But does this mean that the border between fiction and reality has become too transparent to distinguish one from the other? Not really. If a game developer regrets that “for every deleted video, ten more are uploaded every day,” there are some good tips on how to learn to distinguish the real from the fake:
- Very low resolution: In most of the examples above, the images have been intentionally pixelated to hide their origin.
- No sound: Sound effects are often removed.
- No moving people: if the vehicles are very realistic, human movements betray the virtual origin of the images. That is why there is no visible individual at all.
- Unnatural particle effects: even the most modern games struggle to realistically depict explosions, smoke, fire and dust, remind the developers, calling for attention to these details.
- And finally, it is also the uniformity of vehicles, uniforms or equipment that needs to be questioned.
All these clues made it possible in each of the videos mentioned above to doubt their authenticity.