NVIDIA Simulation Debunks Apollo 11 Moon Landing Hoax

SOURCE: iO9 - NIVIDA Visual Recreation of Apollo Landing
SOURCE: Engadget
SOURCE: NVIDIA Blog

I've always had mixed feelings about the Apollo 11 landing. After trawling through piles of theories on both sides for years and years I eventually settled on the idea that we'd 'probably' been but that it was still plausible that the Americans had faked the landings for political purposes.

One of the big issues for me was the lighting in the original landing. Aldrin walking down the ladder never quite sat right. The lighting looks wrong...

... conspiracy theorists argue that, because the sun is behind the lunar module, and because Aldrin is in its shadow, Aldrin must have been lit by something other than the sun — like artificial lighting in a studio.

There was also the 'moving light' issue - where a bright spot appears to move with the camera, again suggesting artificial light.

But this might be the clincher for me... in what's a pretty obvious PR stunt, NVIDIA have modelled the moon landing inside the Unreal 4 engine and processed it with their shiny new GPU...

... using the Maxwell GPU, the demo team rebuilt the scene of the moon landing in Unreal Engine 4, a game engine developed by Epic Games. They were able to show how the sun's rays — coming in from behind the ladder — bounced off the moon's surface and Armstrong's suit, to cast light on Aldrin as he stepped off the ladder.

Long story short, the simulation, taking into account the reflectivity of all the materials used, the position of the sun, camera, astronauts and the lander all stack up. Everything in the simulation perfectly matches what was seen on the moon that day, and this is all based on independently modelled events inside an Open Source game engine.

Anybody can inspect the source code of the engine to ensure there's no jiggery pokery going on,in theory anybody can simulate and model the scene themselves.

That's it for me, I'm now 100% convinced we went. My issues have been answered. Being a coder myself I know how close game engines are to reality in terms of their light modelling.

What do you lot think?

That's quite interesting.

But why don't we have modern astronauts with modern cameras on the moon showing us in high definition today? At the very least can they send up a remote control vehicle with some HD camera attached that we can get some real visuals of the moon surface rather than telescope imagery??

And if this exists already can someone post it, because I can't find anything anywhere...

I think AMD could have done it better. All kidding aside very cool stunt by Nvidia. I still hate that company with how they dissed all the 3Dfx customers back in the day. They lost a lot of business from me over the years from that corporate raid.

One thing I noticed is that their simulation is very bright.

Perhaps the original film dimmed the scene?

Or did they just ramp the lighting up to show off the graphics?

a reply to: DAZ21

I've always wondered about exactly the same thing. From what I understand they tend to take filtered CMYK camera's (and other wavelengths). It's all about gathering science data - they're not spending all that cash to take pretty pictures for us, they take the bare minimum tech to fill the science objectives of the mission.

But then again, who knows? Short of getting up there there's no real way to verify it from the ground.

a reply to: Nucleardoom

Same here. I remember saving up to buy a Voodoo 3. All my mates had a Voodoo 2 and I was proper jealous.

a reply to: eightfold

But that's what annoys me...

With technology today it would be a thousand times easier to pull off a moon landing.

Also, if they did put some rover up there at least with a high definition camera and went to the site of the moon landing, I'm sure there would still be evidence of the moon landing. This would once and for all prove the moon landing was in fact real and they'd finally shut every one up.

It's almost as if they don't want to prove they've walked on the moon...

a reply to: DAZ21

And how all the manned missions stopped and we supposedly haven't stepped foot on the moon since. That doesn't make any sense either.

It helps to prove that we did visit the big ball of cheese in the sky but the problem is proving it, if i say theres a lunar rover there then you say well you dropped it off just before you landed etc so unless the good doctor fancies taking about 5 million people in his tardis to witness the actual landing theres no chance we'll ever settle this argument once and for all

a reply to: Yeahkeepwatchingme

They can send me up to have a look if they're so scared. I'll tell you what's up there.

a reply to: eightfold

My former boss *when I was doing Tech support back in the day just bought the Voodoo 5500 right before they went belly up.

He was only able to find third party drivers that were never really up to the task.

Anyhoo, Interesting story.

The moon nay sayers will still say we wwrent there. You can take them to the moon right now, stick their face in Armstrong's famous footprint and they will STILL deny we were there
They cant deny ignorance, they LIVE to be ignorant.

originally posted by: DAZ21
That's quite interesting.

But why don't we have modern astronauts with modern cameras on the moon showing us in high definition today?

We don't build Saturn V's anymore.

At the very least can they send up a remote control vehicle with some HD camera attached that we can get some real visuals of the moon surface rather than telescope imagery??

I'm sorry, since when is there a mutual exclusivity between "HD cameras" and "telescope imagery?" I happen to have an HD camera for my telescope? The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also has an "HD camera" on its "telescope" LROC.
apollo.mem-tek.com...
apollo.mem-tek.com...
apollo.mem-tek.com...
apollo.mem-tek.com...

a reply to: ngchunter

Hmm... The fact that your telescope is many miles away and a rover on the moon would prove, one we could land on the moon and two film the landing site evidence for proof.

If we've done it already, then let's do it in this millennium. Why would you even argue against not going again, if we can prove it once and for all?

And to those arguing that my wanting proof is ignorance, is just stupidity. I need actual 100% verifiable truth before I believe in anything. Yes I'm willing to go up there too. There'd be no denying then.

originally posted by: DAZ21
a reply to: ngchunter

Hmm... The fact that your telescope is many miles away and a rover on the moon would prove, one we could land on the moon and film the landing site evidence for proof.

What? I said my telescope has an HD camera, just to point out the fact that there is no such mutual exclusivity as your previous post would have indicated. My telescope would need to be about as close to the landing sites as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in order to resolve the equipment left there. In fact, that is essentially what the LROC Narrow Angle Camera is. It's a telescope about the same size as mine, equipped with an "HD camera" (actually a push broom scanner that uses the direction of flight to scan the surface at high resolution) and it has filmed the landing sites and provided proof that we went. I just linked you to it. Whatever.

a reply to: eightfold

Bought a new PC with a Voodoo 3 3500TV in Dec. of 99, the company was dead in the water a year later.
That PC also came with an Aureal vortex sound card which also shared the same fate as 3Dfx in 2000.
Moral learned from this story: Build your own computer.

Cool stuff. I have always understood that light in that shadowed part of the Apollo image comes from sunlight reflected off the lunar surface. It's a no-brainer, really. The Sun is blindingly bright, and even the relatively dark surface of the Moon (similar to worn asphalt) would reflect enough of it for a photo like that.

a reply to: DAZ21

As one of the other posters said, we don't make Saturn V rockets anymore. Our tech on the ground is orders of magnitude more impressive, but without a (civilian!) rocket powerful enough it's basically impossible to get the necessary weight up there.

As I understand it Blue Origin - owned by Jeff Bezos (he started Amazon) is incrementally building up to having a rocket capable of a Mars flight. I won't hold my breath.

It's worth bearing in mind that most of the guys that worked on the original Moon landings are all old and retired or no longer with us. So much expertise was developed then not built upon.

a reply to: eightfold

The tech to fake the moonlanding did not exist in the 60's.
Everything else is mere details.

Case closed!

originally posted by: DAZ21
a reply to: ngchunter
If we've done it already, then let's do it in this millennium. Why would you even argue against not going again, if we can prove it once and for all?

And to those arguing that my wanting proof is ignorance, is just stupidity. I need actual 100% verifiable truth before I believe in anything. Yes I'm willing to go up there too. There'd be no denying then.

Your "wanting proof" isn't ignorance, your ignoring proof is. I just gave you multiple links to images of the landing site. You moved the goalpost to "images of the landing site taken this millennium."

A) You just demonstrated ignorance that we did just that THIS millennium.

B) You just demonstrated ignorance of the links I gave you which included the dates of each image, all were taken "THIS millennium."