virtual camera system virtual camera system demo showing parameters of the camera that can be adjusted part of a series onvideo game graphics types 25d 34 perspective first person video games fixed 3d full motion video based game graphic adventure game isometric graphics in video games and pixel art sidescrolling video game stereoscopic video game textbased game thirdperson view tilebased video game topdown perspective vector game topics 2d computer graphics parallax scrolling pixel art sprite 3d computer graphics 3d rendering polygon prerendering skybox animation celshaded animation digitizing rotoscoping computer graphics realtime graphics game art design graphics engine firstperson shooter engine tile engine virtual camera system voxel lists list of fmvbased games list of fps engines list of stereoscopic video games list of textbased computer games categoryvideo game graphics vte in 3d video games a virtual camera system aims at controlling a camera or a set of cameras to display a view of a 3d virtual world camera systems are used in videogames where their purpose is to show the action at the best possible angle more generally they are used in 3d virtual worlds when a third person view is required as opposed to film makers virtual camera system creators have to deal with a world that is interactive and unpredictable it is not possible to know where the players character is going to be in the next few seconds therefore it is not possible to plan the shots as a film maker would do to solve this issue the system relies on certain rules or artificial intelligence to select the most appropriate shots there are mainly three types of camera systems in fixed camera systems the camera does not move at all and the system displays the players character in a succession of still shots tracking cameras on the other hand follow the characters movements finally interactive camera systems are partially automated and allow the player to directly change the view to implement camera systems video game developers use techniques such as constraint solvers artificial intelligence scripts or autonomous agents thirdperson view in video games thirdperson refers to a graphical perspective rendered from a fixed distance behind and slightly above the player character this viewpoint allows players to see a more strongly characterized avatar and is most common in action games and action adventure games games with this perspective often make use of positional audio where the volume of ambient sounds varies depending on the position of the avatar there are primarily three types of thirdperson camera systems the fixed camera systems in which the camera positions are set during the game creation the tracking camera systems in which the camera simply follows the players character and the interactive camera systems that are under the players control fixed selection of shots in resident evil 2 that aim at creating tension in this kind of system the developers set the properties of the camera such as its position orientation or field of view during the game creation the camera views will not change dynamically so the same place will always be shown under the same set of views an early example of this kind of camera system can be seen in alone in the dark while the characters are in 3d the background on which they evolve has been prerendered the early resident evil games are notable examples of games that use fixed cameras the god of war series of video games is also known for this technique one advantage of this camera system is that it allows the game designers to use the language of film indeed like filmmakers they have the possibility to create a mood through camerawork and careful selection of shots games that use this kind of technique are often praised for their cinematic qualities tracking an illustration of a protagonist whom a player controls and a tracking camera just behind slightly above and slightly facing down towards that character as the name says a tracking camera follows the characters from behind the player does not control the camera in any way heshe cannot for example rotate it or move it to a different position this type of camera system was very common in early 3d games such as crash bandicoot or tomb raider since it is very simple to implement however there are a number of issues with it in particular if the current view is not suitable either because it is occluded by an object or because it is not showing what the player is interested in it cannot be changed since the player does not control the camera interactive instead of staying behind mario the camera intelligently rotates to show the path super mario 64 this type of camera system is an improvement over the tracking camera system while the camera is still tracking the character some of its parameters such as its orientation or distance to the character can be changed on video game consoles the camera is often controlled by an analog stick to provide a good accuracy whereas on pc games it is usually controlled by the mouse this is the case in games such as super mario sunshine or the legend of zelda the wind waker fully interactive camera systems are often difficult to implement in the right way thus gamespot argues that much of the super mario sunshine difficulty comes from having to control the camera one of the first games to offer an interactive camera system was super mario 64 the game had two types of camera systems between which the player could switch at any time the first one was a standard tracking camera system except that it was partly driven by artificial intelligence indeed the system was aware of the structure of the level and therefore could anticipate certain shots for example in the first level when the path to the hill is about to turn left the camera automatically starts looking towards the left too thus anticipating the players movements the second type allows the player to control the camera relatively to marios position by pressing on the left or right buttons the camera rotates around mario while pressing up or down moves the camera closer or away from mario implementation there is a large body of research on how to implement a camera system in some camera systems if no solution can be found constraints are relaxed for example if the solver cannot generate a shot where the character occupies 30 percent of the screen space it might ignore the screen space constraint and simply ensure that the character is visible at all such methods include zooming out some camera systems use predefined scripts to decide how to select the current shot for commonly seen shot scenarios called film idioms typically the script is going to be triggered as a result of an action for instance when the players character initiates a conversation with another character the conversation script is going to be triggered this script will contain instructions on how to shoot a twocharacter conversation thus the shots will be a combination of for instance over the shoulder shots and closeup shots such scriptbased approaches may switch the camera between a set of predefined cameras or rely on a constraint solver to generate the camera coordinates to account for variability in scene layout this scripted approach and the use of a constraint solver to compute virtual cameras was first proposed by drucker bill tomlinson used a more original approach to the problem he devised a system in which the camera is an autonomous agent with its own personality the style of the shots and their rhythm will be affected by its mood thus a happy camera will cut more frequently spend more time in closeup shots move with a bouncy swooping motion and brightly illuminate the scene while much of the prior work in automated virtual camera control systems has been directed towards reducing the need for a human to manually control the camera the directors lens solution computes and proposes a palette of suggested virtual camera shots leaving the human operator to make the creative shot selection in computing subsequent suggested virtual camera shots the system analyzes the visual compositions and editing patterns of prior recorded shots to compute suggested camera shots that conform to continuity conventions such as not crossing the line of action match placement of virtual characters so they appear to look at one another across cuts and favors those shots which the human operator had previously used in sequence in mixedreality applications in 2010 the kinect was released by microsoft as a 3d scannerwebcam hybrid peripheral device which provides fullbody detection of xbox 360 players and handsfree control of the user interfaces of video games and other software on the console this was later modified by oliver kreylos realtime recording and motion tracking virtual cameras have been developed which allow a director to film motion capture and view the digital characters movements in real time the use of motion capture to control the position and orientation of a virtual camera enables the operator to intuitively move and aim the virtual camera by simply walking about and turning the virtual camera rig a virtual camera rig consists of a portable monitor or tablet device motion sensors optional support framework and optional joystick or button controls that are commonly used to start or stop recording and adjust lens properties camera matrix game engine virtual cinematography firstperson video games 