Which approach to graphics features is better for gamers

[Piroko]

Witcher 3 Hairworks has the same issue Tomb Raider TressFX 1 has, the hair is way too soft and light. That giant in particular, wish I had such luscious hair. They need to tone it down a lot.

That new Deus Ex seems to have nailed it, that is a great short haircut. The new Tomb Raider... Still too soft imho, but much better.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Adam Jensen looks great with it so far, but we'll see.

 

[antihelten]

If anyones curious, there's also a discussion about Hairworks/TressFX on Beyond3D. One of the posts there goes into a bit more detail about the technical differences between the two:

In a nutshell (and based on public information) the technical comparisons are as follows:

NVIDIA Hairworks
Compute based simulation.
Use isoline tessellation with tessellation factors up to 64 (maximum possible value) to generate curvature and additional strands.
Use Geometry Shader for extruding segments into front-facing polygons.
Renders hair strands onto MSAA 8x render target to obtain smooth edges.
No OIT solution, non-edge hair strand pixels are fully opaque.

AMD TressFX
Compute based simulation with master/slave support to reduce simulation cost.
Use fixed number of vertices per strand (user-configurable, from 8 to 64).
Use Vertex Shader for extruding segments into front-facing polygons.
Per-pixel linked list OIT solution for hair transparency and smooth edges (no MSAA in any part of the pipeline). Configurable for desired performance/quality.

TressFX also has a very efficient LOD system that reduces the number of strands and makes them thicker as distance increases. I think Hairworks relies on varying tessellation factors for density and curvature but I'm happy to be corrected if this is not the case.

The use of isoline tessellation in Hairworks presents major technical deficiencies affecting performance such as long pipelines (VS HS DS GS PS all enabled) and poor quad occupancy caused by huge tessellation factors and MSAA rendering. A lot of users have already found out by themselves that clamping such tessellation factors to reasonable values didn't significantly adverse quality... TressFX's fixed number of vertices per strand works fine and avoid both tessellation and GS usage. One would need to be very close to the model to see curvature-related issues. In a nutshell hair/fur rendering do not need tessellation.
TressFX probably uses more memory than Hairworks due to the use of per-pixel linked lists for the OIT solution. This can be optimized (e.g. tiled mode) or a mutex/Pixelsync-like approach can be used to approximate OIT results and control memory usage.

 

[3DVagabond]

Witcher 3 Hairworks has the same issue Tomb Raider TressFX 1 has, the hair is way too soft and light. That giant in particular, wish I had such luscious hair. They need to tone it down a lot.

That new Deus Ex seems to have nailed it, that is a great short haircut. The new Tomb Raider... Still too soft imho, but much better.

Pomeranians should have such soft shiny coats.

 

[amenx]

All examples of hair simulation I've seen, incl TR and W3 have too clumpy hair. It may move and wave impressively but cannot simulate strands well. The HW 1.1 is first example I've seen that does it properly as here. But I reckon it would entail a massive performance hit once we see it in games.

 

[Dribble]

Beyond all the marketing I suspect the reality is that hairworks is far more advanced then tressfx. AMD haven't got the money to develop it like Nvidia can with hairworks. This is supported by the fact that so far all tressfx has done is simulate one human's hair - doing animals, multiple things at once, etc is not supported by tressfx yet (unless you count power point marketing).

However hairworks really needs a quality slider, not sure if that's down to the devs or nvidia to implement - I suspect a mixture of both. Problem is it's not in nvidia's interests to add one, they are using it to sell 980Ti's, adding a slider so it works well on older cards doesn't make them more money.

That said I'll still take hairworks as it is over nothing (the realistic alternative). There's nothing that says I have to play the witcher 3 today. In the future it'll still be a good game, and by then even mid range cards will be able to play it maxed with all the extra hairworks visuals.

 

[Good_fella]

It seems in deus ex the NPCs all have it.

From my perspective only Adam will have it.

Even with physx we would be much better off with other physics engines because they simply work and look better.

Nope.

 

[Erenhardt]

^You need to paste animated .gif's to have moving hairs...

 

[Azix]

Beyond all the marketing I suspect the reality is that hairworks is far more advanced then tressfx. AMD haven't got the money to develop it like Nvidia can with hairworks. This is supported by the fact that so far all tressfx has done is simulate one human's hair - doing animals, multiple things at once, etc is not supported by tressfx yet (unless you count power point marketing).

However hairworks really needs a quality slider, not sure if that's down to the devs or nvidia to implement - I suspect a mixture of both. Problem is it's not in nvidia's interests to add one, they are using it to sell 980Ti's, adding a slider so it works well on older cards doesn't make them more money.

That said I'll still take hairworks as it is over nothing (the realistic alternative). There's nothing that says I have to play the witcher 3 today. In the future it'll still be a good game, and by then even mid range cards will be able to play it maxed with all the extra hairworks visuals.

More advanced? More like more demanding. The only reason its like that is to exploit tessellation and AA. Unfortunately this negatively affects other nvidia users. Being advanced also involves efficiency

From my perspective only Adam will have it.











Nope.

Hair can't all be tomb raider style. The game demonstrates a very good range of hairstyles. Some characters have the usual loose hair, others have some loose, others not so much. All of them look like hair though, not just a block with textures on it. eg the woman with the cool hairstyle, you still see strands in the part that does not move. Looks great. And they do move in the video =/

 

[sontin]

More advanced? More like more demanding. The only reason its like that is to exploit tessellation and AA. Unfortunately this negatively affects other nvidia users. Being advanced also involves efficiency

You like to repeat this, huh? :|
TressFX costs as much performance as Hairworks. At the same time is uses 80x more memory than Hairworks in 1440p for just one character. With 50 more characters it would need 20000mb for the hair alone instead of 100mb...

 

[Stuka87]

You like to repeat this, huh? :|
TressFX costs as much performance as Hairworks. At the same time is uses 80x more memory than Hairworks in 1440p for just one character. With 50 more characters it would need 20000mb for the hair alone instead of 100mb...

TressFX uses less GPU time than Hairworks as it runs at a lower tessellation level. There is no real visual differences, but there is a 4x performance differences.

We are going to need a source for this memory statement, as stating it would require 20 GIGABYTES of memory to run on 50 characters is entirely false.

 

[SirPauly]

Memory footprint is important when you want more characters on the screen.
AMD's per pixel link list needs memory to store all the information.

Here a few numbers from Tomb Raider (on - off):
1080p: 1744mb - 1538mb => +13,3%
1440p (4SSAA): 2416mb - 2050mb => +17,8%
2160p: 3057mb - 2212mb => +38,2%

This is just for one character for the hair only.

The Witcher 3 with Hairworks
Geralt only:
1440p: 2250mb - 2243mb => +0,003%

Geralt + 50 wolves:
1440p: 2377mb - 2271mb => +4,6%

Thanks, was curious about this.

 

[Red Hawk]

I think it's hard to compare right now, because the only working example we have of TressFX is a two year old game where it's only applied to the player character, while Hairworks was used in a recent game on multiple NPCs. That's why I'm really looking forward to seeing what Deus Ex does with TressFX, as that should be more comparable to The Witcher 3.

If anyones curious, there's also a discussion about Hairworks/TressFX on Beyond3D. One of the posts there goes into a bit more detail about the technical differences between the two:

Thanks for this! Very informative. With not only heavy use of tessellation, but also the geometry shader and 8x MSAA, it's no wonder Hairworks causes performance to tank, especially on AMD hardware.

 

[Rvenger]

You like to repeat this, huh? :|
TressFX costs as much performance as Hairworks. At the same time is uses 80x more memory than Hairworks in 1440p for just one character. With 50 more characters it would need 20000mb for the hair alone instead of 100mb...

You need to be posting sources or you will be facing vacation time for trolling. We are not tolerating exaggeration here.

-Rvenger

 

[Silverforce11]

You like to repeat this, huh? :|
TressFX costs as much performance as Hairworks. At the same time is uses 80x more memory than Hairworks in 1440p for just one character. With 50 more characters it would need 20000mb for the hair alone instead of 100mb...

Read from beyond3d, people in the know, claim TressFX is the superior solution, less performance impact as well as memory can be fixed in DX12 tile rendering.

Then there's the false claim of yours, TressFX has nowhere near the performance impact of HairWorks.

Article March 2013, about 12 days after Tomb Raider's launch:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013...deo_card_performance_iq_review/6#.VaPcDvmqpBc

I don't want to see you making the same false claim again.

 

[chimaxi83]

HairWorks on Geralt looks like crap for the performance hit. It's good on beasts. I didn't like TressFX in Tomb Raider either (too bouncy/unnatural), but the performance hit was nowhere near this HairWorks crap. Good thing AMD users can tweak tessellation settings.

 

[Azix]

I think it's hard to compare right now, because the only working example we have of TressFX is a two year old game where it's only applied to the player character, while Hairworks was used in a recent game on multiple NPCs. That's why I'm really looking forward to seeing what Deus Ex does with TressFX, as that should be more comparable to The Witcher 3.
Thanks for this! Very informative. With not only heavy use of tessellation, but also the geometry shader and 8x MSAA, it's no wonder Hairworks causes performance to task, especially on AMD hardware.

For comparison its easy really. geralt alone on screen drops fps hugely on PC. Yet on CONSOLES we have this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWWtm4Wq9QU

and its getting better with multiple characters having it in Lichdom and RoTR and deus ex to be released.

 

[Good_fella]

^You need to paste animated .gif's to have moving hairs...

I'm not saying that they are static. 5 hairs moving. :biggrin:

Hair can't all be tomb raider style. The game demonstrates a very good range of hairstyles. Some characters have the usual loose hair, others have some loose, others not so much. All of them look like hair though, not just a block with textures on it. eg the woman with the cool hairstyle, you still see strands in the part that does not move. Looks great. And they do move in the video =/

Here's hair styles without TressFX.

Also Lara's hairs moving w/o TressFX too.

In Shadow of Mordor too. But they don't use TressFX.

 

[Azix]

I'm not saying that they are static. 5 hairs moving. :biggrin:



Here's hair styles without TressFX.
http://img12.deviantart.net/578e/i/2009/330/1/f/final_fantasy_xiii_characters_by_cloudfan174.png[/IMG

Also Lara's hairs moving w/o TressFX too.

In Shadow of Mordor too. But they don't use TressFX.[/QUOTE]

or hairworks. Whats the point? the hair is handled using tressFX, simple as that.

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PX7L3qBrIw[/url]

better look since you seem to not see.

 

[geoxile]

I'm not saying that they are static. 5 hairs moving. :biggrin:



Here's hair styles without TressFX.


Also Lara's hairs moving w/o TressFX too.

In Shadow of Mordor too. But they don't use TressFX.

The basic principles of hair physics should be "simple". Strands are basically ropes, which have been simulated for decades. DoA has done it for ages. GPU based solutions just do the physics simulation on the GPU

 

[monstercameron]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PX7L3qBrIw
wow, was the demo on console? that looked seriously impressive in motion.

 

[Azix]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PX7L3qBrIw
wow, was the demo on console? that looked seriously impressive in motion.

The on-screen prompt is circle so PS4 is likely. If it were PC or Xbox 1, XBox Buttons would be more likely. That should be how it will be on consoles at the very least.

Its pretty impressive in rise of the tomb raider as well. And we get a glimpse of what looks like tressFX applied to the bear

https://youtu.be/fkFG6aoo21Y?t=9m40s

I was thinking and ended up at the conclusion that nvidia probably thinks the ideal situation would be them owning unreal engine completely. Or at least having their own engine they claim does things better and pushes gaming forward. Because when you look at it what they are doing is taking aspects of games, building software to create these aspects (more easily or less, but almost certainly with worse performance). So why not just take over the entire engine rather than just the physics or rendering shadows etc.

 

[Keysplayr]

Title changed from TressFX vs Hairworks to reflect why I made the thread. TressFX and Hairworks just seem to represent the two approaches well.

Hairworks - closed source. Inspired by desire for greater profits on latest hardware. Damages performance for all parties.

TressFX - More open. Inspired by desire to improve gaming and differentiate games.

I've been thinking lately that these show very clearly the difference between AMD and Nvidia, or at least make up a very interesting comparison.

IMO TressFX looks better. The really interesting thing is that it runs so much better. With all the tomb raider stuff that came out and the use of hairworks in Witcher 3 it was hard to ignore

Basically, TressFX runs on consoles and looks like this

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2015/07/rise-of-tomb-raider-video-shows-some-of.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ppNfF8B0tc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ19JCTOGfI

Hairworks kills high end hardware, but looks like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB2RcvWRh40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md4Hmgtl8q0 - at the very most not much better

The tressfx videos are tomb raider and deus ex. It seems in deus ex the NPCs all have it. If the gameplay is on a console you can see just how dramatically different the performance of these two techs are. It likely will be like this on consoles on release. TressFX in tomb raider with the snow interacting with the hair etc. One wonders what else could be much better done

People often make the argument nvidia is adding value with gameworks, seems to me its too much of a trade off. Even with physx we would be much better off with other physics engines because they simply work and look better.

I think for our sake something has to be done about gameworks. Nvidia does not have the competence but their cash/influence reach is damaging our experience.

Azix, your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs immediately tell where you're going to try and steer the topic.
Nvidia evil. AMD good. Yes we know.

If you thought for one moment that TressFX being open or closed makes any difference at this stage of the game, I think you are wrong. Also, if you believe that TressFX isn't designed by AMD inspired by desire for greater profits, I think you're wrong there also.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Title changed from TressFX vs Hairworks to reflect why I made the thread. TressFX and Hairworks just seem to represent the two approaches well.

Hairworks - closed source. Inspired by desire for greater profits on latest hardware. Damages performance for all parties.

TressFX - More open. Inspired by desire to improve gaming and differentiate games.

Loaded question is loaded. And not credible. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

AMD made TressFX to sell more AMD cards. AMD made Mantle to sell more AMD cards. AMD released Fury and Fury X to sell more AMD cards.

AMD is in the business of selling cards not "improving gaming."

 

[DaveSimmons]

Returning to the topic of HairWorks vs. TressFX, does anyone have credible links to the real memory use for TressFX since sontin has yet to provide them?

Consuming RAM vs. adding GPU cycles is a valid difference if it actually exists.