You don't need 4 580's to see things like cloth and hair physics put into a game today though. You certainly don't need them to see better hair than what has been shown so far. :tongue:

There are technologies readily available today that could be used to make the game look better, if we weren't being shackled to looking the same as 6 year old hardware that is.

It use to be a 3 year timeframe between demos and real games. In 2004-2005 tech demos were showing visuals similar to Crysis, which came about 3 years later. Similar pattern with CoP and Metro 2033. Thanks to consoles it is now a 5-7 year gap. That's how badly they are holding the industry back. Tech demos are now "LOLOL NEXT CONSOLE GENERATION, PLS WAIT." instead of "Well, this is what PCs do today if you drop $2000 on one. Expect it to run on mainstream PC hardware in 3 years or so."

The good news for that is two years from now, or less, once we've all upgraded our computers, the game will still be top notch graphic-wise.

Yeah. It's pretty bad. I purchased a Dell computer last year with a 1 gig video card...one of the XPS computers. Cost $1200. Runs Metro2033 on max graphics and directx11, runs everything very well and smooth, and will continue to do so for a while yet. No need to sink lots of money in a computer with how lacking graphics have become. Game consoles really do slow stuff down. Despite this atrocity--an atrocity worthy of painful poetry--I put my hope in the modding community and the generosity of game-developers promoting that aspect of the community. I look forward in Skyrim to beautiful hair!!! Makes you wonder if console gamers might become jealous of how good our hair is, and become pc gamers!

I like turtles.

Thanks for your valuable input...

I wouldn't expect anything more than what games like Final Fantasy XIII had, and that is expecting a lot. What we'll see is probably a higher-res version of what we saw in Oblivion that also bends alongside the skeleton, allowing players to have hair that drifts below their neck. It won't be "special graphics" or anything that technology will bring us in the next decade or so - graphics that are designed primarily for a feature like hair. It doesn't even matter what the most powerful PC is capable of doing, games won't do what consoles won't do, and new consoles don't arrive until 2012 at the earliest. When E3 comes around, we'll all get to see some new games due for the next generation I'm sure, but Skyrim is not one of those and I won't hold out any hope.

Video cards will naturally get better. Lately, Nvidia and ATI have started new lines of dual GPU cards - essentially two cards in one. With two Nvidia GTX 590's, you essentially have four 480s like the tech demo showcased. Cards after that, maybe a few more releases from now and you'll have all that power in a single card. Nvidia said it themselves that the 590s are for "über enthusiasts". You won't see games that require that kind of power anytime soon because only fanatics would build rigs like that. Those 590s are the best you can get right now, and you'd need a power supply capable of powering a city block and a cooling system colder than the arctic just to keep the things running.

Also, I saw the computer running that realtime render of Unreal at PAX East. That behemoth made an area around it in a 10 ft radius heat up about 10 degrees. I feel bad for the Nvidia booth there that had to deal with it

I'm certainly not saying consoles aren't holding gaming back, I'm saying that you saying we would have hair like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzjsTt_DzCw were it not for consoles is *wrong*. We might have that in a few years time, but we would not have it now. Technical progression hasn't slowed down, consoles really have no bearing on when tech demos appear, just when what they're showing is viable - we'll never be at a point where tech demos only showcase things a year or two away, because the upper boundries of what we can do is rising just as fast as what we can do as well as the rest of a game.

The problem with this statement is that the technology is already there, it's just being able to implement it. What folks are saying if games were made with more emphasis in PC versions they could implement them. There are examples up there, but also, Eve Online implements amazing hair graphics as well. Eve Online is not held back by console.

Im not expecting the hair to be anything close to square-enix standards but It would definatly be nice if the hair actually moved instead of oblivions frozen hair

Funny how high-end tech demos are being thought of as what games should be based on. If that was the case sales of games would be too few to sustain.

Agreed. In Fallout 3, you could even get yourself a haircut to change your look. I thought it was rather pointless myself. As long as it looks reasonably good, who cares whether it blows in the wind or not?

I hope there's some good hair choices, otherwise i'm going to have to use a beast character again. )=

This is not next gen. This is already in the past.

Disregard language, just watch hair...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TlefW4Gs24&feature=related

I really do not know what TES has planned Vsions said their artists are working on it.

Hair physics are not that hard to do, many games do them these days, even mmo's. Using a phyiscs engine many are far more then capable of hair phyiscs and come with tools for it.

Also where did you see there was no cloth phyiscs? I mean that's something that on even the consoles should be in, even most non-rpgs do it these days, from fighting games (mortal kombat) to mmo's likle EQ2 YEAAAARS ago.

Just thought I would add this screen shot image to the discussion. This is from the upcoming Tomb Raider (Reboot/Survivor) game.

Notice the direction of the hair while Lara is hanging upside-down...

http://www.goranagar.com/load/Lara-Hanging.jpg

What about the screenshot of the hunter in the forest chasing a deer? It does look like hair, but doesn't fall realistic at all. I don't know, maybe that's a hood or something, or maybe the wind was blowing (if that's the case, the hair physics are amazing).

Ah, but that's a cut scene and much easier to do. However, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEmIKXz4ZgI actual gameplay video from the previous FF on the ps2. Lovely swishy hair in game on a console that's ten years old. Now can we please have swishy hair in Skyrim? There really is no excuse for not having it.

Yeah, her hair is clinging to her face.

Yea, that looks really weird.

Lol, you are right, guys. I only noticed the hair tht was hanging down in back. When I zoomed in, I had a better view.

I guess we will just have to wait to see what TES will do with this feature.

I wonder what a Skyrim character's hair would look like if they were hanging upside-down?

Guys, good topic of discussion in here. I'm glad for all the input and relative civil conversation After playing Witcher 2, I might be hesitant to purchase this game at full price if the graphics are not competitive with present day games that are being released for the PC. After reading the forums and hearing console players complain about expensive computers, I went to Dell and found a basic Alienware computer can be purchased for $900. It's not that much more than an X-Box or PS3. My computer cost about that, and I can play Witcher 2 with completely maxed out graphics. I hope administrative decisions are made in order to make Skyrim the best it can possibly appear and feel on the PC. I hope it takes precedence over the console. Because I like the Elder Scrolls. It would be sad to see its capstone be less than its potential with the technology that has been available for some time now.

Can't agree more I want my character to have long hair and hopefully a jack sparrow style beard so it's movemnt in the wind will add vibrancy and authenticity to the world

Real men have long hair, the vikings had long hair the nords are modelled after the vikings so do it properly

I'm for and against graphical hair. I mean I think it'd look nice, but lets say you have long hair and you're running in first person and turn around and your hair flies in your face, when it falls down you realized you've just been stabbed. Not only that but it'd be a bit distracting on the character, now for NPCs I think it'd be great. I really do enjoy hair though BTW.

As I understand it flowing hair is a product of jiggle physics, yes that physics that deals with bouncing boobies also applies to flowing hair or clothes such as capes, cloaks, etc. That's why many games that use jiggle physics will often have all three of them. Problem is there not all that easy to pull of, it requires some complex coding. You'll often see these effects in the current gen of fighting games because they have small stages with a limited number of characters and wardrobe options. Plus the Japanese have had years of practice. :hubbahubba:

Problem is devs are on a deadline. The bigger and more detailed your worlds get, and the more characters you have, the less time you have to spend on such things like jiggle physics.

This is why many RPG's suffer from the whole plastic or wooden hair effect. Because dev's didn't have the time to do such things during the products initial release, or the money in some cases. I would guess its also the reason why we don't see really long hairstyles because the rigid non flowing hair would cause weird clipping issues. Such as the case with several hair mods for Morrowind.

There's vertex parenting on hair, so for the long hairstyles the tips of your hair will remained confined to your shoulders, while the rest on your head moves.

There may be "simulated" cloth physics. They are using the Havok animation application, so it's likely they can just simulate the physics in keyframe animations. it's also possible that there is some sort of "jigglebone" type system for crude and simple physics, which would also be nice.