nVidia Debunks Moon Hoax Conspiracy
People have declared the moon landings a hoax for decades. Their assessments are based questioning shadows, tire prints, the flag ... all sorts of things. Upward of 6% of Americans don't believe it actually happened. On the flip side, debunkers have been equally as ardent at disproving the conspiracy theories.
And now, there is a new contender, nVidia, the GPU manufacturing graphics company. In a nutshell, the realism of modern video games centers around all kinds of details but lighting can make or break the game. As such, GPU manufacturers try to provide all sorts of computing horsepower to render lighting, shadows, and all sorts of number crunching to calculate reflections, incident angles, etc. As part of their product unveiling, nVidia decided to team with NASA to learn about the scenario and then essentially digitally recreate the photo allowing their GPU and software to determine if the lighting was actually legitimate. The answer? It was totally viable.