Do you think TressFX could be foundation to creating more realistic effects? For example, if I blast someone in a game with a shotgun and you would see little bits of flesh and organs fly everywhere (grotesque, I know) or if I drove a car past some vegetation at high speed, you would see the vegetation move with the air that was forced unto it from the car. I think TressFX could lead to bigger and better things that add more realistic efffects on a smaller scale than PhysX, for things as described above.
Based on what was shown in Tomb Raider( If only the hair did not clip) it looks promising. Also as being open source all users can have access to it. If it had just a little more work done it could be a great thing.
In most 3d content creation programs (cinema4d, max, maya) people typically use the inbuilt hair systems for mass vegetation like fields of corn / grass etc.
One of the benefits of using it in cinema4d is that doing it this way makes it work with the inbuilt particle system with very little work required.