Nvidia's dropped a video of an incredible AI-powered hairdressing sim and now I want a digital barbershop
An Nvidia researcher, presenting at SIGGRAPH in the summer(opens in new tab), will show off the most realistic barbershop simulator I've ever seen. And weirdly now I really want to get my hands on some virtual scissors and go to town on this digital Barbie head.
The tens of thousands of hairs simulated here are using neural physics, a technique which harnesses the AI processing power of your graphics card to predict how something will move and interact with other objects in the real world. Looking at the video, there's an RTX Real-Time at the top, suggesting Nvidia's RTX cards will be the ones with the specific processing power for this technique.
«This technique finally enables both accurate and interactive physically based hair grooming,» reads the description on the video. Now, the 'finally' is doing a lot of heavy lifting for me there, because I wasn't aware there was such a genuine desire out there for hair grooming simulators.
But now I've seen one in action, it could be a real nice cozy game for those times where you don't want the stress of saving the universe, or blasting zombies/Nazis.
To be fair, the sim genre is a bit of an oddity in gaming terms, because even the most banal of endeavours can be transformed into the most absorbing hobby simply by its recreation as a PC-based sim. Farming Simulator is huge; Bus and Truck Simulators have large followings; Jet Wash Simulator picked up its share of fans, and I've whiled away hours on Car Mechanic Simulator myself.
That's not to mention the people simming of The Sims, the classic bug-tracking Sim Ant, and of course Flight Simulator.
So yeah, I could absolutely get behind Hair Salon Simulator. You get the combination of business management, the joy of brand
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