Absurd real-time rendering raises the question: do we live in the Matrix?

It is not from today that members of the scientific community and today's minds debate the possibility of living in a computer simulation created by unknown beings. Although it is difficult to prove or discard at the moment, many people believe there is a good chance that we are actually in some kind of Matrix.

But would a PC not only be able to simulate the decisions and possibilities of every individual, animal, plant and particle in the world, but also create realistic enough graphics that we would not realize that we are trapped in an artificial reality? If it depends on Rense de Boer's work with Unreal Engine, the answer is a resounding yes!

As you can see in the video above, the digital artist used Epic Games graphics engine and very high quality textures - captured by photogrammetry - to create rocks, scenery and even some extremely real little plants. The atmosphere of these environments, the way light illuminates objects and the depth of field adopted by the virtual camera complete the clip's fantastic realism package.

The game and movie industry are getting closer

According to Boer, the raw material from the production was recorded during a trip to the Spanish island of Fuerteventura and served to create about 200 individual stones to simulate some of the landscapes visited there. Although the designer has a greater focus on games, he says on his official website that the idea with this project was to show that the game and movie industry are getting closer and can take advantage of the same world-building tools.

Well, there's no denying that without humans or animals in the clip, the piece is quite convincing. The machine used by the artist to produce his ultra-realistic parts consists of an Intel Core i7 5960X processor, two SLI-connected GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and no less than 64 GB of DDR4 2400 MHz memory. So it can be said that alien computers would they also miss the task of rendering our reality in real time?