Hair

Hair and fur are materials difficult to represent realistically in games, both in terms of detail and in terms of dynamic movement. Just as hairstyles are subject to fashion in the human world and can be used to date images to particular periods, they can be used to date games roughly. Low resolution hair came before high resolution hair, and hair and fur that moves realistically in real-time is today cutting-edge technology.

In Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics, 2013) a new system, TressFX, was introduced to simulate movements of individual strands of hair in real-time in a game. The system requires a fast PC to animate the motions of thousands of individual strands of hair on Lara Croft's head. You can read about TressFX here: TressFX Hair, the world's first real-time hair physics system in a playable game. Note that, in the game, only Lara's hair exhibits the effect, but since her hair is more apparent than others' in third-person perspective, it works to good effect, adding realism and interest to the figure of the leading character (although it does highlight the lack of effect in others' hair!).

When Heavenly Sword was released in 2007 for PS3, the developers, Ninja Theory, were particularly proud of how the main character's (Nariko's) hair looked and behaved in the game. Fans liked her hair and were inspired to feature it in computer wallpapers and graphics they made, in modelled hair available to buy, and in female wig stylings. (Search online for "Nariko's hair" for examples.)