Anyone played with the camera?

I was interested to see the screenshots some players are achieving with Civ4, and wondered how they got them. It occurred to me that I'd heard about |"camera flying", but hadn't seen any details about what it can do or how to do it. It seemed it might be the secret of the close-up and low angle images I'd seen.

So, as I'll probably never get around to actually playing this game, I've amused myself today with the camera flying feature. Has anyone else tried it? Don't do so if you suffer from vertigo, as I think Civ4 is really a flight simulator in disguise.

Quick tutorial for those who didn't know it was there, or haven't worked out how to do it ...

1. Enable Camera Flying mode in your ~/Documents/Civilization IV/CivilizationIV.ini file by editing the appropriate setting. Change it from the default 0 to 1:

; Allow Camera Flying
AllowFlying = 1

2. In your game, hit Command-Alt-F on the keyboard to make the camera fly. Hit the same key combo again to return to normal view controls.

3. In flying mode, the arrow keys move the camera left/right and forward/backward. The page up/down keys move the camera up and down vertically (careful - they seem to be very sensitive). The mouse pans the camera to left or right and tilts it up or down. The scroll wheel zooms the camera.

You can get much closer to Civ4 objects with the flying camera - to the point where you can fly underground or underwater, and get up close and personal with a crab! Lots of new photo opportunities ...

Here are a few "holiday" snaps to whet your appetites for creative "photography" using Civ4.

- menacing wild beasts
- up-nose view of a warrior
- moody landscape

Thanks Alan! The third screenshot looks fantastic, I'll be trying that out just as soon as I have a Mac that plays Civ 4 decently!

[Out of curiosity: you've said a few times that you don't actually play Civ, yet you've obviously a great interest in it. Are you a software tester?]

Out of curiosity: you've said a few times that you don't actually play Civ, yet you've obviously a great interest in it. Are you a software tester?]

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I simply don't have time to learn to play it at the level I was used to playing Civ3, so it's a 'chicken and egg thing'. If I could get up to speed then I'd probably enjoy it.

I need to know enough about it to be able to deal with issues arising in the GOTM/SGOTM and Mac forums, so I do try things out a bit. I actually started to experiment with camera flying when I was trying to give Aspyr some feedback on a graphics glitch I spotted - terrain was visible under the FOW on my Mac Pro. Attached are conventional and perspective views of the effect I captured. In the perspective view the little guy in the far distance is a second image of the scout in the foreground, seen around the world. The patch of sunlight in between is a fog-free area on the opposite side of the globe, the same shape as the starting position cleared fog area but exposing different terrain. In between you can fly over visible forests, coast and floodplains.

I'd be happy to be a tester for Aspyr, as I think I could help a bit, given the sort of bugs I've seen in the released products. But they won't let people outside the US have pre-release software.