MSR Widescreen Argument (Google Groups/Usenet Archive)

Original Google Groups/Usenet topic 
Staff comment in bold.  Main reply in yellow

Just a curious observation.

In the options screen for the multiplayer mode there is an option to set the
screen to a widescreen mode. This works well enough, giving the cars the
correct proportions when viewed on a widescreen tv.
Question is, why is this option not available in the single player mode?? As
it is you either have to have squat cars in widescreen mode or force the tv
into 4:3 ratio - what a waste!!

I guess that's a minor gripe considering all the stuff that this game does
do well, but it would have been nice, a la F355.

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Messing around with the in-game camera options appears to change the field of
view, perhaps somewhere in there you can find a bodge that looks better in 16:9.

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Bizzare Creations probably forgot to put it in around about the same
time they forgot to take out all the bugs that f*****g ruin the game.

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There is a wide screen mode in there if you beat one of the special
races(cant remember which one sorry) you get widescreen option in the cheat
modes menu see Dave you instant gratification freak its in there you just
have to earn it also in the cheat menu (but unlocked seperatly) is the

sickening bubble mode and the very funny silly cheat

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No, that's a joke, right? You have to earn widescreen? F**k me, do you have to earn sound?

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I'm still laughing after reading your message :)

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Its in there right after adjust camera in the cheat modes menu along with
force time and silly cheat.I am not the idiot who made it like that I am
just the guy who posted to tell that poor sod who can't figure it out where
it is complete the second special btw

I don't think he was having a go at you, just at the fact that you have to
'earn' something which should be standars in games. i.e. widescreen mode.
I have a widescreen TV and didn't see a WS mode and so assumed it didn't
have one.
Putting it in as a cheat seems a bit strange.

Good game all the same.

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You access widescreen mode by doing the challenge which requires the mustang
car. The car can be accessed on a special challenge, I think it`s the
chapter with the vauxhall vx220 under the cover. Let me say that the ratio
looks right on a widescreen tv but it doesn`t show any more picture either
side, but cuts off quite abit top and bottom which defeats the point of
widescreen really.

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Damn that. Just like that crap widescreen mode in fur fighters(same
creators).
MSR would look great in anamorphic widescreen :(
Ah well. The dc is not connected to my widescreen anyway...
That sony(!) 4:3 tv gives a much better image.

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F.Y.I. the widescreen mode in Fur Fighters is true 16:9 widescreen with a
much wider viewing angle and not just cut off top and bottom.
Get your facts right next time.

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It is anamorphic but just doesn`t look right with how much it has took of

the top and bottom

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I'm sorry but it is not anamorphic widescreen.
It loses a lot of the resolution in fur fighters. Anamorphic widescreen is
without borders.
Get your facts right...

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In 60Hz and widescreen settings on my Toshiba it's [Fur Fighters] certainly full 16:9
widescreen and without borders. Whether it's anamorphic or not, it looks
great. The real advantage of widescreen mode is for Fluffmatch where for 2
players the split screen is a vertical split, which I find much easier than
the non-widescreen mode horizontal split.

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The Widescreen mode keeps everything at the same perspective, the screen
shows the same visuals height wise but there is extra width and a much wider
viewing angle with far more information at the side of the screen. And
anamorphic widescreen does have borders top and bottom on all standard TV's
and even (dependant on aspect ratio) small borders on Widescreen TV's. The
widescreen mode in Fur Fighters was added whilst checking it on a Sony
Widescreen TV to keep the aspect ratio as close as possible to widescreen
movies. The vertical resolution has to drop to do this as you have a maximum
horizontal resolution of 640, so the vertical dropped from 480 to 357 to
create the borders required to achieve a letterbox effect.

If you require any further information on this please contact me at this
address [email redacted]

Nick Wiswell
Associate Producer
Bizarre Creations

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Wah ?! This is just nonsense, and shows they have no understanding of
widescreen TV standards or even what `anamorphic' means.

"The Widescreen mode keeps everything at the same perspective, the
screen shows the same visuals height wise but there is extra
width and a much wider viewing angle with far more information at
the side of the screen."

Fair enough. All OK so far.

"And anamorphic widescreen does have borders top and bottom on all
standard TV's and even (dependant on aspect ratio) small borders
on Widescreen TV's"

And now the confusion starts. He's muddled up widescreen movies with
widescreen TV. Wide TV has an aspect ratio of 16:9 (or 1.77:1).
Movies are typically either 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, so of course you're
going to get black borders somewhere (at the sides if you're watching
an old academy ratio film or 4:3 TV broadcast). 16:9 is a compromise.
He should be comparing with 16:9 TV broadcasts, which do exactly fill
the screen. (And watch out for those stupid 14:9 broadcasts which UK
broadcasters sometimes use to annoy everyone).

And the comment about anamorphic pictures having borders on a 4:3 TV
is just nonsense. The picture will fill the screen, but everything
will look tall and skinny as it has not been stretched out wide
enough when displayed.

"The widescreen mode in Fur Fighters was added whilst checking it
on a Sony Widescreen TV"

OK.

"to keep the aspect ratio as close as possible to widescreen movies."

Now why do they have to do that?

"The vertical resolution has to drop to do this as you have a
maximum horizontal resolution of 640, so the vertical dropped
from 480 to 357 to create the borders required to achieve a letterbox 
effect."

Aha. Here's why. They're using letterboxed 4:3 output and *not*
anamorphic. An anamorphic picture has exactly the same number of
lines as a standard 4:3 picture, but they are intended to be stretched 
further apart on a 16:9 display. The `pixels' (there aren't really any in 
an analogue broadcast) are *wider*, so your 640 pixels in each line are 
rectangular instead of square.
Sounds like they've been doing their testing with the TV's zoom mode
instead of stretch. Doh!

They should take a look at a game that does it properly (ie Wacky
Races, Rayman 2), or set up a DVD player by telling it that the TV is
widescreen and seeing what happens when they connect it to a 4:3 TV
(everything looks tall and skinny - or rather squashed in from the
sides), then maybe they'll understand what anamorphic means.

"If you require any further information on this please contact me at this
address [email redacted]
 
Nick Wiswell
Associate Producer
Bizarre Creations"

I can't be bothered.

Try starting here: http://www.dvdweb.co.uk/information/anamorphic.htm
(though they've assumed that 1.85:1 is the same as 1.77:1 - most wide
TVs have so much overscan you never see the black bars with a 1.85:1
movie).
There are other (better) descriptions of what anamorphic means on the
net. Why don't you try asking in news:uk.media.dvd ? A subject line
such as ``What does anamorphic mean?'' should have the desired
results. 

Sound of me running quickly away:-)

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Thanks for that and congratulations on a great game, I'm really enjoying Fur
Fighters.
Looks like MSR will be my next purchase as well. Back to the original
qustion though: why is the widescreen mode apparently in the cheat menu for
MSR?

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"Nick Wiswell
Associate Producer
Bizarre Creations"

Aha, the guilty man - now you're for it ;) Why is the Widescreen setting
in MSR something you have to play half the game to win?!?!?! This is er,
strange.
I would really have liked their to be a widescreen option to have been
available from the beginning 8(
Still, ace game ;)

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First I should say that I *love* Fur Fighters. It's a great game.
Playing the fluffmatch in the demo in a Toys 'R' Us months and months
ago convinced me I wanted a DC.
But the ``widescreen'' option is a regrettable mis-feature. It makes
nobody happy. And by the sounds of it it's because widescreen is
widely misunderstood. And that's perhaps to be expected as
broadcasters, TV manufacturers and DVD publishers have conspired to
make it as confusing as possible.

For example:

* Dreadful ``smart stretching'' modes on wide TVs (there are probably
hundreds if not thousands of people out there watching stretched
4:3 analogue broadcasts who are now convinced they are watching
widescreen TV).
* Wrongly labelled DVDs (that say enhanced for 16:9, but are not)
* 14:9 compromise broadcasts that don't fill *any* TV screen
* Nobody making it clear that the only source of (anamorphic)
widescreen material is DVD or digital TV (despite only a handful of
widescreen TVs having an integrated digital tuner)
* Widescreen meaning either letterboxed or anamorphic (or both)
* Legacy letterboxed widescreen material on VHS and analogue TV
broadcasts that mean your wide TV needs a `zoom' mode as well as
stretch.
* The irrational dislike of black bars (either at the top and bottom
or at the sides) when the aspect ratio of the material you are
watching does not match your display, leading to the above
mentioned `smart' stretch modes.
It's not widely understood that if you have a DVD player attached to
a 4:3 TV then your DVD player actually has to throw away nearly 25%
of the lines and fake up black borders at the top and bottom of the
screen if you watch an anamorphic disk. Some players do a good job
and interpolate a new set of lines, others just throw away every
fourth line and you get jaggy squashed looking pictures. I bet some
people have their DVD set up like that and then are using the zoom
mode on their wide TV and wondering why everyone says DVD is great
when it looks dreadful on their TV.

So I accept that the `widescreen' mis-feature in Fur Fighters (and by
the sounds of it MSR too) came about through lack of good information
about what anamorphic means and was an honest misunderstanding.
Damn. Someone handed me a coffee half way through that.

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Geez. We are talking about anamorphic widescreen here.
In your widescreen modes you have to set your tv to 16:9 zoom mode. You'll
lose resolution as you just stated. In an anamorphic widescreen games the
resolution is still 640*480 but the image is squized. So the owners of the
widescreen tv's set their tv's stretch the image horizontally and you'll
have a full screen 16:9 game.
It's the same with dvd.
Try playing f355, toy commander or any other wide game on widescreen mode.
You won't have borders.
It's more processor intensive that way but certainly possible.
Looking forward to your reply on the matter.

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I too then must apologise, as I am not 100% sure what the definition of
anamorphic Widescreen really is, maybe we should have called it "letterbox"
mode instead. (at least we did make the picture wider unlike some games we
could mention who do just either squish the picture or cut stuff off top and
bottom). The DC doesn't support widescreen per se so this is the only way we
could do it, and I got a bit pissed off because we had to spend ages
optimising the code to make it run smoothly with extra polys now visible at
the sides. The TV we tested it on did have a couple of annoying zoom modes,
but we only used the setting that didn't stretch the picture, just actually
cut off the top and bottom of the screen therefore removing the borders from
view.

Sorry for any ranting, glad you liked the game.

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Here is a good "visual demo" of the whole widescreen/anamorphic thing,
after watching it most people go "ahhhhhhhh, I get it now". :)
http://www.dvdweb.co.uk/information/anamorphic.htm

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Widescreen isn't something a console can support. It's in the games. And the
squishing you mention in some games is far better than the option in msr.
The squising (strange word) is anamorphic. You stretch it out on a widescreen
tv to get the correct ratio.

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Having finally obtained this cheat, I thought that I'd be able to enjoy
correct ratios, even if there is a little cropped top and bottom , but
there's still a problem.
In my experience, the cheat is only active for one race - if you set it
to ON, do a race (where it is indeed widescreen), then return to the
cheat screen, the option is OFF again.
I can't believe this!! Do Bizarre really expect people to want to race
once in widescreen mode, just for fun, then return to normal play?
If anyone has had other experiences, let me know, but as it stands I
think it's ridiculous to have such a feature only available in this
way. As someone else says in this thread, are we expected to unlock
sound in a game using a cheat mode!!