The technology is advancing unstoppable in all areas. Since the characters are supposed to become more and more realistic, their representation must of course improve as well. One of the last problems now seems to be solvable: hair.
500,000 details are one or two too many
The main hair of the protagonists in most games is more of a static hat, molded to fit every morning after getting up. If a single braid wobbles when jumping and is subject to certain physical laws, that’s often already the highest of feelings.
Especially in CGI trailers, these limits are often exceeded to achieve a significantly better result. Meanwhile, this technique can also be applied to games, although very cumbersome. For hair to really look realistic, each individual strand must be animated. With 500,000 hairs, this can be quite a mammoth task. But just because something is technically possible doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily needed right now.
Witcher 3: Beautiful hair, but 5 frames per minute
The new technique called NVIDIA HairWorks looks incredibly good, as already experienced in Witcher 3 – at least in still images, since most PCs of the current generation don’t seem to handle it yet. No wonder, considering that 500,000 hairs not only need to be moved but also individually lit, and all shadow effects must be calculated. Since there are often multiple characters visible in the games, the reason suddenly becomes clear why some graphics cards simply wave the white flag. Here is a nice example of the possibilities and the degree of realism achieved:
Nevertheless, this whole technique is one that will probably be refined further in the coming years – how long will it take until we can no longer distinguish games from reality?
