How Nvidia used global illumination to prove we really did land men on the moon

To kick off the launch of its new high-end Maxwell graphics chip, Nvidia used 3D imagery to debunk the moon-landing conspiracy. The graphics chip maker’s researchers did that by reconstructing the moon landing using a “globally illuminated” 3D model of the lunar lander, the moon’s surface, and the astronauts.

That means the company used realistic lighting from true light sources to create the visual effects and shadows in its 3D landscape. The computer model employed separate 3D voxel grid structures that stored direct and indirect scene lighting that was used for the global illumination calculations. Such calculations take into account how light shines from direct sources and then bounces around off indirect sources.