Aspect ratios for gaming

[kyleb]

If those 4:3 displays are huge enough to fill your whole horizonal view, then you aren't even going to be able to see the HUD in most games as that would wind up outside your vertical feild of view. Also, how much "processing power" a given aspect ratio requires depends on how game developers chose to utilise that aspect ratio and can go one way or the other depending on that.

 

[V3]

I find wide aspect couple with high/stable frame rate helps to lessen motion sickness in 3D games with fast camera such as racing games or FPS. I am not sure why wide aspect helps. All I know I can play games like F355 or Gran Turismo on 3 screens all day long, where as on a single large 4:3 screen, I need to take a break every so often.

 

[Fodder]

Human vision is wider side to side than it is top to bottom.

So is a 4:3 display.

 

[Nappe1]

I never thought about the thing. After I got 16:9 TV with DVI, It was plain natural to start using 16:9 when possible. When game does not support it, 26" 16:9 with black bars on both sides is still bigger than my 15" TFT, so I'll play with it in any case.

Nevertheless, TrackManias give you quite much more "wow" with 1366x768 than 1024x768. the sense of speed is just so much more intense. In OpenTTD again, you see more construction space without scrolling.

 

[soylent]

I'm not sure what distortion you are talking about here. Projecting a scene to a plane and displaying that projection on a flat screen is distortion-free if the focal point of the projection is equivalent to the position of your eyes.

The distortion you get from NOT siting at the 'focal point' and having 75-120 degree FOV(like most games). And the distortion you get even if you sit at the 'focal point' when not looking at the exact center of the screen(try it).

 

[EasyRaider]

once you clutter up the average viewpoint of most FPS/RTS with a HUD/GUI you usualy end up with a wider aspect ratio for the actual game (GUI/HUD on the top and/or bottom usualy).

Cluttering up the view is just bad design in most cases. With RTS games you have a point, but I can hardly remember a pure FPS with a HUD significantly obstructing the view. When large UI elements need to be visible all or most of the time, the position should be configurable to fit 4:3 as well as widescreen.

 

[soylent]

How did you come up with those numbers? They certianly don't reflect what I see as when focused on 4:3 displays I very obviously see lot more to each side than to the top and bottom.

Quick check on wikipedia and an encyclopedia(offline) under human vision and a couple of quick checks that they are reasonable(at a given distance, how many times can I fit the monitor in my FOV. With a 4:3 aspect ratio it's 4 times sideways and ~3.5 upwards, 4 if I stare like a mental case but that's hardly relevant).

 

[EasyRaider]

The distortion you get from NOT siting at the 'focal point' and having 75-120 degree FOV(like most games).

120 degree FOV is a lot! AFAIK most games have a default of 75-90 degrees, with some as low as 60 (typically flight sims).

 

[soylent]

If those 4:3 displays are huge enough to fill your whole horizonal view, then you aren't even going to be able to see the HUD in most games as that would wind up outside your vertical feild of view. Also, how much "processing power" a given aspect ratio requires depends on how game developers chose to utilise that aspect ratio and can go one way or the other depending on that.

Given that it's a regular flat display it's not ever going to fill up more than 180 degrees and horisontal FOV can be slightly larger than this in humans. You're always going to want your HUD reasonably close to the center of view; you can't read things with peripheral vision and you don't want to turn your head 90 degrees just to see critical info.

 

[EasyRaider]

Given that it's a regular flat display it's not ever going to fill up more than 180 degrees and horisontal FOV can be slightly larger than this in humans.

True, but if one stupidly did try to fill ones entire vision, one would find that 4:3 comes much closer to fill vertically than horizontally.

 

[Xmas]

The distortion you get from NOT siting at the 'focal point' and having 75-120 degree FOV(like most games).

But that has nothing to do with the aspect ratio, only how close the game FOV matches the real FOV your monitor covers.

And the distortion you get even if you sit at the 'focal point' when not looking at the exact center of the screen(try it).

If you only move your eyes, there is hardly any distortion. It's simple projective geometry.

Proponents of 16:9 and higher like to cling to the "aspect ratio" of human peripheral vision as one of their main arguments. But as far as I can tell normal human vision is about 180-200 degrees horisontal FOV and 135-160 vertical FOV. So going entirely by peripheral view, wouldn't 4:3 actually be a good fit?

Oh, btw, this is actually a good argument for wide aspect ratios.
tan(160°/2) = 5.671
tan(180°/2) -> +Inf

So an "optimal" monitor covering your whole vision would be 11 times as high as the view distance – and infinitely wide.

 

[soylent]

If you only move your eyes, there is hardly any distortion. It's simple projective geometry.

A projection that gives you a high FOV and no distortion while looking at the center will give you HUGE stretching at the edges of your screen. That is ofcourse unless you use a spherical shell shaped screen surface.

Oh, btw, this is actually a good argument for wide aspect ratios.
tan(160°/2) = 5.671
tan(180°/2) -> +Inf

The horisontal FOV of a human is often >180 degrees at young age, so that's more of an argument for a screen geometry that isn't flat. I bet you the technical challange of using a screen shaped like a piece of the inside wall of a cylinder(even if just approxiametly by breaking the surface down into a bunch of strips) will be cheaper to overcome than the any ~inf:1 aspect ratio .

So an "optimal" monitor covering your whole vision would be 11 times as high as the view distance – and infinitely wide.

Only if it's optimal to cover your whole field of view with a display that costs an infinite amount of materials to build and needs an infinite amount of computational resources to display anything on.

At the distance most people view monitors from they don't come close to filling your entire view and 4:3 does match the proportions of their FOV quite well.

The ultimate proponents of extremely wide formats, the cinemas, cover only a small strip of your view unless you sit in the neck breakingly close. An even then, it tends to not be anywhere near 180 degrees wide in the front row.

The format intended for the absolutely largest FOV is recorded in 4:3 film(imax) and is usually displayed on a dome shaped surface using multiple projectors. It does not make much sense to have all the action occuring in a single "strip" region if your viewers will turn their heads and look at things instead of having all the action neatly in the center of view.

 

[Hyp-X]

A projection that gives you a high FOV and no distortion while looking at the center will give you HUGE stretching at the edges of your screen.

Not if your eye is in the focal point (virtual view point).
The problem is that it works with one eye only - the distance between the two eyes are too big (for normal screens), so you will always see distorsion no matter where you look at, or where you place your head.

The format intended for the absolutely largest FOV is recorded in 4:3 film(imax) and is usually displayed on a dome shaped surface using multiple projectors. It does not make much sense to have all the action occuring in a single "strip" region if your viewers will turn their heads and look at things instead of having all the action neatly in the center of view.

Yes I agree that IMAX is the best example of a wide view angle display.

It also has a solution for the "two eye problem" - make sure each eye receives a different image

 

[Xmas]

A projection that gives you a high FOV and no distortion while looking at the center will give you HUGE stretching at the edges of your screen. That is ofcourse unless you use a spherical shell shaped screen surface.

Yes you get stretching at the screen edges, in the screen plane, but that does not result in distortion because the FOV angle covered stays the same.

The horisontal FOV of a human is often >180 degrees at young age, so that's more of an argument for a screen geometry that isn't flat. I bet you the technical challange of using a screen shaped like a piece of the inside wall of a cylinder(even if just approxiametly by breaking the surface down into a bunch of strips) will be cheaper to overcome than the any ~inf:1 aspect ratio .

Sure cylindrical screens would be nice but they are a pain to render to. Flat widescreen monitors give you some of that immersion for less money and effort.

Only if it's optimal to cover your whole field of view with a display that costs an infinite amount of materials to build and needs an infinite amount of computational resources to display anything on.

That was obviously just reiterating that width is more important than height.

At the distance most people view monitors from they don't come close to filling your entire view and 4:3 does match the proportions of their FOV quite well.

And wider aspect ratios match even better.

The ultimate proponents of extremely wide formats, the cinemas, cover only a small strip of your view unless you sit in the neck breakingly close. An even then, it tends to not be anywhere near 180 degrees wide in the front row.

Of course not. There are optical and architectural reasons for that, and artistic ones as well. Still, widescreen is popular for movies.

The format intended for the absolutely largest FOV is recorded in 4:3 film(imax) and is usually displayed on a dome shaped surface using multiple projectors. It does not make much sense to have all the action occuring in a single "strip" region if your viewers will turn their heads and look at things instead of having all the action neatly in the center of view.

That's a bit costly, unfortunately.

 

[soylent]

Yes you get stretching at the screen edges, in the screen plane, but that does not result in distortion because the FOV angle covered stays the same.

I looked at it a little closer with pen and paper and yes I agree. That should be the case.

I am unable to replicate it though with half-life or quake 3. Setting a high FOV and approaching the screen until you can no longer see any distortion; turning my eyes I can still see a large amount of distortion. Same thing even if I sit with my nose almost touching my screen and distance myself.

It's either due to binocular vision(monitor is not infinitely far away, very far from it actually) or HL/quake 3 isn't using GL_NICEST projection.

Sure cylindrical screens would be nice but they are a pain to render to. Flat widescreen monitors give you some of that immersion for less money and effort.

There's the highly speculative, "what if" discussion with rediculously wide/huge displays vs smaller displays of much more difficult geometry. And there's the more sensible discussion about which traditional display makes more sense in traditional use.

Silly discussion first:

It doesn't have to be exactly cylindrical. There are people who have used a stacks of LCDs displays in cylindrical configuration(all pointing to the viewer in the center) and rendered each one individually to emulate this. Wouldn't a display made up of flat, tall rectangular LCD strips be possible to mass produce?

Could you use many small back projectors on a spherical shell and render each one separately with regular projection? Of course there'd be severe issues with keeping the brightness even and with dying projector lightbulbs needing replacement, but with very high brightness LEDs it might not be insumountable. It certainly makes more sense having a small spherical shell with about an arms radial distance to the center than covering an entire wall with a screen to get an equivalent experience.

Of course, multi display solutions put much more stress on transformation hardware as you'll have to redo it for every display, but there are much fewer pixels rendered than an equal performing rediculously wide screen(as pixels per angle of view won't become much larger at high angles where you have poor vision anyway).


Now with the sillyness over:

At arms length my monitor is about as good as 9:5 at emulating the aspect ratio of my peripheral vision(The HUD is also quite customary to place at top or bottom, further increasing the aspect ratio in effect, so I would still like the have some safety margin). In many games it is not possible to change player FOV, for sake of cheating no doubt, and there wide aspect ratios seem to be cropped vertically more often than 4:3 get cropped horisontally. It would be nice to have some statistics on this(though this is not really a technical argument for either aspect ratio, it would just be the sad reality of doing something different from the norm).

To really get the benefit from very wide screens(such as panavision) that you suggest, you have to be very close. And even then the benefit will be dubvious as halving the distance to the screen you will have to have quadrupel the number of pixels being rendered to get the same 'apparent' resolution at the center of the screen as before. So it isn't obvious that you want to cover your entire FOV with the display.

What you suggest also means that I either have to get a monitor that is much larger than the measily 21 inch diagonal I am using right now, which is extremely expensive(not to mention difficult since I also very much dislike LCDs. Hopefully SED will kill 'em before my aging CRT craps out), or suffer severe eye strain from sitting way too close for hours on end.

That was obviously just reiterating that width is more important than height.

How do you figure? It is a statement of the impracticality of building displays that fill your entire FOV using a single flat screen.

And wider aspect ratios match even better.

Not at arms length from a 21 inch viewable CRT they don't. Wider or larger displays than this with the desired quality very quickly increase in price.

Of course not. There are optical and architectural reasons for that, and artistic ones as well. Still, widescreen is popular for movies.

Some have argued that it's original intent was to make the movie going experience better than watching the same movies on a TV, by making the TV perform much worse.

That's a bit costly, unfortunately.

Yes. But if they expect people to keep paying these rediculous prices for movie tickets to rehashed junk they better have some incentive for doing so.

 

[Blazkowicz]

peripheral view of stuff in the background works both ways. I can see the wall and furnitures at left and right, but I'm also seeing the keyboard, a little bit of wall above the screen, even the beige mid-tower on the ground.
really, it's no different than watching the TV, reading a book or playing the gameboy, your attention focuses on what's on the screen.

regarding putting various HUD elements and crap on the sides : I don't see it as a good idea. ever tried putting the task bar on the left side? a few people like it but it sucks. our vision seems to be best at "scrolling" from top to bottom. just look at a sheet of paper, or a web page, the ratio is quite the opposite of widescreen.
a PC monitor serves an infinite number of purposes. browsing the web in widescreen doesn't appeal to me.

then there's the problem of 30 years of games being 4/3, 4/3 TV programs, anime, and even old movies are 4/3. during all my life I've seen the black letterboxes on top and bottom for movies, I'm not yet prepared to see them on left and right
and I still have room for upgrading my 4/3 screen. I'm on 17" CRT, maybe I'll get a 19" or 21" some day. I'm not often watching 2.35 movies on PC anyway.

 

[Xmas]

regarding putting various HUD elements and crap on the sides : I don't see it as a good idea. ever tried putting the task bar on the left side? a few people like it but it sucks. our vision seems to be best at "scrolling" from top to bottom. just look at a sheet of paper, or a web page, the ratio is quite the opposite of widescreen.
a PC monitor serves an infinite number of purposes. browsing the web in widescreen doesn't appeal to me.

I do have the taskbar on the left side. Well, actually it's in the middle, the second monitor being on the left side. My laptop has a 16:10 screen, and while this is a good format for gaming or viewing DVDs, I like to have all the height I can get for coding and browsing the web. Since the taskbar is not the most important thing on screen, putting it on one side is quite a good thing.
However, on 4:3 and 5:4 screens, I place it at the top. And I'm pretty sure my next monitor will be rotatable. Best of both worlds.

Most games try to put HUD elements in the corners or all around the screen. Usually there's only limited information presented at a reasonable size so the placement doesn't matter much.

then there's the problem of 30 years of games being 4/3, 4/3 TV programs, anime, and even old movies are 4/3. during all my life I've seen the black letterboxes on top and bottom for movies, I'm not yet prepared to see them on left and right
and I still have room for upgrading my 4/3 screen. I'm on 17" CRT, maybe I'll get a 19" or 21" some day. I'm not often watching 2.35 movies on PC anyway.

I use my 16:9 TV almost exclusively for watching DVDs. But in the rare occasion that I'm watching a show in 4:3 mode, that stupid thing doesn't do black borders, it does grey ones left and right. Highly annoying.

I am unable to replicate it though with half-life or quake 3. Setting a high FOV and approaching the screen until you can no longer see any distortion; turning my eyes I can still see a large amount of distortion. Same thing even if I sit with my nose almost touching my screen and distance myself.

It's either due to binocular vision(monitor is not infinitely far away, very far from it actually) or HL/quake 3 isn't using GL_NICEST projection.

It's certainly the former.
The problem with games is that, usually, their FOV setting is unrealistically high for a standard viewing situation, like sitting at arms length in front of a 19" monitor. It's like staring through a huge concave lens. If that wasn't the case, we would only see too small a fraction of the game world through that small window a monitor is. Fortunately, normally our brain is able to cope with it, like it adapts to wearing glasses.

At arms length my monitor is about as good as 9:5 at emulating the aspect ratio of my peripheral vision(The HUD is also quite customary to place at top or bottom, further increasing the aspect ratio in effect, so I would still like the have some safety margin). In many games it is not possible to change player FOV, for sake of cheating no doubt, and there wide aspect ratios seem to be cropped vertically more often than 4:3 get cropped horisontally. It would be nice to have some statistics on this(though this is not really a technical argument for either aspect ratio, it would just be the sad reality of doing something different from the norm).

To really get the benefit from very wide screens(such as panavision) that you suggest, you have to be very close. And even then the benefit will be dubvious as halving the distance to the screen you will have to have quadrupel the number of pixels being rendered to get the same 'apparent' resolution at the center of the screen as before. So it isn't obvious that you want to cover your entire FOV with the display.

What you suggest also means that I either have to get a monitor that is much larger than the measily 21 inch diagonal I am using right now, which is extremely expensive(not to mention difficult since I also very much dislike LCDs. Hopefully SED will kill 'em before my aging CRT craps out), or suffer severe eye strain from sitting way too close for hours on end.

You don't have to be that close or use an exceptionally large monitor. What I'm arguing is that, with "comparable" sizes (well, maybe 19" 4:3 to 19" 16:10) and view distance, widescreen monitors are a better fit for several kinds of games.

How do you figure? It is a statement of the impracticality of building displays that fill your entire FOV using a single flat screen.

I meant my statement.

Not at arms length from a 21 inch viewable CRT they don't.

I think they do.

Some have argued that it's original intent was to make the movie going experience better than watching the same movies on a TV, by making the TV perform much worse.

Considering that movies usually aren't showing in cinemas any more by the time they are on TV, I don't see the point. An ordinary TV is much worse, no matter what aspect ratio.

 

[fallguy]

Simply put, you get more overall game from a game with true WS support. Why not want more? It is simple laziness to me that all devs do not support WS.

 

[kyleb]

With proper widescreen support that is, unlike Far Cry where the view in widescreen is cropped down from the 4:3 view instead of expanded to the sides. Thankfully it isn't hard to work around that with a bit of modding in Far Cry, but some games are just stuck that way.

 

[Colourless]

My opinion, is your base is 4:3. You make sure everything works in 4:3. Then if someone is playing in 5:4, 16:10, or 16:9 you increase the FoV in the larger dimension to compensate.

Though nowdays on the PC it might an idea to base for 5:4 due to the numbers of FPDs out there and just increase the HFoV for each wider aspect. Though, I'm sure people would complain that a CRT gets more visable are than a newly bought FPD.