[HN Gopher] Widescreen Gaming in the 90s ___________________________________________________________________ Widescreen Gaming in the 90s Author : luu Score : 45 points Date : 2021-06-18 07:54 UTC (15 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.mistys-internet.website) (TXT) w3m dump (www.mistys-internet.website) | golergka wrote: | > This shows you a lot more of the game world than you'd get in | the standard 4:3 mode, but you can see that all of the 2D | elements in the scene are displayed with the wrong aspect ratio. | This lack of aspect ratio correction for 2D elements is common to | most widescreen games of that era. | | In my experience, building game UX for non-fixed aspect ratio | requires a different and much more complicated architecture from | the very beginning, so I would be quite surprised if any game | developers of console titles in the 90s managed to do it. Even | with modern game engines and layout tools proper support is still | a headache. | | And BTW, game UX is pretty different from the usual business app | UX: you have a LOT of images that take up tons of texture budget | (which you can save by slicing it up in creative ways) and you | can't just stretch them: you have to anchor things up in pretty | complicated ways. And once you add localisation, support for far- | eastern languages and cultures (which have a different design | language) and RTL, things get really interesting. | lbebber wrote: | Related--with great timing, as it was just released--, Super | Mario World Widescreen | https://twitter.com/HackerVilela/status/1405972177225191427 | crazygringo wrote: | Seriously talk about timing, from an hour ago! | | EDIT: Moving rest of my comment to the new dedicated thread for | Super Mario World Widescreen: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27554765 | brundolf wrote: | > Most people got their first taste of widescreen gaming with the | Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3 | | To put on my pedantic hat for a minute: the Wii was only ever | 480p and never truly output in widescreen | | _However_ , there was one exception: Super Smash Bros Brawl had | a "widescreen" mode where it could widen the virtual camera such | that if you stretched the 640x480 picture across a wide-screen | TV, it would look correct | | Edit: I should have read the article! Brawl did exactly what's | described here as happening on older consoles | salamandersauce wrote: | Huh? Tons of Wii games supported 16x9. That was one of the big | differences between Twilight Princess on Wii vs. GCN. 16x9 | support. | | Loads of original Xbox games supported 16x9 too. Stuff like HL2 | and Doom 3. | brundolf wrote: | My main point was that the Wii, unlike the 360 and PS3, | didn't actually output a 16:9 resolution, it was only able to | use the trick described in the article, so I wouldn't include | it under "most people's first taste" | | Didn't realize more games used the same trick, though | anw wrote: | John Carmack coding Quake on a 100 pound 1080p CRT in 1995[0] is | a great image that this article reminded me of. | | I seem to remember monitors being 800x600 around that time, and a | few years later did we even see 1024x768 become the norm. | | It's mind blowing to imagine what 1080 would be like back in the | day. | | [0] | https://web.archive.org/web/20110927044427/https://geek.com/... | duxup wrote: | When I built my first computer I remember a guy helping me along | told me "Your monitor IS your computer. Don't skimp on that." | | After that I always had a nice monitor and it really was true. No | matter how slow my computer was / is ... having a big screen to | use it on makes it a lot easier to tolerate. | | I always found it funny how some games were able to handle wide | screen with no issues, others much more difficult. | anw wrote: | This is an important point, and an oft-quoted mantra I've seen | from older devs. | | Your computer will change, and has little to know difference on | your health. | | Your monitor, keyboard, mouse (and chair/desk can also be | included) are your long term tools that you use to interact | with your computer. They can be a benefit or detriment to your | health (eye strain, RSI, back pain). If you have to work with | your computer for your job, and do so for many years, it's | worth it to purchase tools that have long term benefits. | hyakosm wrote: | > Since there isn't a widescreen resolution in the SDTV standards | | En Europe we had WSS (Widescreen signaling), a digital signal | embedded in line 23 describing the aspect ratio: full 16/9, full | 4/3, letterbox 16/9, etc. It was very useful in late 2000s for | owners of 16/9 CRT TVs. | | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widescreen_signaling) | spullara wrote: | A friend of mine had one of these in the late 90s: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW | trzy wrote: | The Sega Model 3 (ca. 1996-1998) arcade emulator I co-wrote | supports arbitrarily wide resolutions and expands the field of | view of the 3D content to fit the screen width. It works | beautifully despite the games performing culling at the original | aspect ratio. If you choose a really extreme aspect you might | catch objects being culled or ceasing to animate. | | Model 3 also had a couple of 2D tile map layers which are more | difficult to handle consistently. | | You can see an example here (a few seconds in, there is a scene | with a foreground layer that isn't stretched, revealing the | expanded viewport behind it): https://youtu.be/fGQodD4I600 | | In the intro sequence, a driver hops out of a burning car and | then freezes at the edge of the screen. This normally would have | been outside of the visible viewport. Otherwise, everything looks | as expected. | bityard wrote: | In the linked forum thread, someone asked whether there were even | widescreen standard-def CRTs around at the time. | | The answer is yes, but they were fairly uncommon. Most of these | games were produced around the same time that DVDs were new to | the scene. One of the "killer features" of DVDs was widescreen | content and much-better-than-VHS picture quality, finally | allowing the average person to get something very close to the | movie theater experience in their own home. If they had a large | high-end widescreen TV, that is... | | The "widescreen" TVs at the time were mostly projection TVs | (which did use a CRT tube, but were not usually referred to as | CRT TVs) and plasma TVs. Plasma displays were somewhat popular | for a fairly short period between the dominance of CRT and LCD | TVs. But they were fairly expensive, so the vast majority of | households simply went directly from 4:3 CRTs to widescreen LCDs | once the prices on the latter dropped dramatically. | | The companies releasing DVD movies typically either sold a | particular movie in separate "standard" or "widescreen" editions, | or bundled them both into the same box/disc because it was clear | to _them_ that widescreen in the home was the future. And it was | easy: pretty much every film was widescreen already. However, | video game makers were targeting the existing market which was | mainly 4:3 CRT TVs and designing a game for both aspect ratios | was usually not trivial. Hence why there were not many games that | supported it. It was just a nice bonus for trade show booths and | rich kids. | mywittyname wrote: | I don't think many game devs thought that their creations would | live on. Most probably figured their games would be off store | shelves in a year or two and completely irrelevant in three to | four. So it makes sense they would not have planned for the | future. | | I'm sure no one, but a few prescient individuals, ever | considered retro gaming/emulation would be a huge thing in 30 | years. Even I can't believe it when I see seven year olds | wanting to play SNES games. | | The film industry had been around long enough by the 90s to | have realized that there will be a market for classic movies | and that it behooved the industry to future-proof when | possible, especially for blockbuster films. | kstrauser wrote: | We had a Sony Wega TV CRT that had a special "16:9 Enhanced" | anamorphic mode that basically narrowed the vertical scan area | of the electron gun while keeping the same number of lines. For | a while you could find specially mastered DVDs that digitized | the source material at a higher than normal vertical | resolution. If you played them on a normal TV, everything would | appear vertically stretched. If you played them on the Wega (or | other similar TVs? _Were_ there others?), then the picture | would be scaled down correctly and would appear super sharp and | bright. | | [0] https://www.manualslib.com/manual/321453/Sony-Wega- | Klv-15sr1... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-18 23:01 UTC)