NVIDIA Releases Apollo 11 GeForce Demo, Requires Maxwell-based Card To Run

At NVIDIA’s press event for Maxwell, held right before the launch of the GeForce GTX 980 and 970, the company showed off a demo that seemed to impress a great number of people in the room. Taking full advantage of the company’s “Voxel Global Illumination” feature of Maxwell, NVIDIA wanted to help prove Apollo 11 naysayers wrong – something that accurate lighting is required to do. While NVIDIA didn’t come out and give a definitive answer to things, it did debunk the most important arguments against it.

I touched on this demo a bit in my look at the GTX 980, which you can reference here. What you need to know now is that the demo is now available to anyone who owns a Maxwell-based graphics card – that’s either the GTX 980 or 970. This strict requirement is due to the fact that VXGI is exclusive to Maxwell for the time-being (it could change, but it’s hard to say if it will.

Side-by-side comparison of NVIDIA’s demo and the real Apollo 11 photo

In the above shot, you can see how NVIDIA’s demo compares to the original photograph of Buzz Aldrin stepping off of the craft. For the below shot, I simply took over camera duties and snapped a cool wallpaper-worthy shot.

As you’d expect, this demo has an assortment of knobs and dials – it’s meant to be fun, after all. If there’s a downside, it’s that it seems to be locked to 1080p resolution. That’s quickly made up for by the fact that the demo plays the original audio recording from the Apollo 11 landing, which definitely helps add to the atmosphere.

Here’s what NVIDIA has to say:

“Our demo team last month used Maxwell, our new GPU architecture and VXGI real-time global illumination to bust a well-known conspiracy theory about the Apollo 11 moon landing. Now this demo is available exclusively for Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX GPU owners.

Forty-five years ago, Neil Armstrong captured a photo of Buzz Aldrin clambering down the lunar module’s ladder. Conspiracy theorists say the photo, which shows Aldrin lit up against the dark shape of the lander, doesn’t look quite right.

Some even say legendary director Stanley Kubrick – best known for “2001: A Space Odyssey” – worked with NASA to fake the moon landings.

Not so. Our software provides proof that the iconic photograph is authentic. In a demo powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 and Maxwell, we showed how light from the moon’s surface – and astronaut Neil Armstrong’s space suit – illuminated Aldrin.

But some conspiracy theorists aren’t buying it. One man has even used a cardboard box placed over asphalt and tiny models of the lander and an astronaut to recreate the landing.

You can do better. More importantly: you’ll have fun doing it.”

You can grab the demo and see more information here and here, and if you want to explore previous demos, you can head here.