Video games have changed dramatically since the 1980s. The player character changes from literally just a square on the screen into super realistic life-like characters with NVIDIA hair works that cost 3 GB processing power of a graphics card. Combine with some realistic texture mods that a lot of players are using, modern games are very effective in tricking people into believing they are real-life footages.
A victim of this is Khurram Nawaz Gandapur, a Pakistani politician, who shared a video on social media that depicted a plane miraculously dodging an oil truck parking in the runway. The tagline of that tweet is “Narrow escape of an aircraft which could have ended in a great disaster. Miraculous save by the pilot’s presence of mind.”
The video, however, is gameplay footage of GTA V. It was made by a Youtuber named The UiGamer to simulate the event that would happen after an oil truck blocked the way of an airplane during landing. Rockstar’s GTA engine was up for the job to recreate the scene. The internet was quick to expose this mistake of the Pakistani politician – he removed the tweet after that.
This event proved that Grand Theft Auto 5’s graphics still hold up to today’s standards. The recreated scene was so good some people were tricked into thinking it is real footage. Some textures and objects might look a bit dated, but there is nothing that couldn’t be fixed by some mods. Rockstars’ engine has been pretty successful in later years, with the creation of the major hit Red Dead Redemption 2 and the rumored in development GTA VI.
Technologies change every day and video games are definitely going to be even more realistic in the future. The upcoming generation of consoles like PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett is expected to be another milestone of processing power, carrying even more improvement in every parameter. With GTA VI in development, maybe even more Pakistani politicians would get tricked in the future by the synthesized footage.