They set the FOV specifically for the widescreen version. It’s the 4:3 version that’s incorrect (they didn’t matte out the top and bottom).
Changing the FOV can lead to a bunch of problems, one of which is seasickness. Just look at how many people can’t play XBL marathon without getting ill. It’s caused by a very WIDE FOV.
Thinking back to when I still played video games (the days of the first Quake), the FOV controls to that engine were vital. Part of developing as a player was increasing your field of view. The standard was ninety. Most of the folks I played with used somewhere between 100 and 120 degrees, plus a set of scripts that gave you effectively “binoculars” (by decreasing your FOV). I had one friend who played at 270 degrees onscreen.
Is it really now considered cheating?
This debate has already been beaten to death on countless other gaming forums, mostly in a reactionary and overblow manner. For the record, 2K/ Irrational has asserted that the cropped widescreen FOV is the original, intended FOV of the game, as seen on the 360. The 4:3 FOV is actually a hack to avoid complaints about letterboxing the content on a PC screen.
Of course, this is all a moot point by now, because 2K/ Irrational is releasing a patch to allow gamers to tweak the FOV to their desired settings.
“In multiplayer circles, a wider FOV is considered cheating.” - Its true. I play UT2004 a lot and with my 24" dell widescreen, I have noticed a big boost in my “awareness”. But how can you “enforce” this if the multiplayer game is over the internet and not in a physical location.
I’m finally fed up with the restrictions put on consumers of games. This is the last straw, the final frontier, the point of no return…you get the metaphor.
For me it all started with Half Life 2 and Steam. I have to install a separate application that will let the application I just bought start. Not to mention the insane copy protection features built into it.
But I decided to give it a try and after playing with it for 2 weeks, I stopped because of the tediousness of it all.
Now, not only do they install “rootkits” and “activation locks” but they are starting to treat all users like criminals; guilty before innocent, hacker before legitimate user (one of the reasons I don’t play any Blizzard games anymore).
I say enough is enough.
I will NOT buy games that are restrictive. [Keys are acceptable]
I will NOT let applications install 3rd party tools.
I will NOT be part of the masses who accept these ridiculous EULAS.
BioShock, I don’t even want to know you.
Adieu.
There I feel better already.
I find if the FOV setting for a first person shooter doesn’t match the actual FOV I’m seeing (i.e. a function of screen dims and eye distance from screen) then I quickly get motion sickness caused by objects towards the screen edges not moving “correctly” for where they are in my actual FOV.
Sorry, slightly off topic, but did anyone else get bitten by Vista WGA failing when they tried to upgrade DirectX as per the game’s directions? Thanks Microsoft, now apparently my legitimate Vista is counterfeit!
I used to love having +/- slaved to zoom in/out scripts that would change the FOV. Because of the nature of Quake deathmatch, which was more keep-running-and-shooting, it wasn’t much of a cheat except to campers, no more than surround sound - you were more likely to get shot if you tried to snipe someone. On less frantic games, like CS and UT, it could change the course of gameplay unless everyone used it.
Still, the more configurable a game’s engine is, the more I enjoy it.
Wide screens might be better for playing games or watching movies, but most desktop UIs are vertically oriented. How often have you use horizontal scrollbars compared to the vertical ones? If those extra pixels were placed to increase the height of the display, one could view some more of the web pages, or source code, as the case may be.
Steam is by no means the start of the problem and in my opinion Steam is probably the most gamer friendly of all the systems. If you accept that companies want to protect their property, then it’s the best way forward. Unlike SecuROM and the likes it provides benefits to counter the restrictions.
It doesn’t install and rootkits or other sneaky things that run when you’re not even playing the game, you know when Steam is and isn’t running and can completely control that (apart from the fact it has to run when you play). It allows you to tie a game to an account, so you can play it anywhere and uninstall and reinstall it as many times as you like, but still only one person can play it. It’s not even too big considering what it is (50mb for my install, minus game data).
Then it has the added features, including news, automatic updating and a community section (still in beta development currently), all of which are optional. There are 200 games available via. Steam from a variety of publishers. All sharing this same distribution and (in my opinion best) copy protection model. There isn’t the situation of having 3 different types of copy protection installed with 4 different versions a piece. Some are Indie games which would struggle to find such wide publication otherwise and more are to follow.
Admittedly it got off to a shaky start. HL2 boxed editions required you to still download some of the content; The off-line mode was poorly supported without ad-hok switching; The friends mode was down for somewhere in the region of a year and a half; The interface was clunky. But all (Apart from the first, obviously. But the retrospective lesson learnt) have been fixed. If you haven’t tried it in the last year or so I would recommend trying it again with an open mind. If you still don’t like it, fine. But until you’ve tried the updated version it’s difficult to criticise it based upon an old product (fair enough if you have tried it recently).
If you accept that developers need a way of protecting their content and that fast internet connections are becoming ever more prevalent, then Steam is certainly a good way forward.
Oh, I forgot to mention. You don’t need to ever back up your games (and worry about disk copy protection) because they are all available from a central server. You can easily back them up though, if you so wish. Just in case Steam go out of business or something.
From a usability standpoint, I hate the wide screens. Why do I have to lose all that extra space on the bottom (where it was useful) to have it on the side (where it isn’t useful). The only thing I can see useful with a wide screen is movies, and I watch those on a television, as antiquated as that sounds. I actually use my computer for work – go figure – and programming, in particular.
@ICR.
How would we know that. Its not open source so we can’t verify the source code. Who’s monitoring them? And if you say users, I am skeptical about that. People who care to monitor are far and few between and on top of that the people who have the skill to really dig into things are even fewer. Also, it might not do it now but I don’t know about next time. Does that mean I have to KEEP checking it.
Yes I do. Being a developer myself I see why. However, there are limits to end-user’s patience and desperation for the product being offered. Do I really HAVE to have HL2? No! Is it a pain in the ass for ME to use? Yes!
I like my systems to be clean. I don’t install software I either can’t verify or trust (thats why I have VMs). Bloatware like steam just cause me to not use them.
Yes they are. But not everywhere and not at an equal rate. I have lived in africa, asia, europe and the americas. A lot of places in africa and asia don’t even get good dial up and broadband is either prohibitively expensive or non-existant. Does that mean that those users should not be able to use the product? If yes, then its just too arrogant and I want nothing to do with that company.
Great. I get my news from the web. I only update when I feel the need and I prefer to get it directly from the website of the product owner. Community sections are not very interesting.
To be fair, I haven’t tried it in the last couple of months. But I did try it about a year ago when I wanted to show the game to a friend who had never seen it before. The process was still tedious enough for me to just give the game to him and say “you can go try it if you want and keep it.”
I never do and I’ve never had a problem. I just image my drives when I need to.
I understand that they have all these features that some people might find useful but at the end of a day a wolf in sheeps clothing is still a wolf. Steam is restrictiveness with “features” [community etc.] to try to make it appear legitimate to a user. The same is true for Bioshock. Its a beautiful game no doubt. But restrictiveness is going to cause some users to just not use it. I am one of those users!
So lets just agree to disagree. 
Great article Jeff,
Nice to see more good explanations of the real issue rather than it being tainted by non technical assumptions and lame excuses about ‘artistic vision’.
You will have hell of a time convincing non 3D/Techy types though (I know because i’ve been trying for 4 days now).
And the reason the issue rages on is not because of the original problem imo (Which is getting a patch now, 2k accept this). It’s because of the amount of people who refuse to understand STILL debating the issue with such completely wrong evidence. Oh and factor in that 2k basically said we ‘couldn’t handle the immersion’ and ‘we meant it this way’ or something laughable like that just fueled the topic more.
great read this is perfect you really have finally spelled it out better then any one yet
by the way heres a link to the wsgf’s report on Half-Life 2 this game gets it right
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4060
this is how it should be done horz+
BTW, how many people realize the marketing job that’s being pulled for widescreen displays?
It’s not a “wide” screen, it’s a SHORT screen!!!
Remember, they’re sold by the diagonal measurement. As the aspect ratio gets higher, for the same diagonal measurement, you’re getting less screen space. So a 19" 4:3 actually has a good bit more space than a 16:9. (12% more my calculations are right…)
I’m no expert on this, but this seems to be an arbitrary standard when it comes to video games. In a game, nothing is prerendered, theoretically you could render a panoramic view (albeit scrunched together to fit the monitor) because it’s all potentially there, it’s just a matter of if it’s being shown.
Here’s my question: would gamers be upset if the widescreen were the same as it is and the fullscreen had a smaller FOV? (I’m not saying if 2K were to patch the game to make this so, but rather if this were the situation from the get-go.) They most likely wouldn’t; mostly because no one would notice to begin with. The problem here is the traditional notion that widescreen means you get more; that you have an advantage over fullscreen. In this case fullscreen got more, so people with a widescreen monitor feel they got less since they’re so use to getting more. So IMO they probably feel cheated. I don’t think much is being lost by them, I would even claim that that which is horizontal is more important than that which is vertical; enemies are more likely to be on your level or below you than standing above on balconies.
Those who brought up the fact that some films are cropped to be widescreen make a similar point. If those films were released uncropped, would people bought the film as the director intended feel gypped somehow? I think it comes down to whether or not you accept or reject the design decision.
“So apparently a Windows Service is now a rootkit. No wonder those hackers are so confused.”
I’ll just quote another poster to one of the many forums where this is being discussed:
“Securom’s site say it’s a suite of services and state no rootkit is used. However, since it does seek to hide itself, installs silently and (apparently) doesn’t disappear when the game is uninstalled then rootkit it is. I’ll be applying rootkit revealer and investigating…”
But hey, I guess some people don’t mind windows services opening backdoors for Sony/BSA/(MP|RI)AA/etc. on their system.
Storm in a tea cup
Sigh… it’s not a warped view if the game was designed that way.
If looks zoomed in, then measure and find the proper viewing distance. This is home theater basics, folks.
Yes, horz+ for widescreen is preferred, but it doesn’t mean it is “correct”, or that vert- is invalid.
Besides, if you have a big 4:3 monitor, why should it have a smaller FOV? It’s not simply about aspect ratios.
The bigger the screen, the more you should see. But that would make it completely unfair.
I remember playing Quake with that kind of crazy fov… would make my head ache every time.
Oh btw Jeff, I think I saw some Vertigo candy bars in the store here today.