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Nvidia releases Apollo 11 conspiracy busting software

by Mark Tyson on 12 November 2014, 12:05

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

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In September we saw Nvidia 'debunk' claims that the lunar landing was a hoax. Many of the hoax claims refer to how the lighting of Neil Armstrong’s shot of Buzz Aldrin climbing down the lunar module's ladder is not realistic, considering the light source(s). This leads conspiracy theorists to conclude the shots were taken in a studio or some such artificially lit environment. Nvidia's game demo design team used its newest Maxell GPUs and Unreal Engine 4 to recreate an accurately lit moon environment to see if its rendered 3D shots would be significantly different to the lunar photos, they weren't.

At the time Nvidia wrote how the combination of its Maxwell GPU and Unreal Engine 4 environment design "simulated how the sun’s rays, coming from behind the lander, bounced off the moon’s surface, and Armstrong’s suit, to cast light on Aldrin as he stepped off the lander". The Nvidia team created the scene using a new Maxwell technology called Voxel-Based Global Illumination (VXGI) which breaks a scene into thousands of boxes to work out how light bounces around a scene in real-time. It's particularly computing intensive but supported in hardware by Maxwell architecture GPUs.

Now Nvidia has released the software it used in its debunking to the general public. The firm says that you need to have purchased a Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980 or GeForce GTX 970 GPU to use the 'Maxwell Apollo 11 Demo', which weighs in at 470MB. You will also need Windows 7 or newer.

The demo software allows you to view the moon landing scene with various lighting and camera angles, shift the position of the sun and alter the exposure. We are told that altering the exposure also 'debunks' the lack of stars questions regarding some moon lander shots. If you are interested in the moon landing and have the required hardware then why not give this software a go?



HEXUS Forums :: 19 Comments

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I'll take a gander I think, been looking for a tech demo to try out on my 970.
Impressive.
DemonHighwayman
I'll take a gander I think, been looking for a tech demo to try out on my 970.

Same here. I hope nVIDIA doesn't stop developing tech demos. Another thing you could try is a New Dawn. It was developed for the GTX690 but I reckon our GTX970s could handle it (I know my GTX670 couldn't). I tried the UE4 demos, but they all looked blurry for me, like they were being rendered at 1600x900 or something and upscaled.
spl
Same here. I hope nVIDIA doesn't stop developing tech demos. Another thing you could try is a New Dawn. It was developed for the GTX690 but I reckon our GTX970s could handle it (I know my GTX670 couldn't). I tried the UE4 demos, but they all looked blurry for me, like they were being rendered at 1600x900 or something and upscaled.

I'll give that a try thanks spl. I too hope they keep making them, its nice to see the sort of graphics your hardware can produce in an ideal world.
spl
Another thing you could try is a New Dawn.
Is that the one with the butterfly-winged pixie?
She was very cute!! A bit vacant and unanimated, but her tech was exceptionally well demonstrated… ;)

I figure if something can render a character as well as that, it's gotta be good. It looked even better than Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within when I first saw it at the cinema!