Found a widescreen FOV workaround!

[Princess_Frosty]

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE POST BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING - this is so you understand what you're doing, thanks.

Goto the .../builds/release/ folder

Open up the file called "startup.ini" in notepad

Add a new line at the top by hitting return and add the command FOV xx where xx is equal to the FOV you want to use. once you're done your file should look something like this:

fov 120
[Filesystem]
FilePath=..\..\Content\System
FilePath=..\..\Content
BakedFilePath=..\..\ContentBaked\PC\System
BakedFilePath=..\..\ContentBaked\PC\
ScriptPath=.\
BakedScriptPath=BakedScripts\PC
CensoredFilePath=..\..\ContentCensored\System
CensoredFilePath=..\..\ContentCensored\

It's important the command goes before the [FileSystem] tag, also note that I picked 120 for experimental purposes and you will need to change the FOV to whatever you think is best, I will spend time soon working out what it should be set to for 16:10 monitors.

Now save that file and you can load Bioshock with that FOV

I am not exactly sure what the default FOV is but it's probably 85 or 90, so if you want to return back to another FOV you will have to change the file again and re-load

This allows you to change the horizontal FOV but NOT the vertical which is ideally what we'd need to change to fix this easily.

So what we have to do instead is change the resolution in game to something that has a 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratio (this is for non widescreen CRT or LCD respectivly) so pick someting that has a smaller vertical resolution than your monitors native resolution (since this is the smaller of the 2)

Example: if you have a 1680x1050 monitor like me then 1280x1024 is close to the same vertical resolution while remaining smaller so it will fit and not need much stretching.

Your monitor will then stretch the 4:3 or 5:4 resoltion to fit the whole screen thus stretching the horizontal a lot, and this is what the larer FOV compensates for, it gives you a wider viewing angle to start with and so the final result looks normal, only you have a wider FOV and you keep the top and bottom parts of the screen.

I've been struggling to bind a key to get the console working so you can just open that but theres no documentation for switches for the executatble to enable it, nor what the keybind is called so we could do it in the startup.ini file.

Please note that this is workaround and you do it at your own risk, the worst that can happen is you set a stupid FOV and cant get it back or someting daft, in which case just uninstall/reinstall the demo.

Enjoy

[phoenixcreation]

Interesting. <salute> to you. I'll try this out when I get home tonight.

If there is a will there is a way. And I haven't seen a community with this much will in awhile.

[Paddywak]

Thank bud ... gona try it now ...

[greylantern]

Good find, a glimmer of hope perhaps. Well done.

[Essobie]

You might add to your steps to backup the file you are about to edit.

Also, any chance of some screenshot comparisons? It's sounding like this solution is just going to mean that I'll be playing in 4:3 with a wider FOV rather than force my 4:3 monitor to display at 1600x900 since this is essentially relying on my monitor to scale.

But, as I said in this forum's biggest thread a few times, if I could just increase the FOV, I'd be good to go... so in 2.5 hours I'll go home and give this a go. Thanks!

[CyberKing]

Did doesn't work! I tested "fov 120" and "fov 160" to be sure. But the field of view remains.

@Frosty: Did you successfully test it? If yes -> comparison screenshot!

PS: I tested it with the demo. But I doubt that it works with the full.

[BioShockWins]

If it works: Congratulations, I bet there are gonna be some 'told you so's going around soon.

If not: Thanks for the effort anyway, we'll have the patch in about a week, so everyone keep hopeful!

[elvisdumbledore]

It is incredibly annoying that the devs didn't get this right. I can only hope that this gets fixed in an upcoming patch. I don't work in the industry and didn't know to look for it until I read it on here. But once you know what you're looking for it is definitely the same width and merely cut off on the horizontal and vertical as you say. This is the equivalent of just cutting off the right and left edges of a movie so it will fit a TV screen.

Anyway my question is that if you're setting the resolution in game to say 1024x768 and letting the monitor then scale the image won't you get the same kind of distortion that you always get from displaying non-native resolutions. Of course this is only a problem for LCDs really, but isn't that what most widescreen monitors are? My PC doesn't have the horsepower to run the game at 1920x1200 so I'm just playing at 1600x1200 with no monitor scaling yielding a 4:3 resolution anyway. Hopefully Satan will bring me a new graphics card for X-mas!

[Destroy]

So does trick this work or not? Proof of pics please.

[Essobie]

No doubt... I'm curious if this was just a joke post, the OP was just THINKING he/she saw 120 degrees when there was actually no change, or if CyberKing just screwed something up when he tried it.

I have like 40 minutes before I can go home and try it myself! AGONY.

[Paddywak]

Tried it and it doesn't change anything ... but at least the OP tried so thank you Princess_Frosty ...

[Princess_Frosty]

Sorry guys I cant re-produce it on a fresh install of the demo

I've been tweaking stuff all night in an attempt to get this working and I must have tweaked something else in addition to this working, I'm still working on it, sorry again.