So, new Hairworks on the way in time for The Witcher 4?
An Nvidia researcher, presenting at SIGGRAPH in the summer (opens in new tab), will show off the most realistic barbershop simulator I’ve ever seen. And weirdly now I really want to get my hands on some virtual scissors and go to town on this digital Barbie head.
The tens of thousands of hairs simulated here are using neural physics, a technique which harnesses the AI processing power of your graphics card to predict how something will move and interact with other objects in the real world. Looking at the video, there’s an RTX Real-Time at the top, suggesting Nvidia’s RTX cards will be the ones with the specific processing power for this technique.
“This technique finally enables both accurate and interactive physically based hair grooming,” reads the description on the video. Now, the ‘finally’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting for me there, because I wasn’t aware there was such a genuine desire out there for hair grooming simulators.
