Aspect ratios for gaming

[soylent]

I'm a long standing opponent of 16:9 and more eccentric formats such as panavision(24:10).

I have yet to see what the big deal is with wide-screen. I'd like to see if I can't strike up some sensible discussion on the merits of the different aspect ratios in real time graphics and games.

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?

I'm not watching any part of the screen far out in my peripheral vision so why would this even matter? I want to have as much of my screen in the part of my view that has high visual accuity, and what would the shape of this region be? In my experience visual accuity seems to not have any large preference for the horisontal axis.

The slightly trickier arguments are ones of efficiency and gameplay. Many games simply do not use the vertical dimension very much and therefor it might be wasteful to spend a lot of pixels depicting such(but on the other hand those pixels won't cost as much performance wise if they aren't used in an interesting way! They'll most likely be sky/ceiling or ground which is cheap to render).

In a game that doesn't use the vertical dimension much it will certainly be more interesting to have a large horisontal FOV because things you need to be aware of tend to approach in from the sides and not from top or bottom of the screen. However this is NOT cheap since it's likely to be more densely populated with things that take up significantly more time rendering than ground or sky.

It might also be interesting to look at the distortion apparent in games when a large FOV is used. In my experience it looks to be dependent on something like angle squared(or worse) from the center of view which if true would seem to be a major annoyance with wide screens when gameplay truely requires a large vertical FOV. Because you are now forced to use a VERY wide horisontal FOV to not make height and width disproportionate to each other, resulting in extreme distortion.

Thoughts?

 

[Brent]

Let me put it this way, when I sit here in front of my 19" 4:3 CRT playing a game you know what I see in my peripheral vision? My wall behind my monitor, it is a very ugly beige kind of color and not very appealing.

When I sit in front of my 2405FPW however you know what I see in my peripheral vision? My 2405FPW displaying my games, not an ugly wall. Works even better on larger widescreen displays like 30". It gives you a feeling like you are surrounded by your game.

Now I want a display that surrounds me 360 degrees so I actually have to turn my head left and right and I can look behind me, literally

 

[see colon]

for most FPS and RTs type games i find widecreen displays to be pretty wastefull because there is usualy a strip along the top and/or bottom of the screen used for HUD/menu. this effectivly gives you wider aspect ratio for the actual game on a 4:3 monitor. on a widecreen display, that same HUD/menu starts taking up some precious screen-estate further constricting the vertical view. beyond that, lack of support from gav developers on a whole for widescreen displays is pretty disapointing at this point in time.

still... i wouldn't pass up a nice widescreen display if one should arrive on my doorstep.

 

[soylent]

Let me put it this way, when I sit here in front of my 19" 4:3 CRT playing a game you know what I see in my peripheral vision? My wall behind my monitor, it is a very ugly beige kind of color and not very appealing.

When I sit in front of my 2405FPW however you know what I see in my peripheral vision? My 2405FPW displaying my games, not an ugly wall. Works even better on larger widescreen displays like 30". It gives you a feeling like you are surrounded by your game.

Unless you're sitting with your nose touching your screen or suffering from serious eye disorders you will STILL be seeing an ugly wall in your peripheral vision. And you have peripheral vision above and below the monitor, not just sideways. What info about the peripheral vision I can find suggests that 4:3 is pretty close to optimal at filling your peripheral view with the least amount of pixels given your situation above(burrying your face into the monitor, nose almost touching).

 

[Fodder]

From my brief dabbling with widescreen gaming it was simply an annoyance. Even once I found a game that painlessly let me play in widescreen without stretching the image or just cutting off the top and bottom of my view, it seemed like there was just too much screen there. A 17" 4:3 display at the distance I sit from the screen is just about perfect in terms of content versus my ability to pay attention to it all.

 

[Xmas]

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?

Horizontal peripheral vision is more important for human visual perception.

I'm not watching any part of the screen far out in my peripheral vision so why would this even matter?

Immersion.

It might also be interesting to look at the distortion apparent in games when a large FOV is used. In my experience it looks to be dependent on something like angle squared(or worse) from the center of view which if true would seem to be a major annoyance with wide screens when gameplay truely requires a large vertical FOV. Because you are now forced to use a VERY wide horisontal FOV to not make height and width disproportionate to each other, resulting in extreme distortion.

There is (almost) no distortion if your head is positioned in line with the game FOV. The FOV you use in-game should be exactly the same as the FOV your monitor is covering.

Which is a strong argument for just bigger monitors really, as seeing standard game FOVs without distortion often would require you to sit 20cm or less in front of the screen.

 

[MuFu]

Horizontal peripheral vision is more important for human visual perception.

Yes, and I would imagine that in most games the majority of activity takes place along the horizontal axis.

 

[PatrickL]

And if you play a game like wow, you will have a huge gui covering your screen. With widescreen you can push your ctraid windows far on the sides so it is less disturbing

 

[soylent]

Horizontal peripheral vision is more important for human visual perception.

edit:

Yes, and I would imagine that in most games the majority of activity takes place along the horizontal axis.

With a 4:3 monitor I would most likely get the same in-game horisontal FOV and higher vertical FOV. Few games (AFAIK) use much higher horisontal FOV on wide-screens because of distortion.

There is (almost) no distortion if your head is positioned in line with the game FOV. The FOV you use in-game should be exactly the same as the FOV your monitor is covering.

This assumes we are staring very close to the center of the screen. There is a very pronounced distortion at a mere 120 degrees as soon as you don't. In many games there is no particular preference for the center of the screen and even in an FPS where you tend to be staring down your crosshair you will "scan" the screen with the high visual accuity center of vision often.

Which is a strong argument for just bigger monitors really, as seeing standard game FOVs without distortion often would require you to sit 20cm or less in front of the screen.

I would prefer to see it as a good argument for "bent" screens(cylindrical should be enough for wide-screen fanatics), technical challenges aside. Of course, this would be a huge design challenge(Polygons wouldn't even be rasterized as straight edged polygons in screen space using a cylinder shaped screen surface, but I'm pretty sure they would be using a spherical shell but then can no longer represent pixels as a simple matrix of pixel data. How would you physically and logically in memory adress pixels on such a weird screen?). But should support low distortion no matter which direction you look as long as your head is in the "focal point of the screen normals".

 

[soylent]

And if you play a game like wow, you will have a huge gui covering your screen. With widescreen you can push your ctraid windows far on the sides so it is less disturbing

I did play wow. The gui is highly customizable and it would be very easy to rearrange gui elements neatly agains the sides to give you nearly whatever aspect ratio you want. Even given a 'taller-than-wide' screen for viewing text documents(some 4:3 LCDs support rotating the screen 90 degrees and some weird screens have an aspect ratio similar to regular A4 paper) you could arrange most HUD elements along top and bottom to give you a comfortable aspect ratio.

Many other games in contrast tend to lower vertical FOV by having a gui at top and bottom. Which I imagine would be very distracting using an already wide aspect ratio.

 

[PatrickL]

You can rearrange as you want but when you raid with 40 people it takes a lot space whatever you try.

 

[EasyRaider]

Unless you're sitting with your nose touching your screen or suffering from serious eye disorders you will STILL be seeing an ugly wall in your peripheral vision. And you have peripheral vision above and below the monitor, not just sideways. What info about the peripheral vision I can find suggests that 4:3 is pretty close to optimal at filling your peripheral view with the least amount of pixels given your situation above(burrying your face into the monitor, nose almost touching).

Actually, 4:3 isn't a good fit in this case, too narrow. (Try it yourself!) But you couldn't really play, so it hardly matters.

IMO 16:10 is the sweet spot for first person/chase cam games with a large display, giving around 43 degrees horizontal FOV. Going smaller it's not so clear-cut, but 16:10 is still fine. Going larger you quickly get diminishing returns with a flat display.

 

[Xmas]

With a 4:3 monitor I would most likely get the same in-game horisontal FOV and higher vertical FOV. Few games (AFAIK) use much higher horisontal FOV on wide-screens because of distortion.


This assumes we are staring very close to the center of the screen. There is a very pronounced distortion at a mere 120 degrees as soon as you don't. In many games there is no particular preference for the center of the screen and even in an FPS where you tend to be staring down your crosshair you will "scan" the screen with the high visual accuity center of vision often.

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.

 

[Brent]

I think you are trying to quantify by some form of science or mathematics the benefits to widescreen gaming. I don't think you can however. I think the benefits are more subjective. After playing games on my 2405FPW when I sit in front of a 4:3 monitor and play games I feel limited; it feels less immersive.

The closest thing to a scientific advantage you are going to find is the increased realestate giving way to being able to better manage things like HUDs or menus on screen. For example in games like EQ2 or WoW, being able to have your menus on the sides and have more of the game environment in front of you instead of menus cluttering up your view.

 

[AlNom]

eyes are side by side... widescreen just fits better with that imo.

 

[Geo]

Love my 2405fpw. I think the peripheral vision argument has some merit. Human vision is wider side to side than it is top to bottom. In other words, it's naturally wide-screen.

I think the nature of LCD's plays a roll as well tho. Movies have been widescreen for decades. It's only in the last several years I had the opportunity to really see how ugly pan 'n scan is. And since LCD's are always going to look better at their "native" resolution, then a multi-use monitor (i.e. video and gaming) makes sense being ws as well.

 

[see colon]

eyes are side by side... widescreen just fits better with that imo.

this is true, but few games (in the grand sceme of things) take advantage of a wide aspect ratio properly. 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). so, to get any real benefit from a widescreen display in most cases, you have to match the vertical size of a 4:3 monitor, so you get extra screen on the sides. this becomes not so much an argument for widecreen displays as it does for larger displays because the same argument could be made for 4:3 monitors... match the width of a widescreen display and you get some extra screen on the top and bottom.

the real problem isn't with the aspect ratio of your display, anyway. we're talking about gaming here, so until developers start taking proper advantage of widescreen displays the traditional 4:3 will be a better choice IMHO.

 

[Geo]

Might be an interesting option if they gave you the option of putting the status displays off in those sidebars. . .

 

[kyleb]

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.

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.

 

[thekey]

A 4:3 ratio will always be superior to a 16:9, and will always require more processing power. My opinion is make huge 4:3s.