I was looking at a postcard I got recently from some cousins of mine living in Sweden. The postcard is about 16:9 ratio. It made me think about how we percieve things. Sometimes when I watch a movie, I question myself, "In what axis would I like to see more of this picture?" I always answer myself, "Horizontal." Now that a lot of movies are in widescreen format, do you think it would be a good idea to make games in widescreen format? Even if the only computers out there with 16:9 screens are probably PowerBooks, I think that letterboxes would not be that bad for certain games. For strategy games or role-playing games, this might not be the best idea. But what do you think about adventure games or first-person shooters? I do not think that in these genres there is that much that needs to be seen in the parts that would be letterboxed. Letterboxing a game would also give the game fewer pixels to render, increasing the quality of the graphics. I have never played a game in widescreen format, so I do not know if this would be effective or not. What do you think?

I always thought it would be cool to have a widescreen fps, especially considering you could give the player a little more periphiral vision than they would normally get. A lot of games have widescreen cut scenes, but most, if not all, games do not have widescreen gameplay. I think it would be interesting.

I would try it but I wouldn''t know how to implement it..

I wouldn''t mind a widescreen FPS, but I think that you should put all the HUD elements (besides crosshair) in the part letterboxed off. Things like ammo count, score, health, armor, chat, etc would be more visible on a black background, and as somebody said it would allow for periphiral vision. It would be interesting to have the left & right edges of the screen somewhat blurred (maybe drawn at 1/3 size and then stretched out) to make it harder to identify friend or foe from the edge of your vision for ex. It would definitely be interesting.

Wouldn''t you need a wide screen monitor for this too? You''re not increasing your viewport, you''re decreasing it with a normal monitor... or am I missing something?

Hi!

There are many PlayStation games where you play in 4:3 screen, but it becomes 16:9 when you don''t control the action (dialogs, entering through door, etc...).

Also, there are games that let you choose 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio (for those 16:9 televisions).

...but I think a game made entirely 16:9 would be very very interesting. Also, B/W games could look very good.

theNestruo

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Ok

Letterboxing would decrease the overall resolution of the image, but it would still be widescreen and give you a wider side view, plus it would probably look pretty cool.

I think that would be interesting putting all of the HUD data in the letterbox. But I am not talking about a console game. I am talking about a computer game. I also think that it would increase the players peripheral vision, giving him or her a better field of view. I think that this would work best in adventure games, and maybe RPGs, just having all of those stats and maps taking up all of the letterboxes.

But the size of the monitor doesn''t change, so how does your view increase? And games have put the info on the bottom of the screen like that a long time ago (look at all those 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation FPS).

The field of view increases. Think of it as a mild distortion effect. I''d go on, but I''m sure someone else can explain it better than I would.