Idk it anyone just post this but Will be great to have a photo mode like aoe 3 , Will be awesome to share some battles or just show our lovely empire.
I read your thought and ideas
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There Will be not a photo mode because graphic textures and models are very bad of you are looking them more close.
Developers should release a graphic DLC before.
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AoEIII has a photo mode because it’s stunning whereas aoeiv is embarrassing
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This is like saying they’re not going to release a free camera mod because the art is really bad.
(except they did)
I’m not going to claim the graphics are like a miniaturised form of Crysis, but they’ve had a serious uplift since release (a lot of work went into the Sultan’s Ascend).
Okay-ish photos are possible with the free cam mod, but that mod disables cheats (so no minimally minimal). The overall visual quality is hit or miss depending on the model, texture and camera angle. Here are some examples I’d consider fine:
or pretty bad:
My overall thoughts is the game was made to be viewed at the standard in-game camera distance. AoE3 was made with a much closer zoom level in mind and the visuals were designed for that. A photo mode for AoE4 could be nice addition (especially with time of day / cloud cover options), but having such a close zoom does reveal inconsistencies in the overall model / texture quality.
I’ll post some screenshots with photo mode and yourself will Say how beatiful graphic Is.
I agree. I just don’t think the reason is “because the devs don’t want us to see it”, because as you’ve proven, we can.
I support a photo mode in pretty much any game, tbh.
just some comparison
Aoe4 has some good models speaking about proportions the most of them are poored of details. There are low textures and plastic weapons wich broke every kind of immersion.
I don’t honestly think that developers could be able to improve textures (in the same way they have improved terrains and mountains with Season5, with 4k textures) because this is long work and Relic is in trouble. Don’t have enough developers.
on the other way, Aoe3de seems a more vivid and realistic world also with brillant colors:
Look at russian cavalry archers: armours, helmets and clothes are simply realistic.
Building are more detailed and decorated
Again, armours, clothes and weapons are realistic.
You can like or not AOE3de but it graphically looks much better than AOE4.
The main problem, for me, it’s Essence Engine. It’s a good engine for small battles like company of heroes but it wasn’t a good choice for Aoe4 because it doesn’t allow you to have detailed graphic and good FPS at the same time. The reason is the lack of recent features like DLSS available since the RTX 2000 series.
This is why i’m concern for the future of AOE. A potential new title will represent the same problems.
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The personal problem I have with AoE III, and I appreciate it’s not something that fans of the game care about, is that it’s too vivid. The colours are way too saturated vs. “real-life”.
Which is funny for me to say, because I don’t really care about photorealism. I just prefer the softer palette of AoE IV.
I have nothing against AoE III (any version of it) as a game, by the way. I don’t have a single negative opinion about it beyond “I didn’t get into it at the time as I was playing other games”. I have the free version of AoE III: DE installed.
A lot of the unit textures are crisper in III: DE. Buildings too at times. But you only benefit from this level of detail when zoomed most of the way in, which isn’t generally how anyone actually plays an RTS game. That said, it absolutely makes a different when taking zoomed-in screenshots / appreciating close-up aesthetics.
On a number of other things, I’d give the win to AoE IV (particularly lighting, admittedly which is generally only appreciable from custom maps or maybe certain campaign missions / specific biomes). I prefer IV’s water, even though boats don’t interact with it as well as they do in III: DE.
As for performance, IV still does better for me than III: DE (III: DE has this weird hitching effect that I’ve never had in IV). Essence is actually massively more performant than in the past, and my personal opinion is most of the modern issues with Essence stem from a rewrite (around / prior to DoW III, post-CoH 2). The engine gained a ton of performance (like or dislike DoW III, it ran beautifully) but lost a lot of technical functionality (e.g. DoW III has locked camera rotation and limited zoom). We’ve seen the technical aspects of the engine built on with CoH 3 and AoE IV (in different ways - CoH 3 has active pause, while AoE IV has a new terrain renderer).
Personally I think 4 looks quite a bit better than 3.
The colors feel very saturated in 3 to me.
It doesn’t look any more realistic in my opinion. Actually less so in some aspects.
Although I don’t even care about realism much. I’m not here to zoom in and examine textures, I’m here to play the game.