Nissan Mistakes Driveclub Screenshot For Real Cars

Racing games tend to have the best-looking graphics on the consoles they’re made for, given that metal vehicles and flat roads are easier to render than organic life. Now they’re realistic enough that they can fool the car companies that sell the vehicles the games use.

The Nissan corporation’s official US Twitter account recently posted four photos of its own car models with the caption “Innovation that excites” (Nissan’s current slogan). Too bad none of those photos ever happened in real life. They were all screenshots from Driveclub on the Playstation 4, taken by Chris, another Twitter user. Whoever runs Nissan’s Twitter retweeted the photos without knowing their origin.

Driveclub features real licensed cars, including several of Nissan’s. After other tweets pointed out the mistake, an embarrassed Nissan said “Didn’t look close enough apparently! Graphics these days are ridiculous!”

How realistic can racing games get? Both Unreal company Epic Games and Industrial Light and Magic believe game graphics will become indistinguishable from reality in the next decade. Cars can probably make that deadline (and sort of already have), but people and animals will take a little more work.