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I get bearings on mountainside paths studded with spruce and shrubs. On the right is Lagodia knitting in southern Tyrol, Italy, with a deep blue in the center, but persevering in the greenery that touches the pebble shore. To my left is a limestone cliff slowly bleached under the sun. Raise the camera to the slope and press the shutter button.
The mountains are not real, nor are they cameras. This is the world window in Lushfoil Photography Sim, a new game for recreating real places around the world. But a photo? Well, I think it’s just as realistic as any other digital image. The question is, what leads you to spend time taking photos in a virtual environment rather than in a real environment?
“You can access photos, but travel may not be easy depending on the situation,” says game developer Matt Newell. “The focus of Lushfoil is not on taking photos, but rather on the location and atmosphere that surrounds you.” From the thousands of sacred red gates at the Fahrenheit Tanaka-Taisha Shrine in Japan to the misty plains of Mildal Sandur in Iceland, these far-flung places are yours to explore for £11.99 or $14.99, not thousands on plane tickets.
More and more games are choosing to include photo modes. In the shadow of the Assassin’s Creed, players can take a break from mischief and murder to capture the inspiring scenes of feudal Japan. And painting games such as été show that it is possible to wager creative pursuits on attractive effects. However, Lushfoil is unique in making photos the only gameplay element.
Virtual scene shot by Chris Allnut, a chapel on the coast of Lagodia meat in Southern Tirole
What do professional work do? FT’s chief photographer Charlie Bibby offers his perspective. “I was very surprised at how good it looked graphically,” he says. “And sound design made a huge difference. For example, you could hear footsteps while walking.”
However, the challenge is to find motivation to take photos of places where you are not personal connections, and Bibby finds she has a hard time reconciling reality with virtuality. “I understand that some of the landscape photography exists in a space and that space is clarified with the image you create,” he says. “But when the landscape is artificial, the basics are missing.”
Newell points out that the photo is not the first activity the game has recreated. The Agricultural Simulator series sells over 400 million copies, and the genre has expanded to include power washing, surgery and, strangely, goats. “We thought photography would be a gentle and satisfying addition to this list,” Newell said. “But again, why simulate something? I think we should all just go outside.”
Still, I found myself returning to the Lagodia knit virtual coast and experimenting with Lushfoil’s cameras in ways that may not be authentic. The organized landscape and piano soundtrack have a meditative quality, and Bibby agrees that the experience has made him think about the photography in a more conceptual way.
The ultimate test is whether an image has value from context. Are you hanging virtual photos on the wall? Do you want to save it as a desktop background? Would you like to send it to a friend? More importantly, is the answer to all of these questions the fact that it is likely that there is no chance of being an “no” due to an irrational fear of the new thing, or is it because virtual photos never resonate as much as one shot in the real world?
Now on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/s
