Realistic Live Camera with Ego Perspective

Why another camera mod?

I was upset about the preinstalled live camera, and also not completely satisfied with GunMod's camera mod (even though it made everything much better already).
So I thought I make my own live camera mod, based on GunMod's live camera, with the following changes:

What makes this special?

1. Larger field of view (fov). This means, the camera is more zoomed out when playing. This is closer to the FOV of a human.
2. No more boundaries which limit your moving range on a lot! You can move over the whole neighborhood, and you will not stop moving at "invisible walls" around your house. You can even move outside the visible area.
3. Zooming into a Sims head. This almost gives you the possibility to play in an ego perspective. This is incomplete though, with several restrictions listed below.

Now let's have a look at the changes in detail.

1. Larger Field Of View
As said in the feature overview, the camera is more zoomed out than by default. The old zoom levels were quite unrealistic, a human can see much more at once, except he is one-eyed... . Here is a screenshot of a camera leaning back in a corner, looking into the room. Notice how much of the ceiling and the floor is visible and that you can almost see the two walls of the corner the camera is in. The original configuration would've shown only the kitchen furniture and would've cut away most parts of ceiling and floor, the spiral stairs on the right wouldn't be visible too.

If you have Apartment Life (EP8), you will notice that this new camera makes the "ceiling" camera useless: You can greatly modify the ceiling with this LiveCamera, you can also turn it upwards to see even more.

2. No more camera movement restrictions
I somehow got rid of the "invisible" walls around your lot which stop your camera from moving any further. You can move over the whole neighborhood. This looks best if you set the "Fade Distance" in the Game Options to "Off", so other lots and decoration stops disappearing suddenly. To quickly move to another location, it's a good idea to double-right click on that point where you want to move to and you go there immediately!


3. Ego Perspective Possibility
The original intention to make this mod was to reproduce a camera always moving like the currently selected Sims' eyes. As you can see on the images below, this is pretty close to that, but only works best with the following things being kept in mind:

• To activate this "mode", zoom in to the maximum with your mouse wheel or keyboard. Then, right click the sim which sight you want to have to set the camera to follow him.
• You have to rotate the camera on your own. The camera only moves (translates) with the sim, but rotation has to be done manually.
• It only works if the Sim is not moving too fast, otherwise the camera jumps out of his head and will be behind him.
• Another problem with this is that the camera is not always inside the head. If a Sim leans forwards, you start seeing either his whole head or only his teeth from the inside. However, it works pretty well for conversational animations.
• The camera is fixed to the height of standing, adult / elder Sims. For teens or children, the camera will be too high, also, if the adults / elders are sitting, the camera will not move down towards them.

If you are ok with all this, you can get the following great results though:


Since this LiveCamera.txt resulted out of GunMod's camera mods (but has been changed mostly everywhere) there's also no fading for stairs, trees or lamps here. If you'd like that though, there's an additional download with the default Maxis fading.

How to install

First at all, pick one of the three downloads I have included here:

• LiveCamera - Original Maxis Version - This is just a backup of the original LiveCamera.txt in case you forgot to backup and want to restore it.
• LiveCamera - Realism Mod by PacMani - This is the mod as seen in the images above. There are no stairs or trees fading away when coming closer to them.
• LiveCamera - Realism Mod with Maxis Fading by PacMani - This is the same as the mod in the images above, but trees and stairs fade out if you move closer to them, just like in the original game.

You do not place this download in the typical "Downloads" folder! You have to backup some files, before you replace those:

1. Go to your "Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Cameras" folder.
2. Make a copy of the "LiveCamera.txt" file there and give it a useful new name (like "LiveCamera Backup.txt").
3. Now, open the download with an archive program like 7-zip, WinRAR, WinZIP or whatever you prefer.
4. There's a "LiveCamera.txt" inside it, move this file into your "Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Cameras" folder (where you just backed up the current LiveCamera.txt).
5. Now you only need to start the game and enjoy the new live camera :-)
   
   Of course you can combine the LiveCamera with other camera mods. E.g., it is possible to combine GunMod's cool neighborhood camera with this LiveCamera, since you only need to replace the LiveCamera.txt.

Additional Credits:
GunMod for his camera mods, from which this modded LiveCamera.txt was started.