Hairworks, yay or nay?

[00Rubberducky]

Hairworks, yay or nay?

You using hairworks? If so, what settings, build and framerate do you achieve / use?

 

[KiriSilvermane]

I run an i7 with a 970gtx
Ran hair works on full with a mix of high and ultra (foliage view at medium) and could get steady 60 fps @1080 with a few drops to mid 50's.
I've recently turned off hair works and gone with nvidia experience settings which is virtually everything ultra (though I still pushed foliage to med) and get solid 60.
Hair works looked awesome when it was on screen and I was happy with the performance.
To be honest the difference between ultra textures and high is barely noticeable. Same for other settings! So drop some to use hair works was an ok solution for me.

 

[krakuus]

Nay, not because it's good or bad but because it's closed technology of one manufacturer. This always leads to unfair fight and at the end the consumer is always the side who pays, same goes for AMD technologies like TressFX

 

[keldrath]

I don't, it's too heavy a hit for my 290x atm.

Even so, I did try it and actually felt it looked worse in cutscenes/dialogue anyways so I don't regret having it off.

 

[TheMorbidAtheist]

Yay for screenshots.
Nay for everything else.

 

[Merwanor]

Big yay. Wish they added hairworks to even more stuff in the game. I am running it with everything else at ultra with a steady fps with a 970 card. But I had to lock my fps to 45fps via evga precision or else it would drop from 50 to 30 occasionally and stutter.. But locking it to 45 made it steady with the occasional drop to 35-40 on heavy forested areas with lots of storms and stuff.

I tried to see how the game looked without it, and it is just not even close to as pretty. Especially on monsters and beasts. I have seen a few armor pieces on some NPCs in Skellige that also has the hairworks effects. Wonder why it is just a few peaces and not all armors. Even with a big pack of wolves I see no difference in the performance, so more creatures or stuff with hairworks does not seem to make a difference to me when talking about performance.

 

[soot00]

I think it looks foogly on humans. On wildlife still shots it looks cool but the battles are so fast and furious you don't even notice how good they look.

I chose performance > miniscule couple seconds of eye candy during fights of which case I am too busy dodging and fighting to even stop and notice..."aint nobody got time for dat..."

 

[KiriSilvermane]

Hmm, do you have Shadows on Ultra? If so, you should definitely turn it down and get a free 10-20 fps with minimal difference visually.

The game's just sickingly inconsistent with framerate.

My rig is a 980 + 4690K rig and i've tried 3 main setting configurations:


Config that I use and almost never dip below 60fps

• Everything Ultra aside from shadows(medium) and foliage(high)
• 80-100+ fps
• Never goes below 60fps, even fighting bears, fiends, griffins, nothing. The only way I made it go below 60fps is when I tracked 15-20 wolves and even then it only dropped to 54-58 fps (the framerate tanks when I zoom into Geralts head though but this is expected considering the hair being rendered at x8 MSAA)

A solid config, turning off hair works on this build ensures you will NEVER go below 60fps REGARDLESS of what you do and it looks damn good (pretty much full Ultra). Probably the one I will stick too

It's annoying, because with shadows on high/Ultra you can run the game 99% oft he game with no issues but there seems to be areas on the map that cause random ass lag spikes (only ever happens when it's night time, in the morning the framerate goes back to normal). There is this area called "Reardon Manor" (where you first meet Letho) that causes my FPS to dip to 45-50fps (fully maxed out, no hairworks) and it's essentially a ghost town. My fucking largest dips in NOVIGRAD was 58-59 for a SPLIT SECOND. I narrowed the issue down to the shadow setting down into medium completely fixed it and my FPS was back to being well over 60.

It was fucking ridiculous.

It's annoying, the shadow setting seems to be completely fucked, looking at the nvidia comparison there is borderline NO DIFFERENCE between medium-Ultra despite Ultra costing anywhere from 10-25 fps (depending on location).

Basically, even on a Titan X, there is no way to never dip below 60fps fully maxed out unless you're running a high end SLI config.

My rig

• 980
• 4690K
• 8GB

Can't honestly recall right now! Lol ( laying in bed browsing on my ipad)!
I ran through the nvidia tweak guide and tweaked a good 55-60fps by dropping settings that I couldn't see major differences in: shadows etc.
I'm running the nvidia experience reccomended for the 970 now with a couple of tweaks. Off the top of my head I turned depth of field on, and dropped foliage view to medium.
Think that was it though

 

[hryniel]

Nope, sometimes i turn it on for no apparent reason but then i turn it off.

 

[AvengerGrim]

Nay, on trophies (Griffin) and monsters, looks good, but I hate the look on Geralt, I think it makes his hair looks too "silky", while the default hair look more "dirty" and less "perfect Japanese CGI crap", just my opinion. ^^

 

[keldrath]

Nay, on trophies (griffin) and monsters, looks good, but I hate the look on Geralt, I think it makes his hair looks too "silky", while the default hair look more "dirty" and less "perfect Japanese CGI crap", just my opinion. ^^

Yeah gave me the same impression, his hair just looked so, thin and wispy. At least in close up dialogue scenes.

 

[tahirahmed]

Yay. Config in my signature.

I use it because although it's not ground breaking on Geralt and other humans, it's a must have for monsters. They look so glorious with HairWorks, don't want to miss out their beauty.

All ultra @ 1440p, 60 fps all the time except some drops to 55 in heavily populated areas of Novigrad and Oxenfurt.

 

[Wolfmeister1010]

I don't like the way hair works looks on Geralt. It looks like...straw, to be honest, and doesn't fall properly down his neck.

Doesnt matter though, cuz I always go with the ponytail anyway!

 

[Smurfin]

- Sometimes I turn on Hairworks but some other times I turn it off.

- All setting @ultra but some other subjective preference like blur/motion blur/ etc set to off.

- PC : CPU i7 2600k 3.4ghz , GPU : MSI 970 OC/tiger edition, RAM : 16gb.

- Framerate : @1080p : 45-60 without Hairworks, with Hairworks : 35-60.

 

[AdurianJ]

Got a GTX 980 G1 Gaming and a GTX 580 for physX cpu is overclocked i7 3930k

I seem to get around 50 fps and i run everything except blur

Edit: Oh and i run at 1920x1200

witcher3 2015-06-07 00-48-36-85

 

[Halequin05]

Nay, on trophies (Griffin) and monsters, looks good, but I hate the look on Geralt, I think it makes his hair looks too "silky", while the default hair look more "dirty" and less "perfect Japanese CGI crap", just my opinion. ^^

Maybe he is using SunSilk Shampoo to get those loks flowing.

As for me I am running an i7 4790k with 32g Ram and a pair of ASUS GTX 780ti DCU II's in SLI. everything maxed with a few tweaks. Since the 1.05 patch the fps has gone back to around 75 fps, but there are some drops, I agree that the fps has a yoyo affect.

 

[prince_of_nothing]

Running hairworks at maximum quality here. I think it looks great, and definitely enhances the IQ of the game. The only thing I don't like about it, is that bears don't have enough simulated fur on them. I think they downgraded the hairworks for bears, because I don't recall it looking this bad when the game launched..

 

[Wolfmeister1010]

Running hairworks at maximum quality here. I think it looks great, and definitely enhances the IQ of the game. The only thing I don't like about it, is that bears don't have enough simulated fur on them. I think they downgraded the hairworks for bears, because I don't recall it looking this bad when the game launched..

I remember thinking this a little bit too.

Oh well. Bears are really rare anyways

 

[spacehamsterZH]

Nay. The performance hit just isn't worth it for me, I barely notice it outside of cutscenes.

I've already posted this elsewhere, but I really wish there was a cutscene only option for hairworks.

 

[prince_of_nothing]

I remember thinking this a little bit too.

Oh well. Bears are really rare anyways

Yeah this is true, bears are quite rare. But so are Griffins and plenty of other monsters which have hairworks enabled. Out of all the hairworks enabled creatures, bears look the worst if you ask me.

Oh, forgot to list my specs. GTX 980 SLI, overclocked 4930K and 16GB of DDR3-2133.