At the BBC website, Phil Coomes shows some side-by-side images of real events and modern FPS game images. The recent flap over clips from the game Arma 2 being cited as genuine film captured from the IRA is only the first of many incidents we should expect to encounter, as games get better (and advocates remain as dedicated to advancing their causes as ever):
Today we are used to seeing real time reports from across the globe, technology has advanced and anyone with an internet connection can travel to far-off places, even imaginary worlds, from their armchair.
The world of video games has progressed too. Some seem real, as highlighted by a recent Ofcom ruling that ITV misled viewers by airing footage claimed to have been shot by the IRA, which was actually material taken from a video game.
Labelled “IRA Film 1988”, it was described as film shot by the IRA of its members attempting to down a British Army helicopter in June 1988. However, the pictures were actually taken from a game called Arma 2.
[. . .]
So I went through my photos taken from various combat zones, and attempted to replicate them in a computer game.
The game Arma 2 was ideal — it’s more of a war simulation than an all-out blaster, with the correct uniforms, vehicles and weapons as well as varied terrains and bang-bang firefights.
Plenty of hours fiddling within the gaming environment, alongside Ivan who developed the game, produced some pretty remarkable results.
In some cases it is actually quite hard to tell the difference between my photographs and the computer version, which is deeply worrying. The level of detail is so precise that the virtual war zone is as convincing as the real thing.
