Posted July 20, 2011
cjrgreen: I think the art direction has a lot to do with what they can or can't give you. They can't give you pixels that don't exist, and they won't give you a frame that doesn't suit their artistic vision.
Going from 16:9 to 4:3 does not give you an extra 1/3 vertical FOV unless the art was done in such a way that the game can render it and it still looks good enough that the art department will stand behind it.
A simple solution would be to unlock the vertical fov as a free setting in a config file so that stuff doesn't get cropped in 4:3 (ok, it does get distorted, slightly). From a technical standpoint this is trivial and has nothing to do with the aspect ratio or the art, or the gui ;) The current solution is exactly what everyone feared, they just fixed the AR but not the vertical fov - its the easy way out of a problem that had an even easier way out. Namely, to allow us to set the fov ourselves. Going from 16:9 to 4:3 does not give you an extra 1/3 vertical FOV unless the art was done in such a way that the game can render it and it still looks good enough that the art department will stand behind it.
By the way, personally i think the fov is fine in 4:3 aspect
Post edited July 20, 2011 by eRe4s3r