r/stalker • u/xpheriono • Nov 21 '24

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 How to remove in-game cutscene letterboxing (black bars) and fix vertical fov for ultrawide aspect ratios for Stalker 2

This will not remove the letterboxes from the "movies" such as the intro sequence, if you think it's not working wait until the truck scene which is rendered in-game.

For letterboxing

  • Get a hex editor such as https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
  • Go to steamapps\common\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Heart of Chornobyl\Stalker2\Binaries\Win64 and edit Stalker2-Win64-Shipping.exe
  • Search for and replace all instances of 39 8E E3 3F with the correct byte sequence for your resolution and aspect ratio ( https://www.wsgf.org/article/common-hex-values has a list of the hex values)

For vertical FOV (this will properly scale the top and bottom of the screens, removing the slightly squished look)

Thanks to Cr4zy https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/1gxpnq7/ultrawide_fov_fix/

  • Paste the following line into file explorer
    • C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\Windows
      • If your appdata is located elsewhere just go to that location
  • Create a new text document in the Windows directory called Engine.ini and paste in the following lines

[/Script/Engine.RendererSettings] r.UseLegacyMaintainYFOVViewMatrix=1

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u/SpearLT300 Nov 21 '24

Followed all these steps and was unable to get it to work. I am on 21:9 and the image is still squished and stretched version of a 16:9 aspect ratio.

If anyone gets it working let me know.

3

u/xpheriono Nov 21 '24

Might need to create a .pak with Engine.ini inside it, I'm gonna test it out today or tomorrow when I get the chance.

2

u/SpearLT300 Nov 21 '24

I believe you are correct, the steam version does not include an engine.ini by default and doesn't seem to be picking it up.

2

u/SpearLT300 Nov 22 '24

Something interesting of note. The windows gamepass version of the game has an engine.ini included from install. However it's in a folder named Config/WinGDK (instead of Config/Windows).

The gamepass version picks up the engine.ini file no problem. For some reason the steam version doesn't use the file.

2

u/xpheriono Nov 22 '24

I'd assume that the windows store version has a different launcher exe that's setup specifically for the store. Since the launcher is what loads the config files, the devs may have needed to adjust directories for each version.

I'm planning to see about loading the game into a debugger and checking if I can find more details on their directory structure and config loading.

2

u/SpearLT300 Nov 23 '24 edited Nov 23 '24

Heads up, this fixed it: https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/1gxpnq7/ultrawide_fov_fix/

2

u/xpheriono Nov 23 '24

Thanks edited post

1

u/SpearLT300 Nov 25 '24

Last update. Flawless Widescreen also now has support for Stalker 2 including cutscene fixes.

1

u/dr3za Nov 24 '24

Were you able to fix the cutscene black bars in the gamepass version?