Perspective Correction: ei; viewport - command

In EQLive there is a command to modify the viewing area of the on screen action, if you will. It was accomplished by using the /viewport command. This command shrunk up your viewing area allowing you to place window components out of the way of what was going on in game. It also included perspective correction, for lack of a better term, so that what was there wasn't clipped off by UI windows.

I would like to know if this functionality will exist in EQ2 as it was a most welcome component of UI modification. I have been unable to locate any specific information on this.

I would dearly love to have the viewport command too. I have EQ UI adjusted so that the entire world view is shrunken and displayed in the middle of my screen, with all the hotkeys, buff icons around the viewport so I don't have to stare at the glare of the spell effects while I look at my chat box. It's made gaming much more relaxing for me.

Now EQ2 offers an option to minimize the Letter box, but as the letter box shrank, the top and bottom of the world details actually vanished.

In addition, we can only minimize the top and the bottom, no longer the left and right edges.

I would love to see a porportional shrinking so that no world details are lost, and be able to shrink the left and right edges as well. Thanks for any help on this.

[guice]

It currently does not exist in EQII. I'm unsure about any plans to put it back in.

[Khelor]

EQ2 comes with a letterbox format, you can have blank areas top and bottom of the screen.

[Sorvani]

Originally Posted by guice

It currently does not exist in EQII. I'm unsure about any plans to put it back in.

the EQ2 letterbox is all the viewport-esque command we are gonna get. so top and bottom is your only room.

[Ellyana]

I like the eq2 letterbox..just wish you could adjust the top and bottom independently

[Mythgarr]

Along a similiar line of thought - what about 16:9 (widescreen) displays? If you are using a widescreen display, will the black bars still exist at the top and bottom of the display? I ask only because I like to play many of my games on my bigscreen TV using a digital output. On most games (read: all I have tried) they adjust beautifully to the foreign aspect ratio. Will EQ2 further cut down my vertical screen real estate, or will it simply make those icons translucent and place them over the display?
It would really suck to have an ultra-wide widescreen display in game, but it would also be a waste to use the 4:3 aspect ratio on a bigscreen TV while displaying a 16:9 display on it. Has anybody tried this? What were your results?

[Dolby]

Originally Posted by Mythgarr

Along a similiar line of thought - what about 16:9 (widescreen) displays? If you are using a widescreen display, will the black bars still exist at the top and bottom of the display? I ask only because I like to play many of my games on my bigscreen TV using a digital output. On most games (read: all I have tried) they adjust beautifully to the foreign aspect ratio. Will EQ2 further cut down my vertical screen real estate, or will it simply make those icons translucent and place them over the display?
It would really suck to have an ultra-wide widescreen display in game, but it would also be a waste to use the 4:3 aspect ratio on a bigscreen TV while displaying a 16:9 display on it. Has anybody tried this? What were your results?

You can turn them on and off and adjust their size no matter what aspect ratio you are displaying the game at.

[malnedra]

Has anyone tried the cl_letterbox_position option?

I tried eq2default.ini eq2recent.ini and eq2.ini

Doesnt seem to do anything.

[kenwoodx2]

I have a 17 inch widescreen LCD monitor.. The resolution on my system is set to 1280x768 (which basically is like a 19 inch monitor with a shorter screen height) For both EQ and EQII the game adjusts fine to this new resolution (ain't DirectX great?) .. I did have some rendering problems with EQ when I first changed to a widescreen resolution, but an updated video card driver fixed that. Anyway, in EQII you simply turn off the letterbox effect and the black bars go away.. You then have a true widescreen image in EQII .. of course your UI elements are then on top of that image.. *shrug* .. I'm sure you could turn the letterbox on even with the widescreen resolution, but why would you?

[Kiatron]

I DID IT!!!!!
you need to add the following line to your eq2.ini file
cl_letter_box_position 0.001
(puts it all the way to the top)
I didnt check the bottom, but the range is from 0 to 1 on the number, so logically .99 or 1.0 should put it at the bottom
--Kiatron

[Deathbane27]

Originally Posted by Kiatron

I DID IT!!!!!
you need to add the following line to your eq2.ini file
cl_letter_box_position 0.001
(puts it all the way to the top)
I didnt check the bottom, but the range is from 0 to 1 on the number, so logically .99 or 1.0 should put it at the bottom
--Kiatron

Thanks.

This kind of works.

It DOES move the center view so you can have a huge blank area at the top or bottom of your screen and still see the center of your screen.

The bad side is it screws up your ability to click things (if you have it set all the way up, you can't target anything that's human-sized from third-person view), and their names hover where they WOULD be if you didn't have the letterbox on.

Try it out and you'll see what I mean.

[insomniac]

Originally Posted by Kiatron

I DID IT!!!!!
you need to add the following line to your eq2.ini file
cl_letter_box_position 0.001
(puts it all the way to the top)
I didnt check the bottom, but the range is from 0 to 1 on the number, so logically .99 or 1.0 should put it at the bottom
--Kiatron

how'd you figure out that command?

[Deathbane27]

Originally Posted by insomniac

how'd you figure out that command?

I would imagine the same way that Azek did when you asked him about cl_ui_skinname.

http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/s...=1367#post1367
http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/s...=1407#post1407

[Kiatron]

hmm, you are right about the targeting, I was so happy when I got it working last night, i didnt do much testing with it.
I will have to see if I can find something for that.
I did find the command in the manual, then had to figure out which file to attach it to so it wasn't overwritten and how to get it to move things. I am hoping they do put in the viewport command, and there are implications that the letterbox is resizable, I just need to figure out all the commands. I quit EQ a while back, and forgot half of what I learned there.

(some people might know me as Enixam instead of Kiatron)

--Kiatron

[Deathbane27]

Anything you can find is good. I found a few promising ideas but they all made the game crash when I tried using them.

[Virodeath]

Boy wish there was a fix for this targeting issue, that is da bomb!

[0ctavius]

It isn't a way to dynamically set your viewport, but with some know-how, I am sure our resident gurus could come up with an editor input box that would allow you to set it...

If you look in UIBuilder, under MainHUD, the LetterBoxFrame is defined there. The left and right sides would be added, and with some really nice know-how, someone could make a custom window that lets you enable or disable individual sides of the letterbox, and change their width...

It isn't hard, if you use the OnXXX events of different controls to change values in other parts of the UI. I may play with it and see what I can do. It isn't something I personally need as I am happy with the default letterbox setup, but I CAN see the benefits to some people of having differing sizes.

I obviously haven't tested this theory in-game yet, so I don't know if any of the targetting issues would be present, but I highly doubt it...