What do you guys think about letterboxes (black bars) in ENB's

[Dreadtail]

Title

[hawkeye]

Not a fan. The screen is supposed to be a window into the game world. Like standing at a window in a building. At the moment we get a small window. I want a bigger window - wider horizontally and vertically., like a big glass window. So black bars are the opposite to my preference as they reduce the view.

The catch is that bigger windows require more computational maths, which means better cpu and gpu. And better graphics engines that do true 3D projections. This won't happen as games are written for low end pc's as that's what most buyers have.

[Bansheebutt]

ENBs are ugly as sin all around and massive handicaps on your game's performance, but black bars?

Like, why, Mr. Strawman? It's "cinematic"? Are you still watching movies on a 4:3 CRT from '97?

The only reason I can think to use them while actually playing the game is they can mask some of the distortion from having a super high fov. But I'd rather just play at a lower FOV at that point, because I'd be just planning on obscuring my vision with ugly black bars anyway.