Just having a better or bigger model? Better training data, better feedback process, etc.

Seems more likely then "it can simulate reality".

Also I take anecdotal reviews like that with a grain of salt. I follow numerous AI groups on Reddit and elsewhere and many users seem to have strong opinions that their tool of choice is the best. These reviews are highly biased.

Not to say I'm not impressed, but it's just been released.

Object persistence and consistency are not likely to arise simply from a bigger model. A different approach or architecture is needed.

Also, I just added a link to an expert’s tweet above. What do you think?

Others have provided explanations for things like object persistence, for example keeping a memory of the rendering outside of the frame.

The comment from the expert is definitely interesting and compelling, but clearly still speculation based on the following comment.

> I won't be surprised if Sora is trained on lots of synthetic data using Unreal Engine 5. It has to be!

I like the speculation though, the comments provide some convincing explanations for how this might work. For example, the idea that it is trained using synthetic 3-dimensional data from something like UE5 seems like a brilliant idea. I love it.

Also in his example video the physics look very wrong to me. The movement of the coffee waves are realistic-ish at best. The boat motion also looks wrong and doesn't match up with the liquid much of the time.