Pakistani Minister Congratulates Pilot For Miraculous Save In Retweet Of GTA V Video
from the is-this-real-life? dept
Usually, when we’re talking about video game footage being used to attempt to fool others into thinking it’s real footage, it’s been done by nation states looking to either pretend they’re far better at war than they are, that their weapons are far cooler than they actually are, or to frame their adversaries for doing nefarious things far more than they actually are. Those cases aside, it does also happen that news organizations get fooled by this sort of footage too. And we should probably only expect this sort of thing to occur more often, given the leaps in graphical realism the gaming industry takes every year or so.
And so it’s only with a little bit of meanness that I bring you the following video.
As you can tell from the title of the video, it’s a gameplay video from Grand Theft Auto 5, in which the player is piloting a passenger aircraft and nearly causes an explosion when an oil tanker crosses the runway as it’s landing. Cool. These videos of GTA5 are common and showed off regularly on the internet by players amazed at what they can pull off in the open world game, not to mention the thrilling nature of how relatively realistic it looks.
Realistic enough, it seems, for Pakistani minister Khurram Nawaz Gandapur to retweet the video alongside his now-deleted tweet stating: “Narrow escape of an aircraft which could have ended in a great disaster. Miraculous save by the pilot’s presence of mind.”
He apparently confused a GTA V clip with real life, and tweeted praising the pilot for excellent skills. The video showed a Airbus A380 flying over a city and avoid an oil tanker in the runway as it was about to land. Gandapur tweeted, “Narrow escape of an aircraft which could have ended in a great disaster. Miraculous save by the pilot’s presence of mind.”
I love stories like this. Again, it’s not really about laughing at someone for getting fooled. What interests me more is both how cool it is that video game footage is getting realistic enough to regularly fool people into thinking its real footage, and how terrifying it is to think of the mayhem that might cause in the future. After all, it’s all well and good for a country to promote its military might by using game footage of some terrifying weapon… until it’s believable enough to cause another adversarial nation to react in real life.
Still, I hope whoever the pilot of the GTA5 plane is from that video feels they have an extra feather in their cap over getting a clap on the back from a Pakistani minister, because that’s pretty cool.
Filed Under: games, gta v, khurram nawaz gandapur, pakistan, reality, video games
Comments on “Pakistani Minister Congratulates Pilot For Miraculous Save In Retweet Of GTA V Video”
VR
True VR gets one step closer.
Re: VR
Heh? I thought that’s what a certain clown was using at all times.
… until it’s believable enough to cause another adversarial nation to react in real life.
For those of you who missed the best bits of the cold war, when anything and everything was an ICBM launch, bomber, or nuclear explosion detected… enjoy. (Of course, some of the really good ones we didn’t know until after things had settled down a bit. We probably yet do not know all of the incidents.)
Khurram Nawaz Gandapur’s been watching too many movies. Real life does not come with all those camera angles.
Well, at least he didn’t say it was an example of dangerous drone flying.
#Deepfakes?
Interesting to see what DOESN’T get called (or identifed as) a deepfake by politicians.
I saw this on Snopes and was amused because it was so clearly GTA footage. It’s worrying that actual leaders are taken in by it because less obvious fakery is just around the corner
A Miracle
They almost spilled a tanker of semen! What, you didn’t get the reference on the tanker? 😉
Re: A Miracle
TIL!!!
I never noticed that, and I’ve been playing this game since it launched.
are you sure about that
"or to frame their adversaries for doing nefarious things far more than they actually are"
I’m not convinced there even is a video game as wild as that it could be used to portray to a degree resembling reality the scope of the various ways the US government has supplied, trained, instructed, protected and if necessary evacuated, bombed their legitimate opposition over flimsy or made up excuses, or otherwise supported, such as blaming their actions on their opposition, ISIS or the very same under any other name.
Are you suggesting otherwise?
While graphics are getting realistic, the bit where the truck drives on the runway is so very clearly not from real life.
I am guessing that certain people without that much contact to CGI and computer graphics throughout their life will probably not notice this… like the special effects in movies when I was a kid, it looked damned good back then.
I also heard that some news outlet reported this as being a failed terrorist attack. Where they got that from, I don’t know.
The only way I could see anyone mistaking that for real is if they didn’t actually watch it at all, just read the title (and don’t know what GTA5 is).
Even with a device (or eyesight) fuzzy enough not to recognize it as game graphics and with the sound off so as not to hear the guy explaining the stunt, the magical flying camera following the plane should be a dead giveaway it’s not real.
No, this isn't cool...
It’s proof that we are putting idiots into government positions.
My first thought while watching the video, and pretending that it’s realistic-enough to fool someone is:
Who was filming this plane’s flight path… and from multiple angles?
I suspect people have been watching too much TV and Movies – it seems they’ve lost their ability to think critically about what they see on a screen, and how it was produced.
Iv been around computers for along time,
And learned and watched these pop up.
Then WONDERED how the person THOUGHT, they were even close to real..
A few realities in something like this..
There is an Airplane tracking this airplane?? how do you think they got the PRE-landing..Thru a city?
Airports Originally and even now…DONT like to be near city centers..NO high buildings near the fields..
The Sound affects in a Inter-city area at LOW LEVEL flying…OMFG…over 120 decibels..
They ARE getting good, and Im waiting for water marks to be placed in Computer Animation, as they do with PAper copiers and printers..
Re: Iv been around computers for along time,
Don’t like to be, no, but are still in many cases. Ever flown into LaGuardia in NYC? You skim the tops of tall buildings (not skyscrapers, but still really tall) close enough that you can see kids in the windows waving at the jets flying by. LaGuardia was made for small aircraft, not DC9s and such, so the approaches for the large jet liners is rather dangerous, both for the jets and the people along the approach path. That said, the approach in the video is clearly nonsense. Just not as nonsensical as you think. 🙂
Re: Re: Iv been around computers for along time,
Just look at the ol’ Kai Tak Heart Attack (it’s no longer flown, but there’s plenty of photo/video docs of it floating around the net) for a great example of this…
right now i don’t like to speak of russians, but i’m reminded here of the hero who saved the world from calamity. you know who i mean. the guy who looked at the information and then critically asked himself if it looked reasonable.
this guy who tweeted failed.
The answer is 42 …. oh wait, that was Deep Thought.
Bottle cap challenge in GTA5?