The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt revealed

Won't that make the performance gap even larger?

Most likely, but they also provide 3 options for users to enable that helps control any GPU based performance issues. So if you have low to mid range cards you can also enjoy a certain level of immersion.
Performance:Three HairWorks options are on offer in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: "Off", "Geralt Only", and "All". As the self-explanatory names suggest, they control whether HairWorks is switched off, applied only to Geralt, or applied to Geralt, his horse, and all other HairWorks-enhanced characters, creatures and monsters in the game.
 
Hairworks kills the framerate. Otherwise it runs well (45-60fps), 1900x1200 ultra + hbao. I'm running a 2500k @ 4Ghz and a slightly overclocked GTX 970.

It looks pretty good, although oversaturated.
 
Is it possible for CDPR to release a patch that puts TressFX as an alternative to Hairworks?

On one hand, I want to see Tomb Raider-level of hair everywhere. On the other, I have a fairly high-end rig and this rather synthetic performance drop would make the game unplayable.


Won't that make the performance gap even larger?
Yes, nVidia made damn sure that no one but the people spending $1000 for a Titan X this year could play the game with Hairworks fully on, even if that meant killing the performance for other Geforce users.
At the same time, the people who spent $1000 for a regular Titan last year gets relegated to little more than the performance of a $220 pre-overclocked Geforce 960 (which uses a chip that has less than half the die area and transistor amount).

Gotta love nVidia's greediness... Gameworks really went over itself this time.
 
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Why would you assume Hairworks is "technically superior" to TressFX? The main quality issue about Hairworks is the lack of an OIT solution and this shows quite badly (including on edges).

Probably because I just assumed they must have done something better or why bother in the first place. But since it turns out it isn't really better quality wise and eats a crapton of performance, it's just flat out worse, which was the feeling I was getting when I tried it out in the Witcher 3.

Shame, rather than supporting something that actually works with decent performance, they had to put out that performance hog just to try to push people into their 1000 USD cards.

Regards,
SB
 
witcher3 2015-05-19 18-35-42-49-FPS.png

If I'm guessing right, this is what you guys want.
This is with shadows and grass density high, and SSAO.
Everything else on ultra, at 1440p.

i7 4770k @ 4.2
GTX 970 SLI
16 GB
Installed on SSD
 
Is it possible for CDPR to release a patch that puts TressFX as an alternative to Hairworks?

Even if the stories of truckloads of money are not true NVIDIA at the very least subsidized them with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of consultancy ... CDPR can't really afford to just piss them off by then turning around and giving AMD the same thing for free. Maybe if they didn't get cold hard cash and AMD offered to do all the work, but that's a lot of maybes.

I think there isn't a chance in hell.
 
Even if the stories of truckloads of money are not true NVIDIA at the very least subsidized them with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of consultancy ... CDPR can't really afford to just piss them off by then turning around and giving AMD the same thing for free. Maybe if they didn't get cold hard cash and AMD offered to do all the work, but that's a lot of maybes.

I think there isn't a chance in hell.

What if using TressFX gave a big performance boost to Kepler cards? :D
 
Gameworks creeping into GCN console territory would be the epitome of stupid.
 
Do you have a source for that? Everything I've read says Hairworks is exclusive to the PC (naturally so given it's an Nvidia propriety feature).
Look at the videos. There is some hair tech on PS4. It looks good. Maybe better.
 
any of you playing on PC with surround sound? the game have manual audio option or it auto detect surround speakers and works "plug and play"?
 
Look at the videos. There is some hair tech on PS4. It looks good. Maybe better.

Hair is still present with hair works off, it just doesn't look as good. I haven't got a direct comparison to the PS4 but from memory the consoles hair is closer to the off setting in the video below:


Lots more comparisons here which lists Hairworks as a PC exclusive feature (and this is an Nvidia run website):

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gu...-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide
 
Last but not least, Nvidia’s HairWorks. This is apparently the “pushing-technology-forward” setting in The Witcher 3 the way ubersampling was in The Witcher 2. What I mean is “HairWorks wants to melt my graphics card.”

Not really, but it does put quite a dent in my framerate. I’d heard rumors about that prior to release, and can now confirm: It definitely doesn’t seem like as lightweight an implementation as AMD’s TressFX is currently. With HairWorks off I was getting between 50-60 frames per second on Ultra/High on a 970. Turn on HairWorks for Geralt Only and I dropped to 40-45 frames per second. Turn HairWorks all the way on? Some battles dipped into the thirties.

“Oh boo-hoo, the thirties,” I cry. Considering the console versions struggled to even hit 30 frames per second at 1080p (reviews reported sub-30 frames per second during chaotic scenes) I’m feeling pretty great about The Witcher 3 on PC.

Oh, and Geralt’s beard grows, which is the coolest totally-inessential feature I’ve seen in a game in a long time.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2923...ew-impressions-smoothly-slaying-monsters.html
 
Hair is still present with hair works off, it just doesn't look as good. I haven't got a direct comparison to the PS4 but from memory the consoles hair is closer to the off setting in the video below:
Hmmm. Well whatever they did with the "regular hair" is pretty damn solid if I may say so. I'm not sure Hairworks is better. It's subjective that's for sure.
 
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The Hairworks implementation in The Witcher 3 is still based on tessellation and Geometry Shader expansion, which is what the presentation I linked to is referring to. The inclusion of MSAA in Hairworks will improve edge quality on hair strands but it's not an OIT solution as the inside of hair strands is still fully opaque. Such transparency is an essential cue for high visual quality, especially for light hair color (it should only be omitted if a cheaper alternative is required). I don't believe Hairworks uses screen-door transparency for those areas - quality would probably not be acceptable unless a large number of AA coverage samples was used.

Won't that make the performance gap even larger?
The combination of maximum tessellation factors (up the maximum allowed of 64) and MSAA on such fine geometry will result in very poor quad occupancy which is inefficient on all GPUs.
 
So is hairworks jersey barrier syndrome all over again?
I wouldn't put it in the same class as the Crysis 2 abomination since it's actually a proper use of massive triangle counts and geometry shaders, it's just that Nvidia utilize brute force with their cards which are more suited to it.
 
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