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Topic on Talk:Prey (2017)

This is a permanent link to a single version of this post. This version is from 12:33, 24 August 2020. You can see the differences from the previous version, or view other versions on the post history page.

I'm... not sure what purpose this thread serves as the article has stated that the game is Vert- since 29 May 2018...


On another note, please be aware however that you should not test and compare a 4:3 resolution against 16:9 any longer since 4:3 haven't been the reference aspect ratio used in over a decade now. What you need to do to actually test it accurately is test 16:9 to 21:9 and possibly even 32:9.

This is also because games can handle changes in the horizontal dimension differently from changes in the vertical dimension. 4:3 to 16:9 generally introduces too many variables for a game that was otherwise designed and developed around the 16:9 aspect ratio.

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For a prime example of community misunderstanding, the original version of BioShock can be used as an example. PC gamers at the time was really angry at the developers that 16:9 users got what they saw as a worse experience to 4:3 users as the 16:9 users saw the game as being Vert- when compared to 4:3.

But what the community wasn't aware of was that the game was *designed* around a 16:9 aspect ratio. And when the developers needed to support the 4:3 aspect ratio (an aspect ratio that is typically "narrower" than 16:9), they had three options available to them: either implement 4:3 support as letterboxed view, or as Hor- with less of the game world visible on the sides, or as Vert+ with *more* of the game world visible on the top and bottom.

And the developers went with the Vert+} option -- thereby supporting 4:3 users in the best possible way they could. But as history has shown us the PC gaming community that used 16:9 monitors did not understand that, and only saw that they "lost" parts of the top and bottom on their monitors. And so they labeled the game as Vert- when it really wasn't as the 16:9 aspect ratio was *the* reference aspect ratio the game was designed and built around.

It's like we would view 16:9 screens today from the perspective of 21:9. Obviously a 16:9 view would be seen as Hor- when compared *from* the perspective of 21:9, but this does not mean that the game is Hor-. Similarly, we can't judge games developed today (that all basically target a 16:9 aspect ratio as the reference view) from the perspective of 4:3 resolutions either.

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PCGamingWiki also does not currently provide necessary separation between tracking changes on the vertical axis from that of the horizontal axis, as well as doesn't provide a way to state what the reference aspect ratio that the game was developed for is. In general, however, older games developed around or before 2007 or so (somewhere during the transition to HDTVs basically) typically target a 4:3 aspect ratio as the reference view, while later games typically targets the 16:9 aspect ratio.

And so changes in both the vertical and horizontal dimension needs to account for that change as well.

Although as almost nobody uses 4:3 nowadays (less than 0.5% according to Steam) we can sorta get past not providing the complicated parameters that it would otherwise entail.

And therefor users should compare 16:9 in modern games to 21:9 and 32:9 when stating whether a game is Hor+ or Vert-, and never 4:3.