists because cinemas needed a way to draw in customers who had been enchanted by their home TVs.

Eyes are sort of lemon shaped so widescreen exists because it's a better way to view.

The hole the light goes through is round, though. Your logic fails.

We have two eyes arranged horizontally, so naturally our horizontal field of vision is wider than the vertical. I'd say the ratio is probably somewhere close to phi (1.618) though I have no proof to back this up.

I was sceptical of widescreens until I bought one and realised how much more natural it is to view images in this way. I could never go back to a 4:3 screen now.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Beans** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:40 am

consolegaming wrote:So, during the last gen widescreen titles started to trickle out, many of them 'faked' widescreen and lowering the resolution of the games.

Once the Xbox 360 came out we finally had widescreen gaming as a norm, every game had it, but what do you guys feeling about it?

Has it improved gaming, or made it worse, or is it something you do not even pay attention to?

I do believe that the old 4:3 games now have a certain nostalgia about them and playing in widescreen does not really improve the gaming experience much.

I think there are certain titles where the extra picture has benefitted the gamer, like in racing games and fps games, but in other genres it may actually have spoilt the experience.

I do not think genres like sports and platformers have really had much benefit from change in aspect ratio, what do you guys think?

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Widescreen gaming is better in every way. In what way is the experience spoiled?

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **consolegaming** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:54 am

Beans wrote:
consolegaming wrote:So, during the last gen widescreen titles started to trickle out, many of them 'faked' widescreen and lowering the resolution of the games.

Once the Xbox 360 came out we finally had widescreen gaming as a norm, every game had it, but what do you guys feeling about it?

Has it improved gaming, or made it worse, or is it something you do not even pay attention to?

I do believe that the old 4:3 games now have a certain nostalgia about them and playing in widescreen does not really improve the gaming experience much.

I think there are certain titles where the extra picture has benefitted the gamer, like in racing games and fps games, but in other genres it may actually have spoilt the experience.

I do not think genres like sports and platformers have really had much benefit from change in aspect ratio, what do you guys think?

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Widescreen gaming is better in every way. In what way is the experience spoiled?

Playing footy games in widescreen just does not feel right imo, also I enjoyed the older 3D zeldas in 4:3 as opposed to 16:9. It is almost as if there is too much blank space on the left and right and the traditional 4:3 gives it a more concentrated, claustrophobic experience.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **emilythestrange** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:55 am

I still don't understand what makes widescreen better.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Madness** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:47 pm

emilythestrange wrote:I still don't understand what makes widescreen better.

You can fit more into a rectangle than a square. It's also easier on the eyes.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **emilythestrange** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:55 pm

Madness wrote:
emilythestrange wrote:I still don't understand what makes widescreen better.

You can fit more into a rectangle than a square. It's also easier on the eyes.

Depends how big the rectangle is!

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Eighthours** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:57 pm

consolegaming wrote:Playing footy games in widescreen just does not feel right imo

What? What? What? What? What? x 1,000,000.

PostRe: Widescreen gaming by **Ario** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:58 pm

consolegaming wrote:
Beans wrote:
consolegaming wrote:So, during the last gen widescreen titles started to trickle out, many of them 'faked' widescreen and lowering the resolution of the games.

Once the Xbox 360 came out we finally had widescreen gaming as a norm, every game had it, but what do you guys feeling about it?

Has it improved gaming, or made it worse, or is it something you do not even pay attention to?

I do believe that the old 4:3 games now have a certain nostalgia about them and playing in widescreen does not really improve the gaming experience much.

I think there are certain titles where the extra picture has benefitted the gamer, like in racing games and fps games, but in other genres it may actually have spoilt the experience.

I do not think genres like sports and platformers have really had much benefit from change in aspect ratio, what do you guys think?

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Widescreen gaming is better in every way. In what way is the experience spoiled?

Playing footy games in widescreen just does not feel right imo, also I enjoyed the older 3D zeldas in 4:3 as opposed to 16:9. It is almost as if there is too much blank space on the left and right and the traditional 4:3 gives it a more concentrated, claustrophobic experience.

I put it to you, good sir, what shape is a football pitch?
If I can see a wider range of he football pitch then I can use it.

In platformers it means I can keep moving and get a better sense of what's up ahead.
Even in racing games, where you only need to see the track and the next bend, being able to see a wider view means you can (in a good looking game) see the surroundings, crowds, buildings etc.

emilythestrange wrote:
Madness wrote:
emilythestrange wrote:I still don't understand what makes widescreen better.

You can fit more into a rectangle than a square. It's also easier on the eyes.

Depends how big the rectangle is!

Alright, imagine two side by side TVs, both the same height, screens the same size vertically aligned perfectly.
A 4:3 TV will fit slap bang in the middle of the 16:9 TV, so imagine playing the same game on the side by side displays. The centre of the 16:9 display will show exactly what's on the 4:3 screen (unless of course the HUD is moved out of the way to the edges) but then you'll have ll that extra space on the side to see more of the environment at once. You aren't losing out on anything at all.
If you're getting black borders or letterboxes during standard TV or Games (not movies, which are filmed in an even wider ratio) then your setup is wrong, or the game is not proper in 16:9.

Widescreen gaming

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