1998: Half-Life – Virtual Tourism in New-Mexico. My second aesthetic shock in a real-time 3D virtual world and my very first screenshots in a video game. After a long period of rather classic gaming wonder during my childhood on arcade, consoles, then on PC with Alone in The Dark, Syndicate, and Little Big Adventure, followed by a first 3D jolt with Unreal, I discovered Half-Life in 1998. A new kind of video game, based on immersive storytelling, borrowing codes from cinema, featuring a revolutionary physics engine, and detailed 3D graphics. The willingness of taking screenshots was immediate. I took a little bit of everything: places, objects, interactions, scripted sequences. A basic shooting method, a rendering a bit raw, but the big picture of Virtual Tourism Project was born: I found a simple method to keep memory of my virtual experiences.



Walking, contemplation and screenshots in Half-Life 1. Game design by Sierra, Electronic Arts – Valve Corporation (designer). Screenshots by François Soulignac, between November 1998 and September 1999.