Aspect ratio

[vexed]

Jorzi, what is your opinion on aspect ratio?
Should the models be adjusted to the correct aspect ratio or should this be left to the 'global' world to handle the aspect ratio, and making things always 4:3 instead of 16:9 or whatever else?
(Yeah, black border to fix the aspect ratio...)

[Jorzi]

Hi
I'm not sure what exactly you mean, but I certainly don't think the models should be deformed to compensate for perspective distortion. Using a 16:9 screen myself, I don't see a problem with the way it looks in version 3.1.2. The only thing that could use some black borders is the exit screen I think.

[vexed]

I'll take it to another thread... and split it from your thread.

[vexed]

OK then.
Back to aspect ratio.
With people playing at resolutions the game was never meant to be played in (it was design in 4:3), we are getting distortion from the original source material.
One way to fix this is introduce black borders around parts of the screen, so it is 4:3 again.
The other way to fix it is to apply a aspect ratio matrix to all the content, which tries to correct the distortion, at a cost of having to rebuild all the models at run time, but, this can lead to the possible loss of detail for said model.

Is it better to cap the resolution to (for example) not go higher than 1920x1080 (which this is 16:9, the distortion isn't that bad, but, it is there.)?
Or, are people OK with having black borders or ...?

[Jorzi]

What about this: If aspect ratio is wider than 16:9, you zoom in the view so it matches the edges, then cut it horizontally. I don't think increasing the resolution should result in wider camera angles.

[turquoisesky]

For me it should always be 4:3.

[cnceo]

All modern games that I know of use 16:9 as default aspect ratio (which probably 99% of the displays out there have) and cut out the middle for the rare occations where people use 4:3 monitors (giving those people less view). However, black borders on the edge for widescreen displays would be (design-wise) horrible. I'm sure people will spam every tourbleshoot channel they can find, if they see black borders for todays standard display resolutions, because they will consider this a bug.

[Olrox]

According to W3Schools, the most common screen resolution since a bit before 2012 is 1366x768, which is (not quite exactly, but for practical sake) 16:9. Analyzing their statistics, we can get a clear picture at the trend: including 1366x768 and 1360x768 resolutions within the 16:9 category, it amounts to 53% of their user's displays. In second place is the 16:10 category, amounting 22% of the users. In third place, comes 5:4 resolution - the once popular 1280x1024 screens are to blame for the 8% this aspect ratio scored. In the trail, gazing upon us from the 20th century, is the 4:3 category, with 6.5% of the screens - but honestly, old computers are mainly to blame. Also, 10.5% of the displays don't fit in the standard resolutions, which might be attributed to multi-screen, tablet or smartphone users.

Most importantly, however, we must note that there is a clear migration from standard aspect ratio to widescreen aspect ratios chiefly in the last decade. The main reasons behind this is probably because people started watching more movies in their computers than before, notebooks became more popular, and people started multi-tasking more frequently. Won't get into the details of why it all makes sense, but we can be certain of precisely one thing:

16:9 is the way to go if we want a standard. Then cut small vertical slices from the sides for 16:10, a bit more for 4:3, and a bit more for 5:4. Might not be the best solution in terms of resource usage, but it is the easiest and will be efficient for most users - and as time goes on, more and more.

Data source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

[Jorzi]

What Olrox said

[vexed]

Look closely.

[themac]

The secret is not to distort the 3D output itself to fit the screen or window but to show more or less of the 3D world dependend on the height and lengh of the screen or window.

[cybersphinx]

Jorzi, what is your opinion on aspect ratio?
Should the models be adjusted to the correct aspect ratio or should this be left to the 'global' world to handle the aspect ratio, and making things always 4:3 instead of 16:9 or whatever else?
(Yeah, black border to fix the aspect ratio...)

The problem is not the aspect ratio. The problem is camera distance. To get less distortion on the sides, you increase the camera distance and reduce the angle.

Ideally, you always show about the same area of the map regardless of aspect ratio and resolution, so that the vertical FOV gets smaller, horizontal FOV larger the wider the aspect ratio. The easy way is a fixed vertical angle, and the wider the aspect ratio, the wider the horizontal view.