This Screenshot Blog Will Blow You Away With Stunning (And Highly Technical) Game Photography

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

If you're a game enthusiast, Dead End Thrills is one hell of a site to follow. This blog is acked to the brim with screenshots that could be mistaken for promotional images or, in the case of the shot above taken in EVE Online, even concept art. 

These shots aren't simply point-and-click (or even point-and-PrntScrn), but taken using mods, tricks, techniques, and tools that can improve lighting, alter the player camera perspective, and of course allow for stunningly high-res results. Of course all of this info is shared (along with a high-res download link), however not every aspect can be easily recreated without some technical know-how. To recreate the shot from EVE Online, for example, Dead End Thrills recommends "CCP 'Jessica' toolset, 3:4 and 2:1 ratio viewport, 15K tiledshot rendering, high in-engine antialiasing, custom FOV."

While you or I might not necessarily be able to take shots like this one ourselves, Dead End Thrills also has a sizable community, along with a Flickr group open to any screenshot-minded gamers looking to share their work. If you're looking to lose an afternoon ogling some of the most amazing virtual environments you've ever seen, Dead End Thrills is certainly a good place to start.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Timesand has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan andwith pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Jo Yardley]

Link directs to picture, not the Flickr group.
A shame they don't allow Second Life pictures.
Shame, we might have convinced a few gamers that SL has upgraded a bit recently.

[Pussycat Catnap]

There are no photographs or painting to be made from video games / virtual worlds. Only screenshots and/or digital art.

[Iris Ophelia]

@Jo Fixed it, thanks!

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I appreciate the artistry of a spectacular screenshot, but I almost want to see a disclaimer on each of them: "Warning: you will never see anything like this quality while actually playing the game."

True of Second Life, as well. Most of the time I play with all the graphics turned down to lower settings to optimize performance.

[zzpearlbottom]

Not true regarding Second Life, Arcadia, at least for me,i truly don't think the way i see the world is as bad! (always with Ultra settings, alm and shadows on, most times using dynamic richness day cycle!)

[Pussycat Catnap]

In SL I usually have most of the graphics on at the same level as my screenshots.

Windlight and so on all there. But what differs is shadows. Shadows are the big one for my 2011 iMac - I can run with them on when alone and not much other mobile stuff in range, but in crowds I leave them off unless I'm carefully lining something up.

But I've read recently that the real killer for SL graphics is... the chat log... which seemed odd... but I've read that as you're logged in that log starts to consume your memory / resources, and this cuts into FPS. Making it so that something that seems completely unrelated actually ends up a significant source of the appearance of lag-like symptoms - and an eventual crash when it gets too big.

I think I can turn it off by turning off the logging settings in preferences, and have done so. But I forgot to go look in my finder folders and see if anything is still being saved in there.

[zzpearlbottom]

Yes, i turned the chat logs asap off!
Also even if it seems LL is working on a fix, conversations using local chat i expanded mod makes the fps drop, not as much as on previous Ll vode, but sill!
I detach local chat and the fps gos higer again, if i don't have it activated at all, even better, but be on compact, detached or closed, the fps drops are not significant even on croweded sims, now on expanded mode, yes, from 14 fps i got drops up to 6!
So chui seems to be still in need of a lot of work (Notice that i use UKanDO latest release, based on LL code from 2 weeks ago!).