While playing Anno 1800, I noticed something which I’ve never noticed before in any other game (but to be fair, I don’t play too many city builders): The sun keeps a position relative to the camera and thus the shadows always fall from left to right:
It almost looks like a time-lapse of a sun moving across the sky, only that here it happens because I rotate the camera.
For comparison: There is an option, which makes the sun stay at a fixed world position:
Now it behaves as we know it from the real world:
As the latter option is more realistic, it must be the better choice, right?
Well, not from a compositional point of view. One can get into the unfortunate situation where the camera is positioned so that the sun casts shadows behind the camera. This makes everything look very flat:
Just to underline how much impact the shadows have, here is a little comparison. With the shadows “hiding” behind the buildings, it almost looks like “unlit” mode from your favorite game engine:
I think, it’s a very nice idea to keep the sun relative to the camera. A good example of a “small” feature with huge visual impact.
And I hope you like it as much as I do!
Simon :)
p.s. big shoutout, that the Anno team implemented an automated camera rotation for nice video capturing (F3) and also a way to hide the UI (ctrl+g). 💘