hey there, recently i ran a couple of tests with gamestudio and widescreen.

i found out that gamestudio just resizes the 3d world without constraining correct proportions in fullscreen if you leave all camera settings at standard.

wich was surprising to me. i thought whenever i set a custom resolution with another aspect ratio than the standard 4/3 i get to see more of the 3d scene!

but this is not true, in window mode you see at the rendered scene like through a 16/10 window seeing less of a scene than you would see through a 3/4 window.

now the problem came when i switched to fullscreen during my test, in fullscreen if you use anything else than a 4/3 resolution the scene gets streched wich looks ugly.

to prove it here are the results of the tests, i just rendered the same scene 3 times with a standard camera arc of 60 in fullscreen.

here is the 1024x768 3/4 resolution

as you can see everything looks like it should.

now here is the 1280x800 resolution of the same scene and
the 1680x1050 both of them beeing 16/10 widescreen resolutions.


if you compare this last two with the original 1024 shot, you can see that the square in the middle is streched.
to prove that it just streches the 3d world i took the 1024 shot and resized it in my painting program without taking care of the properties,
this is what came out.

now i tried to set the view's aspect when i tested in fullscreen and found out that, if i set the aspect to 1.333 wich is 4/3 while in a 16/10 fullscreen resolution everything looks like it should.

to prove again
a fullscreen screenshot in 1024x768 with aspect of 1

and here comes
the screenshot of 1280x800 with camera.aspect = 1.333

i would say they look almost the same. it only appears that in widescreen you are closer to the scene and see less. you do see the same space horizontal but vertical you do see less! so this is probably the way right now to achieve proper proportions widescreen rendering in A7 while in fullscreen.

however i dont know if its a bug that i have to set the aspect in fullscreen to produce a normal not streched looking screne.

now if i would like to show the user of a widescreen more and not less of an actual scene what could be done?
remember that looking through the window thing i talked about earlier? i could imagine i set the camera more far away - when in fullscreen widescreen.
this would probably give me more view of the scene but isnt this a problem because the camera is actually more far away ?

i know if you will never see the same scene through both windows, if you see more vertical and want to see more horizontal too you have to move your window back thus getting away more from the ground. but is this really the right way?
i remember from other games i had the same player size but could look more to the left and right only.

or is the way to go setting a higher .arc value? but how do i find out wich on does the perfect job?

i hope anyone is interested in this topic, with widescreen displays becoming
more common these days, this area must not be overlooked!


greetings

wouldn't you just need to adjust the cameras FOV on widescreen resolutions?
Is the FOV even adjustable in 3dgs?

hm, i dont think there is such an option. you can change the arc wich is probably what you mean.

i tested a bit further with the following setup (camera 1000 quants directly above the player entity) and found out the following:

1) in windowed mode: to achieve the same vertical view in 1280x800 like it is in 1024x768 i have to set the camera to 1197 quants above the players head. the camera.arc value is 60 and camera.aspect is unchanged! i just set the camera higher and i have a wider view horizontal but the same distance vertical !

2) in fullscreen: i have to change the camera.aspect to 1.2 ! and set the camera to 1197 quants to achieve the same result i have with 1024x768, 1000quants above the player with camera.aspect = 1 !

i don't know yet why this setup works, but you can clearly see that you can see more of the scene to the left and right but the same up and down. i measured screenshots to find out the correct distance and .aspect values...

here is the original screenshot 1024x760, camera.arc = 60, camera.aspect = 1, camera.z = 1000, fullscreen
http://www.ackbytes.com/upload/1024a1.jpg

and here is the screenshot of the same scene in 1280x800, camera.arc = 60, camera.aspect = 1.2, camera.z = 1197, fullscreen
http://www.ackbytes.com/upload/1280a1_2.jpg


i really have NO IDEA why you have to set the aspect to 1.2 in fullscreen but not in window mode. however i understand why you have to pull the camera 197 quants up, thats just to get more view of the same scene.
maybe its an engine bug? can anyone test this please?

That is exactly what I ask for, I think the build-in video modes for traditional CRT monitor are out-date, as more and more LCD selling are wide screen, I think Conitec should consider to add more screen mode or other solution for correct aspect ratio in wide screen mode.

I use this to get aspect and arc working together.

CODE:
if (key_home == 1)
{
camera_arc += 0.1;
camera_aspect-= 0.001;
//
aCamera.arc = camera_arc;
aCamera.aspect = camera_aspect;
aCamera.arc = 1.5 * tan(aCamera.aspect);
if (camera_arc >= 130){ camera_arc = 130;}
if (camera_aspect <= 1){ camera_aspect = 1;}
//
}
//
if (key_end == 1)
{
camera_arc -= 0.1;
//OK now
camera_aspect+= 0.001;
//
aCamera.arc = camera_arc;
aCamera.aspect = camera_aspect;
aCamera.arc = 1.5 * tan(aCamera.aspect);
if (camera_arc <= 30){ camera_arc = 30;}
if (camera_aspect >= 2.0){ camera_aspect = 2.0;}
//
}

From the last post is this thread
Code:

---

  If you have a 16:10 display use the following line:
camera.aspect = (16/10) / (4/3);

This should work for any ratio like if modified like:
camera.aspect = (16/9) / (4/3); // For a 16:9 ratio
camera.aspect = (5/4) / (4/3); // For a 5/4 ratio

---

post thread

If I renember whell is out there other sample more better
but I don't know where are I can try continue to search in
the forum, but probably this sample are enought

i can not confirm that this does work. as i tried that too, i set the aspect to (16/10), started the engine with fullscreen 1280x800, took a screenshot and everything is streched on the screenshot. try setting the aspect to 1.2 in 1280x800 and take a screenshot and be surprised...
try it for yourself if you dont believe me.

as far as i understand it doesnt matter what you see on the screen, you have to produce correct output on the gfx card. you could see a totally distorted picture on your monitor, while the engine still makes nothing wrong. just check that with a screenshot.

look again.

(16/10) / (4/3)
=
1.6 / 1.3333...
=
1.2.

Felixsq was right, but i can understand the confusion.

julz

jcl confirmed that the engine 'assumes' 3/4 ratio, but only in fullscreen, because it makes no sense in windowed mode.

so whenever you enter a custom resolution you have to set the view.aspect not to the aspect ratio itself but with the above formula thats good to know.

so noe to get widescreen working you have to follow the steps:

-get current windows res.
-find out wich aspect that is.. (16/10, 4/3, 16/9...)
-set a widescreen resolution
-set the the view.aspect to the above formula but only if you are running fullscreen engine