Nvidia's hardware accelerated PhysX API is the most advanced physics API available to game developers these days. Compared to PhysX, Havok is practically in the stone age.

While it's still very capable, Havok has no support for GPU accelerated physics, and thus many of the advanced particle effects you see in PhysX titles, cannot be accomplished using Havok without a steep decline in performance.

You could use GPU accelerated physics to do so many things that are anywhere from impractical, to unfeasible with software physics.

Imagine Geralt and Triss having realistic looking, and moving hair (Triss could finally let her hair down). Or the dress of a sorceress that reacts to her movement. Or how about mist or fog in a moon lit forest, that reacts to the movement of the characters or monsters.

You could make some cool looking spell, bomb or sign effects with PhysX as well, and make them much more destructive, realistic and spectacular to behold.

CDPR already used Nvidia's 3D Vision for the Witcher 2, so there's no reason they can't go the extra mile and implement hardware accelerated PhysX as well..

Here's the Borderlands 2 PhysX trailer for anyone that wants to see what GPU accelerated PhysX is capable of.

BTW, how the hell do you embed youtube videos? />

While there is a very good chance that the Witcher 3 will be DX11 (considering it will be shipping after the release of the next gen consoles this year), I'm still worried that it may end up being DX9. I mean, I was genuinely surprised when I found out that the Witcher 2 was going to be DX9 only.

What does it matter some of you might say, especially after seeing how beautiful the Witcher 2 was with good old DX9.. I mean, the damn game looked better than most DX11 titles.. However, it's not merely a matter of image quality why the Witcher 3 must be DX11.

As lovely as the Witcher 2 was, it suffered from several issues (IQ and performance) that could easily have been remedied with the proper use of DX11. In terms of IQ, the Witcher 2 had horrible looking grainy shadows, and the lighting (while excellent for DX9) paled in comparison to what can be found in the most cutting edge DX11 titles (namely Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3).

Also, while texture detail is one area where the Witcher 2 excelled in, texture variety isn't. With DX11's higher texture compression, we could see less of those repeating textures in the Witcher 3 and a lot more variety.

The performance enhancements though is where the real benefits are. We've all seen the horrible texture pop in the Witcher 2, which seems to have gotten even worse after the EE patch. This could be wiped out with DX11, as DX11 has multithreaded rendering, enabling the CPU to send more data to the GPU at once in a single command list, resulting in more being rendered in less time.

Also, I would like to see the Witcher 3 take the same route as BF3 and be 64-bit only to take advantage of the higher memory ceiling. If the Witcher 3 will be an open World game like rumors state, then having access to more memory will definitely be very beneficial as it will result in much shorter loading times and larger areas for Geralt to play in.

It seems fairly axiomatic, that Geralt requires another evasive maneuver other than roll. CDPR must make this a priority for the Witcher 3, as rolling around to evade or set up attacks is very unrealistic and to be frank, looks ridiculous.

A quick stepping move (either laterally or at an angle) would be much more realistic. Also, when one is surrounded by enemies, a leaping move reminiscent to the first Witcher game which would allow Geralt to jump over an enemy.

OK, I haven't played dark mode in the Witcher 2, but I was watching a video on youtube where the player does this fast rush move with Geralt that I've never seen before.

Here's the video:

link

Go to 2:20..