Crash Bandicoot PC Launcher v1.9

True 16:9 Widescreen

That's it. That's the update.

v1.9 adds true native 16:9 widescreen support to Crash Bandicoot.

This is not a stretched 4:3 image, a crop, or a simple FOV hack. The game now actually renders additional world geometry outside of the original PlayStation viewport, while keeping the original 4:3 area untouched.

Getting this working reliably ended up being far more complicated than simply making the camera wider.

The widescreen renderer now handles:

• Native world geometry outside the original 4:3 view
• Proper depth and occlusion
• Original textures, lighting and vertex colors
• Fog, tinting, water effects and animated materials
• Full-screen effects such as fades
• Special handling for areas such as the bridge levels and their fog layers
• Scenery extensions for places where the original level geometry literally ends at the edge of the 4:3 screen

A number of levels required their own carefully targeted scenery repairs. These extensions use the original materials and texture density and are rendered as part of the world rather than simply filling the sides of the screen.

I also built a dedicated widescreen verification tool during development to compare the native 16:9 renderer against the original rendering path frame-by-frame. The original 4:3 portion of the image remains unchanged while the game renders the additional view around it.

A lot of testing went into camera movement, deaths, respawns, effects, transparency, fog and some of the stranger cases hidden throughout the game.

It may only be one feature, but it is easily one of the largest rendering changes I've made to the project so far.

Crash Bandicoot can finally be played in real 16:9.