Photography in games

[Arryosha]

Curious if anyone is into virtual photography in games, and if so, what games you've done that with. I got interested in virtual photography when using SpaceEngine because the space vistas in that game are unmatched, and the good proc gen planets allowed for nice landscapes. It led me to learn about "rules" of photography composition, and at the time there were sites where people would post their photos and there were even contests.

From my short research on the topic, there seem to be three types of photography games:

1. Non-photography games with a photo mode. Photo mode is pretty common nowadays, but some games excel at it, and apparently some even have a photography community, including some professional photographers. Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding are examples of games that are supposed to excel in this category. This kind of photography might be a way of taking advantage of otherwise terrible AAA games.​

2. Games where photography is a secondary game mechanic. There are a fair few games in this category, including Beyond Good and Evil, Fatal Frame, Viewfinder and maybe Eastshade.​

3. Photography sims. These are more rare and make photography the whole point of the game. These usually involve more advanced photography concepts and mechanics, and include games like Umurangi Generation, Pokemon Snap, and Lushfoil (unreleased). The first two of these, as far as I know, score your photos.​

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I think the first and third of these are the most interesting, since they would involve the most learning and creativity. I'm especially interested in games that have a good scoring mechanic (e.g., does the photo make use of the rule of thirds?) and games that have a photography community.







Some SpaceEngine photos (not by me):

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Some examples of work from a real photographer, Leo Sang:

https://leosang.com/battlefield

 

[Iucounu]

What's the difference from ordinary screenshots? Do the games let you simulate real camera adjustments? It might be nice to get rid the wide angle FoV effect in many games.

 

[Butter]

 

[Konjad]

What's the difference from ordinary screenshots? Do the games let you simulate real camera adjustments? It might be nice to get rid the wide angle FoV effect in many games.

A lot of games nowadays have 'photography' mode (called differently depending on the game) where you are able to set up a lot of stuff that you can't modify otherwise, including FOV, depth of field, lighting, character poses and so on.

Personally I'm not interested in this, but I saw plenty of people on Steam playing with it.

 

[Hag]

The new Flight Simulator has a photo mode and a whole bunch of photographic challenges, where you need to shoot some specific monument aligned with another, or with your plane at some distance, or even to shoot animals which requires some hunting.
It's quite fun.

 

[Sodafish]

No, I prefer the real thing.