Information war is a thing. Though, you can find information from people on the ground on Youtube, social media and small websites (mainstream media you can completely forget, there are enough leaks to show that the likes of BBC and Reuters engage in propaganda to turn people against Russia (and I don't even mean local/international outlets but in Eastern European nations specifically and even in Russia itself)). Ah, of course, you should be able to distinguish footage from a video game from real life footage (referring to the large amount of people who apparently can't do that).
On the topic of video game footages being used seemingly by unknown actors with various intent, if a gamer like me can be tricked, how gullible is the average user?
I LEGIT thought the whole Ghost of Kiev video was REAL the first time I watched it. It was only when the whole scene did not make sense——why would the Russian jet slow down and slowly ascent with a pursuing Ukranian jet and why would it use AA missile instead of opting for guns at such close range moving slowly?
It was only after this exercise in logic did I take a second look at the video and saw the person holding the camera was moving way too stable without the artifacts you normally get from software stabilization.
Many, many people saw that video and retweeted it thinking it was legitimate. I almost did too until I saw it a second time and realized Twitter's compression algorithms degraded the quality in an authentic manner that hides anti-aliasing and uncanny valley.
Games are increasing becoming photorealistic where I can't tell from preview thumbs (ex. Ride 4) and we are probably witnessing the cusp of a new type of war. Our morales can be influenced by the hour now thanks to social media and advancements in light ray tracing.
Like in 2011 I was certain that photorealism was far off because of the computation difficulties with real-time ray tracing, I had not anticipated the leaps in GPU, AI, Deepfake technologies as well as software advancements like Nanite and Lumen in UE5
