"Wherever the camera’s gaze turns, reality sprouts. Curiously, this representational tactic has overlaps with Medieval theories of vision, which philosophers believed to emanate outwards from human eyes, a concept known as “emission theory”. In a sense, this camera-centric computation of the game engine interface also mirrors the essentialist origins of ecosystem science. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a centralized technique for tracking and monitoring forest ecologies was introduced by the timber economy."

mixed with random blunders (e.g. "...the planet Vulcan in Star Wars...").

Yeah, so poorly researched - Spacewar! was not funded by the Pentagon. <eyeroll> And as for military use - maybe they (or an AI) are confusing this with Battlezone...

At least read the wiki page.

No, billboarding is a technique in three-dimensional graphics in which a sprite is rendered perpendicular to the camera without respect to camera movement. Commonly used in early 3D racing games to display background details such as trees, people, and... billboards. It looks ok when driving normally, but the illusion fails when you stop driving and face the side of the road.

Level of detail is a separate concept.

That's interesting...