Rise of the Tomb Raider, which launches later this year on Xbox One and Xbox 360, will be incorporating a new, advanced version of the hair technology enabled by AMD’s TressFX. All of this will help Lara Croft have hair that behaves believably in the game.

“We definitely believe the hair technology we developed with AMD was a foundation for the way we believe hair will be rendered in the future video game graphics,” game director Brian Horton said on the official Tomb Raider Tumblr. “And, as pioneers of this–there’s not many people to look at for reference other than films–we have been pushing that technology to find ways to make it even better.

“The hair is now in clusters, so the way hair naturally falls is that hair wants to be next to a adjacent hairs that create shapes. Now, the hair splines can follow these guide hairs and these formerly physics-grown hairs, so it feels a little bit more natural when it moves.”

All of this should help Lara’s hair behave more realistically than hair has ever done in a video game before. For instance, Horton cited an example about the kind of changes this would bring to how hair acts. “When she goes underwater, her hair will float and it’s important- when it comes out of the water–it will feel heavier and feel more clumped and obviously look wet and darker.”

Personally, a character’s hair is the last thing I am worried about when I am playing the game, but for those who feel that this adds to the immersion, this should come as good news.

We recently spoke to various individuals over at AMD – with answers compiled by Robert Hallock, PR Lead for Gaming and Enthusiast Graphics – about the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, including the company’s role in designing the consoles, and on what the future holds for PC gaming as well what the company is doing to innovate in graphics.

Rashid Sayed: Next generation seems to be firmly in AMD’s grasp, since all the three platform holders–Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo–are using AMD tech. What benefits will this bring to the company as a whole in, say, the next 5-6 years?

"Coming into this latest generation, our flagship Graphics Core Next architecture is the common fabric for any game developer looking to publish. "

Robert Hallock: It’s tremendously difficult to predict where things will go in 5-6 years, but we can talk about the near-term with more confidence: the game development industry now uses AMD Radeon graphics for six shipping platforms: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox 360, Microsoft Xbox One and the PC.

For five of those six platforms, Radeon is the only choice in the development process. And coming into this latest generation, our flagship Graphics Core Next architecture is the common fabric for any game developer looking to publish. It’s all a bit oblivious to believe or assert that this situation won’t have a positive and obvious effect on the overall level of optimization games demonstrate for AMD architectures.

Rashid Sayed: It has recently been revealed that DICE will be optimizing Battlefield 4 for AMD hardware. Which, given that AMD powers the PS4 and Xbox One, seems to make sense. However, as more next generation titles release for the Xbox One and PS4, we could see more games being optimized for AMD hardware. How will this trend affect the company going forward in the PC market, which is still dominated by Nvidia?

Robert Hallock: The vast majority of the AAA PC titles released in 2012 and 2013 were already optimized for AMD Radeon, including Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Hitman: Absolution, Far Cry 3, Battlefield 4 and more. That was through our ongoing AMD Gaming Evolved program.

By this measure, I think it’s difficult to characterize a market dominated by NVIDIA; the proof is not in the pudding. And when you also take into account that AMD’s GCN Architecture is now the singular architecture of focus for any developer looking to do business in consoles, then it’s perfectly logical to conclude that Radeon is the force to be reckoned with.

Rashid Sayed: Since Sony and Microsoft have [different] philosophies towards the videogames market, how difficult was it creating a custom solution that catered to their needs?

Robert Hallock: I can’t personally speculate on the difficulty of creating such solutions, and I’m sure Sony, Nintendo Microsoft would like to tell their own story. But what I can say is that AMD’s semi-custom business is an excellent example of our engineering prowess, our world-class IP portfolio, and our dedication to our customers.

"I think the gaming community would do itself an injustice by rushing to crown a winner or a loser. I don’t see it as that kind of race, because we all win—users and, yes, AMD alike--when the market provides a big matrix of choices that can appeal to gamers of every stripe."

We were able to collaboratively design and bring up several unique solutions that, as you say, catered to their needs. Nobody else in our space is offering this manner of flexibility, and our full house of design wins is proof that this strategy is working.

Ravi Sinha: Much has been made about the power of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and how one is more powerful than the other. Given that the AMD technology powering them is the same, how far does technology actually influence the success of either console in the initial period? The Wii U, for instance, is technologically inferior to both, but has still had a fairly decent initial period, however understated, in the market.

Robert Hallock: Success is an awfully nebulous recipe, and I would argue that it’s literally impossible to isolate how much “technology” weighs on the final product. Other ingredients are just as important to many people: price, game library, content partnerships, accessories and the like.

However, I think the gaming community would do itself an injustice by rushing to crown a winner or a loser. I don’t see it as that kind of race, because we all win—users and, yes, AMD alike–when the market provides a big matrix of choices that can appeal to gamers of every stripe. We’re thrilled to be the beating heart of these amazing CE devices.

Ravi Sinha: Following up on the previous question, will there ever be a time where the architecture is no longer a factor in the improvement of one console generation? Microsoft, for instance, announced that it would be able to use Cloud Computing to continuously improve one’s gaming experience, effectively adding on to the base experience (Forza Motorsport 5’s Drivatar is one such example). It could become a matter of “why get a new console when your current games are continually updated?”

" Choosing AMD over NVIDIA is an obvious choice for a consumer electronic device. We offer x86 and powerful state-of-the-art GPU solutions in a single chip with our Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). "

Robert Hallock: I think such a development is best answered by the console makers. It’s only natural that they would know best the future of their respective businesses. Whatever that future might be, however, we are in the business of creating solutions to meet the needs of our customers. In the arena of cloud gaming, for example, we have the AMD Radeon Sky Series of GPUs, which are server-grade graphics processors specifically engineered to render, compress and stream games in the cloud.

Rashid Sayed: How deeply was AMD involved in building/suggesting the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s architecture? Also, how did Sony and Microsoft go about selecting AMD over Nvidia?

Robert Hallock: Choosing AMD over NVIDIA is an obvious choice for a consumer electronic device. We offer x86 and powerful state-of-the-art GPU solutions in a single chip with our Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). This is what the console makers demanded, and only AMD has the ability to deliver on that demand. With respect to our level of involvement, the design of the APUs in these consoles was collaborative.

Rashid Sayed: Are there any differences in terms of GPU design and raw horsepower on the PS4 and Xbox One?

Robert Hallock: Sony and Microsoft would be in a better position to comment on the relative merits of their hardware.

Rashid Sayed: Nvidia recently said that the profit margins were low in the console business, and they didn’t think it was something they should aggressively pursue. What are your thoughts on this?

Robert Hallock: The position seems a bit like sour grapes to me. The reality, according to industry legends like John Carmack (citation), is that the standardization of console hardware will, in his words, ‘make it cheaper and easier to develop games for multiple platforms.’ And, he continues, that will improve the quality of games as devs spend time polishing them, rather than juggling architectural particulars.

We are very proud to help enable this sort of ecosystem for game developers, and excited that such an ecosystem runs almost unilaterally on our hardware. I can’t imagine why anyone would willingly cede such a favorable situation.

"A similar upward trend [for PC gaming] was predicted by JPR for 2012, and it bore out positively. Obviously none of us have a crystal ball, but analysts seem quite bullish on the market."

Rashid Sayed: The PS4 and Xbox One have exotic architectures, but do you think they will be able to stand the test of time and give stiff competition to the ever evolving PC platform in the future?

Robert Hallock: I think Sony and Microsoft would be better suited to answer how they intend to keep their platforms healthy over the long term.

Ravi Sinha: Tell us a bit about the PC platform. We know you guys are heavily invested in it, so how do you see it shaping up in the next few years after the PS4 and Xbox One are released?

Robert Hallock: Peddie Research just released some excellent data on this topic, illustrating a continuous rise in PC gaming hardware–$20.7 billion by 2016. A similar upward trend was predicted by JPR for 2012, and it bore out positively. Obviously none of us have a crystal ball, but analysts seem quite bullish on the market.

Ravi Sinha: One of the major bastions for Nvidia is in the mobile market, with its upcoming Tegra 4. Intel has also been making waves in the market with its Atom series and the upcoming Haswell. AMD has recently announced its next generation processors for tablets and laptops, but are there any plans for implementing these APUs in smartphones? Also, how far will the mobile APUs go towards combating the likes of not only Nvidia but Qualcomm, which will release the Snapdragon 800 in the near future for supporting 2K resolutions on smartphones?

Robert Hallock: We are tremendously proud of our APUs and the form factors we enable, such as that VIZIO tablet I mentioned. Ditto our sweep of the next-gen consoles. But Lisa Su, our SVP and GM of AMD’s Global Business Units, recently noted in a call with Gulf News that we have no plans to enter the smartphone market.

"I’m continually fascinated by the ways you can creatively reinterpret graphics APIs (like DirectX) to come up with cool effects like TressFX Hair. Who knows what AMD’s game developers are cooking up? "

Ravi Sinha: AMD introduced TressFX with Tomb Raider earlier this year that lent to realistically modeled and shaded hair on characters. Will we be seeing any other games taking advantage of this technology in the future, or maybe an advanced version of the same? Also, what other areas of graphical design is AMD working towards for creating visual realism?

Robert Hallock: Technologies like TressFX Hair enter into our portfolio of in-game effects that we can offer developers when we collaborate with them as part of the AMD Gaming Evolved program. Other effects in that portfolio include High-Definition Ambient Occlusion (HDAO), Forward+ rendering, or sparse voxel octree global illumination (SVOGI). We don’t force game developers to take any or all of these technologies, rather we open the buffet table to enable them with the tools to meet their vision of the game.

It is absolutely conceivable that TressFX Hair will appear in future games, but it’s too soon to comment on when or what those games might be. With respect to what we’re working on going forward, I’m continually fascinated by the ways you can creatively reinterpret graphics APIs (like DirectX) to come up with cool effects like TressFX Hair. Who knows what AMD’s game developers are cooking up? (Yes, AMD has game developers on staff!)

Ravi Sinha: With the release of the Richland APU for PCs, AMD is beginning to move towards the next generation of PC technology. What does this entail for PCs, and what will be the focus areas for AMD in the next few years?

Robert Hallock: I’m not in a position to forecast the future for our business, but here and now we are intensely focused on gaming technologies. Our workstation team has the AMD Radeon Sky Series of GPUs, designed to stream games from the datacenter to a thin or light client. Our CPU business continues to push the envelope with chips like the 5GHz AMD FX 9590.

"Our APU and semi-custom businesses are firing on all cylinders with the “Jaguar” core for consoles, and the Richland, Temash, and Kabini chips for a diverse range of PC form factors."

Our APU and semi-custom businesses are firing on all cylinders with the “Jaguar” core for consoles, and the Richland, Temash, and Kabini chips for a diverse range of PC form factors. And of course our graphics IP is intimately woven throughout most of these products, demonstrating a real harmony amongst our teams and within our technology portfolio.

Ravi Sinha: Bottlenecks for PCs have always been around, with significant hurdles still existing in utilizing the full power of multi-core CPUs and connections between the RAM and CPU in a system. What is currently being done to reduce those bottlenecks and take full advantage of the power that AMD provides?

Robert Hallock: Programming for multi-threaded platforms is an inherently challenging task, as many PC enthusiasts have probably heard. Therefore it seems unwise to offer products that explicitly depend on such optimizations. Coming from that perspective, we offer a portfolio that enables excellent performance regardless of the developer’s approach to threading. If the developer happens to be particularly good at it, then our architectures are scalable to accommodate as well.

Rashid Sayed: Last question. Chris Doran the founder of Geomerics recently said to us that CGI level graphics is still an active area of research in video games and at the moment artists do not have the freedom to put their stuff at will while they move around the world. Now, we have seen some amazing tech demos from AMD or the recent Infiltrator demo from Epic Games, which seems to indicate that the power to integrate such high end graphics is there but we still don’t see retail games taking advantage of that. What is your take on the same?

Robert Hallock: Tech demos are a very strange and often misunderstood beast. While some demos, like our “Leo” demo, were designed to demonstrate technologies we’re making available in games today (Partially Resident Textures and Forward+ rendering), other demos are very aspirational, painting a picture of where the industry could go in a few years’ time.

"The truth is that these aspirational demos are the ideal, pristinely perfect environment: they’re designed for a fixed hardware target, using the best possible implementation of a technology, allocating virtually all GPU resources to rendering that technology."

It is the latter kind of demo that often causes people to wonder why a technology can’t be in a game if it can be played in a demo. The truth is that these aspirational demos are the ideal, pristinely perfect environment: they’re designed for a fixed hardware target, using the best possible implementation of a technology, allocating virtually all GPU resources to rendering that technology.

But spending your GPU resources to rendering just one effect is not how games work. To be blunt, you cannot blow your entire performance budget on one effect. So the industry must advance a few years to a time when the effect and the quality of yesteryear’s demo now consumes a manageable portion of the GPU’s performance, rather than the whole.

TressFX Hair is a powerful example, because it wasn’t until we combined sufficient compute and triangle rendering capabilities in a single chip with the GCN Architecture that real-time hair physics could be a reality. Many companies have done aspirational tech demos for hair, but we alone were able advance the industry by making it a reality.

I don’t envision a time when aspirational demos like this will ever fall out of favor, because it is fascinating to not just imagine, but see the possibilities the future holds.

A big thank you to Roy Taylor, Robert Hallock, Christine Brown and the entire team at AMD for making this interview happen.

However the many demos showcased highlight that not only will the PS4 be able to significantly up the amount of detail on screen – with more particle effects, greater draw distances and a larger number of character models on screen – but that it will significantly increase the realism of its environments and characters. Well, as realistic as a flaming demon lord could look in the real world that is. This goes double for the facial capture, which has moved up the chain of motion capture and scanning to support a higher number of triangles with each new generation.

But just how does the PS4 measure up to the previous generations? What kind of evolutions have we seen since? We take a look back at previous PlayStation facial model tech demos to compare just how far the PS4 has come – and how much of a leap it is over the PS3.

Let’s start with Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation. It’s amazing how for a game praised on the basis of its emotive storytelling and deep characters that the facial emotions look so blocky now. Of course, they looked blocky back then as well. Capturing facial expressions using motion capture just wasn’t practical in the old days.

With the PlayStation 2, the number of polygons was upped significantly. A full 3D scan of a model’s face was now at hand to be peppered with details. Cue the introduction of shader technology that gave detail and texture to the features, adding those wrinkles for realism and individual hairs on the eyebrows and head.

Of course, modelling and rendering those individual hairs was still incredibly tough – it’s actually not until AMD’s TressFX technology that we can see a realistic depiction of 3D modeled hair in a video game.

But the foundation was set for the PlayStation 3. David Cage of Quantic Dream deeded to take the technology for a spin and produced a tech demo for KARA. One can see the basis of KARA and how it applies to Beyond: Two Souls’ protagonist (at least in how vaguely similar they look).

It’s here that the amount of triangles added became an almost indiscernible mesh. Lighting and detail that realistically reflects off the iris in the eye gives it that extra hint of detail. The power needed to properly model detailed expressions was still slightly lacking. But hey, Beyond: Two Souls still looks pretty damn good.

That lack of power would also keep the system from properly rendering individual strands of hair, as seen in the Alfred Molina tech demo from E3 2005. While the texture quality and triangle count is high, with various wrinkles and even sweat visible, the hair was still just a neat clump of triangles.

At the PlayStation 4 reveal event, David Cage revealed the new engine that was being worked on at Quantic Dream. He also let us know about the triangle count on Beyond: Two Souls being 30,000 for a single model. He then showcased renders of an old man using the new engine.

The utter nuance of expressions and the significantly improved rendering of individual strands of hair was much better handled here. And while it may not look like a significant step up from the PS3 at first, looking at the two side by side showcases just how far the technology has come.

Again, this is only the beginning. If the PS3 is capable of something like Beyond: Two Souls and can play host (maybe) to games like Metal Gear Solid V and Battlefield 4, it will be interesting to see just what the PS4 is capable of.

The overall graphical options can be seen below in the first screenshot. This is on a system with 8 GB DDR3 RAM clocked at 1600 MHz with a 2600K at 4.6 GHz and a 2 GB GTX 670 – by no means a slouch in terms of graphical capability.

Now, check out what kind of performance is obtained with TressFX enabled.

A minimum 23.3 frame per second and maximum 39.6 frames per second. This makes for an average frame rate of 31.1 FPS.

Now, see what kind of performance is obtained with TressFX disabled.

A minimum FPS of 38.9 and maximum 60.3 FPS. This makes for an average of 50.5 frames per second – nearly double that of enabling TressFX. Insane. Just insane.

But the amount of detail obtained is indubitably worth it. Check out the Tomb Raider gameplay video below with TressFX enabled and see if you agree.

For Tomb Raider, it is required that you have a AMD HD 7000 series card for optimal performance.

“TressFX Hair revolutionizes Lara Croft’s locks by using the DirectCompute programming language to unlock the massively-parallel processing capabilities of the Graphics Core Next architecture, enabling image quality previously restricted to pre-rendered images,” AMD’s blog reads.

“Building on AMD’s previous work on Order Independent Transparency, this method makes use of Per-Pixel Linked-List data structures to manage rendering complexity and memory usage.

“DirectCompute is additionally utilized to perform the real-time physics simulations for TressFX Hair. This physics system treats each strand of hair as a chain with dozens of links, permitting for forces like gravity, wind and movement of the head to move and curl Lara’s hair in a realistic fashion.

“Further, collision detection is performed to ensure that strands do not pass through one another, or other solid surfaces such as Lara’s head, clothing and body. Finally, hair styles are simulated by gradually pulling the strands back towards their original shape after they have moved in response to an external force.”

Here are some examples.

However, as if to still showcase its alliegance to PC gamers, AMD is now teasing something referred to as “tressfx”. The company is calling it “a new frontier of realism in PC gaming” with the tagline “Render. Rinse. Repeat” and invites gamers to learn more on Tuesday, February 26th. Judging by the tease and ads running, it would seem AMD is going to tackle the problem of realistic hair rendering in video games.

But is it just us or all these pre-announced dates for mysterious reveals starting to get a little annoying?

Regardless it’ll be interesting to see what AMD has to offer PC gamers, especially given the new NVidia GTX Titan and the overarching technology of the PS4 that is supposedly – and lay heavy emphasis on “supposedly” – wowing consumers around the world.