AMD Shows TressFX 2.0 hair technology

Lichdom: Battlemage will be the first game that uses TressFX 2.0, the latest iterartion AMDs hair rendering technology. TressFX 2.0 promises even better hair rendering with continuous levels of details (LODs), improved efficiency with many light sources, a new self-shadowing option and more.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR TRESSFX HAIR? 
As Crystal Dynamics worked to bring TressFX to other platforms, we have been busy developing an even newer version of our award-winning hair tech.

In November we announced “TressFX 2.0,” an update to the effect that brings several notable changes: 

• New functionality to support for grass and fur
• Continuous levels of details (LODs) are designed to improve performance by dynamically adjusting visual detail as TressFX-enabled objects move towards and away from the player’s POV
• Improved efficiency with many light sources and shaders via deferred rendering
• Superior self-shadowing for better depth and texture in the hair
• Even more robust scalability across GPUs of varying performance envelopes (vs. TressFX 1.0)
• Modular code and porting documentation
• Stretchiness now respects the laws of physics

• and numerous bug fixes! 
  
  Starting with grass and fur, implementing realistic physics for these objects is rather similar to hair: treat each strand as a chain, group chains together, and then apply an external force. There is obviously some voodoo at work to make grass and fur behave more like grass and fur, and rather less like long hair, but the principles are so similar that they’re a logical extension to TressFX’s capabilities. 
  
  In designing TressFX 2.0, we addressed a notable issue in our hair physics simulation: stretchiness. Extreme linear and angular acceleration of a fast-moving or fast-turning character could cause the hair sim to appear unnaturally stretchy. In very rare instances, the physics model could even prevent the hair from ever recovering its original length.

 Full details over here.

BTW the open mud-fights with Nvidia thes edays, just wow: "In contrast, NVIDIA’s Hairworks technology is seven times slower on AMD hardware with no obvious route to achieve cross-vendor optimizations as enabled by open access to TressFX source. As the code for Hairworks cannot be downloaded, analyzed or modified, developers and enthusiasts alike must suffer through unacceptably poor performance on a significant chunk of the industry’s graphics hardware. With TressFX Hair, the value of openly-shared game code is clear."

AMD Shows TressFX 2.0 hair technology