FAQ/Is it CGI or a Photo

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Is it CGI or a Digital Photo?

As technology advances, it is getting harder and harder to tell real from fake. Many true earthers claim that NASA uses "CGI Images". NASA defenders argue that it's not CGI but "Images" taken with "Digital Cameras" (and tend to pretend that you don't understand what a digital camera is).

First of all, Digital photography produces "Photos". Yes "Digital Photos". What we mean by "CGI" is "Rendered 3D objects" using software to generate a 3D image, where NO camera (of any type) is used. Rendered 3D Images can look super realistic, and sometimes better than life.

Note: Yes, "flerfs" know what Digital Camera's are. In fact the Nikon COOLPIX P900 (also known as the Flerf 900) is a Digital camera, and it allows us to see WAAAAAAAAAY beyond what the globe model should allow.

Technology keeps getting better

Many of NASA's videos are subject to CGI animation, models, and augmented reality. The better technology gets, the harder it will be to determine if it's real or an elaborate fake. Fortunately there's plenty of older NASA videos out there that are clearly fakes to help you realize they aren't trust-able.

For now, you just have to train your eye to look for these subtle computer generated characteristics. Going forward, you may have to rely on computational forensics. Basically computational forensics is a combination of applied trigonometry with the appropriate programming skills to run analysis on the subject matter (photo or video).

This will be very important in the near future as the technology to make near photorealistic fake videos (DEEPFAKES ) is already accessible to a lay person with a small budget and an agenda.

Deep fakes are a relatively new kind of video, which is generated by computer AI. Multiple photos of a person are given to the AI, and the computer will analyse the images and apply them to an existing video. The person in that existing video will then be replaced by the person in the photos. The quality of the deep fakes have been getting better and better. YouTube has many examples of this “face swapping” technology, and it raises quite a few concerns.

The biggest concern is not being able to spot a deep fake. As you can imagine, this has huge implications for video evidence, and for celebrities, politicians, and science. There are already deep fake porn movies of famous actresses, and videos of politicians saying controversial things.

The saying used to be "don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see", but it’s a new era. Now you must understand that you can't believe half of what you see either.

Which is Real?

Below are some photos and 3D rendered Images, take a look at the image and without cheating by looking at the column header, can you tell which is which? Click the image to view it larger, click it again to show it Full size. For best results open them in new windows.

The sky is pretty easy to fake with modern technology. Many examples are out there, take a look.. At first glance they both look like real clouds and real sky under different conditions.

Photo	3D Rendered Image / CGI

In the past, fake CGI grass was pretty easy to detect, but now, it's getting very difficult to determine. In fact, the CGI grass looks almost better than the real grass photo. Look at the closeup of the CGI grass, it's very convincing!

Photo	3D Rendered Image / CGI

The following shows two pool tables. The fake one isn't even trying to be realistic, it's a scene from a video game!
Imagine if creator was trying to be as realistic as possible - You simply wouldn't be able to tell the difference on this type of image.