The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt has been hyped for setting new standards in the graphics department and Nvidia have also released an updated graphic driver specifically for the game. They provide updated optimizations for SLI profile and one-click game setting optimizations within the GeForce Experience application as listed from page 8 of their detailed patch notes pdf. These drivers can be downloaded here. You can also check out Nvidia’s he Witcher 3 Graphic guide at this link. Just note that they have benchmarked the game on two Titan X GPUs in SLI.
To show off their proprietary Gameworks technology only available on Nvidia cards in the new video that went up on Nvidia’s official YouTube page highlighting the some of the NVIDIA GameWorks effects integrated in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. A small highlight below covers the majority of those GameWorks engine technologies.
NVIDIA HairWorks has been used in over three dozen animals and monsters. This technology provides realistic fur and hair that responds to the creatures’ movements as well as environmental effects such wind, but has a very heavy effect on performance. PhysX powers various effects such as clothing on Geralt, world monsters, flags, banners and sails that wave in the wind. GameWorks Destruction sends debris flying about the scene as Geralt unleashes a magical sign. NVIDIA HBAO+ offers accurate, detailed Ambient Occlusion shadowing in every scene
While this does raise the bar for graphics and physics in video games, it also sets a bad precedent in the industry as this thread on reddit argues. Simply put, by having exclusive technologies that benefit their latest products at the cost of the competition will lead to an exclusivity war which forces consumers to upgrade more frequently than they need to. While this move may have short term benefits it will have grave costs in the long term.
