[MP-Ryan]

bear with me if this was covered before, but I ran a search and couldn't find anything more recent than when I last had FSO installed.  Does widescreen (16:10 / 16:9) work in-mission, or are there still HUD alignment issues?  I realize that menus will always be stretched because the interface art is 1024x768.

[The E]

Yes, the ingame HUD is still stretched. However, Swifty's HUD rebuild fixes that issue.

[Kolgena]

While we're on the topic,

Any estimates on when the HUD fixes will hit trunk?

[Parias]

Aside from a degree of weirdness with slightly noticeable accented underscores appearing next to or beneath each character in the various text boxes in the game (which I was able to start ignoring pretty quickly), widescreen in the game is indeed perfectly playable. I've had no real issues playing at 1920x1200.

[MP-Ryan]

Is anyone actually tackling the interface art (especially of the in-mission HUD itself) to eventually have full widescreen support?  I inquire merely because most monitors these days are widescreen.

[Fury]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69858.0

[MP-Ryan]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69858.0

Thanks Fury.

[BlackDove]

Yeah, thanks for that one Fury.

I have a related question though.

What about the actual rendering in widescreen? So far, it seems to me that the game stretches the FOV in order to incorporate the edges. Maybe I'm mistaken, but here's an example.

When centered (when in the FOV of the 1024), everything's a-ok, but when objects are to the side of the screen, they end up stretching.

Maybe that's how it's supposed to be? Looks strange to me.

I'd assume any changes in how everything is rendered would be hard work (if that's tied to this anyway, I have no idea), but I just wanted to ask if there's any way to remove the stretching on the sides.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[sigtau]

Yeah, thanks for that one Fury.

I have a related question though.

What about the actual rendering in widescreen? So far, it seems to me that the game stretches the FOV in order to incorporate the edges. Maybe I'm mistaken, but here's an example.

When centered (when in the FOV of the 1024), everything's a-ok, but when objects are to the side of the screen, they end up stretching.

Maybe that's how it's supposed to be? Looks strange to me.

I'd assume any changes in how everything is rendered would be hard work (if that's tied to this anyway, I have no idea), but I just wanted to ask if there's any way to remove the stretching on the sides.

That's called "depth," every game engine does that.  Some engines such as Source allow you to change the FOV, but I don't really think it's truly necessary.

[chief1983]

I actually would recommend changing the default FOV, especially for a widescreen.  The stock one leaves you a large FOV, which makes things tend to feel a bit small.  Decreasing your FOV limits your view of course but also enhances the apparent scale, and prevents the stretching near the edge of the screen.  Default is .75, I'd go down to .6 for 4:3 and .5 for widescreen, at least.  .4 is even playable for many.

[sigtau]

If that's the case, then I need to be less of an elitist asshole in my posts we should have some kind of aspect ratio detecting code for 4:3, 16:9, and 16:10 (and the default FOV for any other aspect ratio).

[BlackDove]

I actually would recommend changing the default FOV, especially for a widescreen.  The stock one leaves you a large FOV, which makes things tend to feel a bit small.  Decreasing your FOV limits your view of course but also enhances the apparent scale, and prevents the stretching near the edge of the screen.  Default is .75, I'd go down to .6 for 4:3 and .5 for widescreen, at least.  .4 is even playable for many.

Alright, that's something.

How does one go about doing that though?

[sigtau]

If the FS rendering engine is even slightly sane (HAH) then it'd be a property set on the camera.  However, it may be an engine-wide setting.

[General Battuta]

I actually would recommend changing the default FOV, especially for a widescreen.  The stock one leaves you a large FOV, which makes things tend to feel a bit small.  Decreasing your FOV limits your view of course but also enhances the apparent scale, and prevents the stretching near the edge of the screen.  Default is .75, I'd go down to .6 for 4:3 and .5 for widescreen, at least.  .4 is even playable for many.

Alright, that's something.

How does one go about doing that though?

FOV can be set via a launcher command line flag or via SEXP (under 'cutscenes').

[BlackDove]

Ah thanks. Yeah that seems to fix the skybox stretching, just as the fov command explanation mentions.

[Kolgena]

.5 for 16:9? Really?

I find that situational awareness drops off too much (and the lock reticle too hard to keep on screen) much below .65. If you had TrackIR, then .4 would look great, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend going lower than .5.

[chief1983]

In multi, that may be true.  But if you're going for immersive single player, the sense of scale you get from .5 is great.  .65 may not be low enough to cure the stretching at the screen edges that is distracting for some users.  But you just have to experiment and see what you like I guess.

[BlackDove]

Yeah I tried a bunch of settings today, .55 to .60 was sort of where I thought the sweet spot may be. At .5 there's no real visible stretching, but everything is so much more enlarged (which isn't a bad thing most of the time actually). At 55 to 60, you get some stretching, but it's definitely lower than at 75.

Either way, it's good to have the ability to manipulate it at will.

I thought I was going to have to break out the hex editor there for a minute.

[chief1983]

Yeah it's definitely a tradeoff between awareness and scale I think.  I like everything to feel big, on a 24" widescreen it's really huge.  And in FotG, the fighters are pretty small, so you get the bonus of having a bigger target to aim at, which is really helpful.  .75 with FotG would be really hard to play with I think.  .5 really makes you need the radar though.

[BlackDove]

Yeah, on my 24" things are huge as well, and especially with the .12 MVP's, the explosions are gigantic, which while overdone and not "realistic", does serve to punctuate the mood and overall theme that "yes, it's about destroying **** in space".

Only problem I'm struggling with is that the skybox has to be actually optimized for the gigantification of the changed FOV (otherwise it looks somewhat off).