You know the drill - the forumite creed: there are many opinions but this one is mine. So, don't shoot piano player, he's doing best he can. /grin

Game been tested on rig that is either equal, or surpasses "Ultra" requirements, with 2 R9 290x instead of 1 GTX 980 (sorry, there was no free GTX coupon with game, I'll gladly test it with 980, if you give it to me, I'll even agree on titan, I'm not picky ;P).

1. Contrary to promises I was unable to reproduce that earlier renderer. Maybe I miss something and it's hidden deep in options?
2. Hairworks creates awful stutter. Since it's not Steam copy I have, I can't really measure FPS, but stutter is visible. Moreover, hairs actually behaves odd, goofy outright: ever saw Geralt with his hairs flailing left and right, or trying to climb up, cobra style?:)
3. Flickering on the screen. Not entire screen, mind you, but only parts of it. Can't explain why. Annoying as hell if I know what. Happens randomly.
4. Goofy lightning effects at times, like too bright light,
5. Strange trees behaviour, that doesn't match wind.
6. Game reported failure to import saves some time well into game.
7. Controls input lag and imprecision.
8. You can scale interface, but not fonts. It's been 4 years you've been asked to fix that in Witcher 2.
9. Sound disappears at times, or, heh, sounds too odd, like off place and off time. In several combats all sword-fencing sounds were gone randomly.
10. Downgrade happened (or you fucked us before with false images you branded as "in-game"). You cheeky lying bastards. /grin "Time to kneel and repent!" But first, fix that flickering. And control input lag. And font, for fuck sake, 200 hours with that tiny font, are you kidding me? Where is coupon for free ophthalmologist visits?

First Impressions? Huh? Reads like a bug report / feature request manifesto.

Enjoy your new shiny game for a day or two at least before getting so negative.

Wait for day or two? For what? To see more of these things? You ain't a SEAL, until you eat Italian steel, can't give bugreport until witnessed bug for twelve consecutive hours and all that? :D Come on, bugs won't go anywhere until patched, and judging by GTA V, you can wait for those patches for long, long time.
So you can wait for day, for two, or even for nine months till Enhanced Edition or whatever arrives. I think they already used their get out of jail free card: this game has been delayed several times, all under "we have to improve it" banner, so one could expect game would be cleaned of such obvious issues, some of which are present for several years and remains non-addressed, not to mention few issues reported by various reviewers in allegedly "older builds", that, surprisingly, are still there, despite game already being released with day one patch. I understand, stability is the sign of excellence, but I wouldn't think less of CDPR should they add normal font and adjust controls for an "open world" game where are no more barriers exist and in certain places precision split life from death (okay, load game). I don't know how good or bad controls are with gamepad and on consoles, but from keyboard and mouse point of view I think controls are pretty much borken. Plus some other issues, like inability to reassign some controls at all.
If they sold themselves to Nvidia for their shiny stuff, it is their choice where there deliberately chose to exclude part of community that has GPU from AMD, but they had several months to test AMD and Crossfire compatibility, if they don't have any AMD hardware on site, they could release some test build for AMD users, because we, unlike those "journalists" are interested in flawless performance on our rigs, right after release.

P.S. Where is the smiley holding "Sarcasm!" sign when you need one? /grin

Well, I am on a Titan X, and in response to your issues:

1. Contrary to promises I was unable to reproduce that earlier renderer. Maybe I miss something and it's hidden deep in options?
Me: Ummm, what

2. Hairworks creates awful stutter. Since it's not Steam copy I have, I can't really measure FPS, but stutter is visible. Moreover, hairs actually behaves odd, goofy outright: ever saw Geralt with his hairs flailing left and right, or trying to climb up, cobra style?:)
Me: I havent had stutters, but yes, the hair is all over the place, and flickering too on some other characters. But, this seems to be the nvidia hairworks software, as it has happened on other games that have it (and lower spec machines from me, so not hardware based).

3. Flickering on the screen. Not entire screen, mind you, but only parts of it. Can't explain why. Annoying as hell if I know what. Happens randomly.
Me: Not having that issue.

4. Goofy lightning effects at times, like too bright light,
Me: Not having that issue.

5. Strange trees behaviour, that doesn't match wind.
Me: Yup. Noticed this right off the bat. Only seems to be in the first realm though, as its no longer happening in the 2nd realm so far.

6. Game reported failure to import saves some time well into game.
Me: Nope, thank GOD.

7. Controls input lag and imprecision.
Me: Yup. Mine is keyboard only, and mostly with the horse. The horse takes ages to turn after first getting on him.

8. You can scale interface, but not fonts. It's been 4 years you've been asked to fix that in Witcher 2.
Me: True.

9. Sound disappears at times, or, heh, sounds too odd, like off place and off time. In several combats all sword-fencing sounds were gone randomly.
Me: I have had 2 spots, where peoples lips were moving for ~3-5 seconds before the dialog started.

10. Downgrade happened (or you fucked us before with false images you branded as "in-game"). You cheeky lying bastards. /grin "Time to kneel and repent!" But first, fix that flickering. And control input lag. And font, for fuck sake, 200 hours with that tiny font, are you kidding me? Where is coupon for free ophthalmologist visits?
Me: Visuals look great, although some of those trailers did seem to be 'not ingame', as I cant get mine to look that lifelike, but still looks really good.

Can't please everyone. Best looking game so far just isn't good enough for some people.

So much butthurt ...

Much appreciated. This. Reply number 2. No direct option "VGX renderer" nor some "saturation/hue/whatever" sliders. Maybe they'll add it later, who knows. Of course you don't have stutters, you have Nvidia. :) Though friend of mine have some FPS problems with it on his 970. Good for you. It's too obnoxious and unpredictable, so I can't really pinpoint on what's wrong. Tried disabling crossfire and "playing" with settings, nothing helps. One of most annoying, it's looking into Aldis. Could be linked with flickering. Or tied to specific arrangement of objects on the scene, hard to say. I think I've seen a few, shaking like they're filming bear porn up top. Checked, no bears. Unless they are invisible. :) I guess that'll be 11 - had people being either spawned out of thin air, appearing or disappearing (judge by radar marks, whether they are there or not). Not as massive and frequent as AC:Unity, but still, funny. At least for now as only unimportant characters did that. Could you verify whether your imported conditions are correct or not? We don't have any imported gear and for now I've found only one possible hint on import, but since I don't know what was considered "canon", I have no idea whether it is import or the message was just a glitch. Well, when you don't have obvious weak spots or outright goofiness game indeed looks great, no denial here. They greatly upgraded human models, mostly faces, some look very realistic, but some models do have minor issues, like that "precious cargo" quest giver, who has obvious opened seam on his sleeve, and some characters who has belts and various gear elements either hovering above main model, or clipping through each other.
Vegetation looks odd, I mean it's big and aplenty, but somewhat "flat", with sharp edges, and at times looks a bit cartoonish.
Animations mostly fine, with an exception of that DA2-like pattern, with pauses between moves, instead of fluid flow of moves we had in W2, for example. Could be linked to input lag.
No FOV slider, no camera options, and Witcher's senses narrowing FOV even more.
Water looks sub-par, really.
About stability. Game's been running for several hours, both maximized and minimized, no stability issues whatsoever. It almost strange. :) Hey, when we talk about perfection - skies are limit. ;P Why so serious? :) We all having fun here.;)
Problem is we have absolutely no idea how game with older renderer would perform. CDPR do not disclose that info publicly, so until previous variant release all these talks about horrible performance are speculations. Chances are CDPR will release it in few weeks after sales' peak on consoles will be gone and we, PC Master race would enjoy the visuals we deserve. :) I find "we disabled best settings for future" amusing, if not hilarious at best. Surely, good games remain good games, and we buy good old games on this site, but massively, nobody would give a shit about it, as there would be better looking games. So "locking features" look very odd for me. According to my monitoring software, Witcher 3 never used more than 30% of CPU power, and mostly is around 20%, and there is no steady 100% usage of GPU, mostly spiky load levels, what makes me thing there are unused reserves already. Scroll to the bottom of the list of keybindings, you'll find some locked ones. Some of them are those I'd like to reconfigure. ArmA habit and all that. :) You may not notice any flickering at all, as it could be AMD-only problem. And lag only input-related, been riding like crazy, no visual FPS drops. With hairworks disabled, that's it.. You may want to reduce music to hear things better. It's not frequent thing.

not having any of the issues you are posting and definitely no lag or frame drops using HairWorks at all... would help if you actually stated your system spec. The game is the best looking rpg I've played, it feels alive, it has some beautiful lighting effects and I'm enjoying myself. 9.2/10 from me so far.

Well, I said it is equal or surpass "Ultra" requirements and specified the only difference - GPU, I guess that's suffice. But it would be nice to know GPU from what manufacturer do you have.

On a side note, I finally managed to hang it, when picked up guarded treasure near precious cargo location. Buddies couldn't believe this game works just fine for all day long. Achievement unlocked. /grin

But seriously, flickering and small font size aside (both are hard on eyes), this game is very good. Storytelling, narration, lore, fan-service (or whatever that named), are superb. I won't give any points score, but why the hell you're not playing it yet?

Hah you have a point there.

Haha, first impressions of an excellent game and every single point is a bug/gripe? How...balanced of you. :p

Now you get the idea. :)

Because they are first impressions; things you spot before you could get into story, narration and whatnot.
And should game be excellent, it wouldn't have those problems. ;P

I am playing it or was at the time, but I was eating so easier to write then navigate and dodge with Geralt :D My card by the way is an Asus GTX970 and it does have a small oc (I have had 2 minor lock ups as well from playing inventory tetras but F5 is my friend)... glad your enjoying it. I do understand your frustrations with small fonts however, as one of my own eyes is next to useless... but I only play at 1080p on a 27" monitor, so things are generally large, but the lack of font scaling is something I have noticed with a lot of games, console and PC and these companies should know better. First impression other then wolves with HairWorks was when I walked straight into one mother of a large bear (near a place of power), the hair was thick and rippled, it made the beast look even more intimidating. The bear was well animated, not terribly bright, but well animated, as it chased immortal Roach around in circles.

Thanks for reply. :) Your experience may be tied to your GTX card, as many Nvidia users do not have some issues us, AMD users have. But instead you have your own, meant to be played and such. :)
Jokes aside, so far I do enjoy game, and I can only hope CDPR had enough power, zeal, passion, muse, inspiration, whatever else there is, to keep game interesting throughout most of duration.
Well, judging by GUI/controls, we, PC users, got as much attention from developers as white crayon. :) Sad, really.
As for hairworks, I can't check them ingame, as FPS drop is too severe, and I'm not sure I'll be able to get decent look anyway.
P.S. Immortal Roach sounds like an awesome opponent for Unstoppable Raid. :)