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Simulating a Planet on the GPU: Part 1 (2022)

(www.patrickcelentano.com)
109 points Doches | 1 comments | 12 Nov 25 06:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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montebicyclelo ◴[12 Nov 25 08:29 UTC] No.45897696[source]▶
As a hobbyist, shaders is up there as one of the most fun types of programming.. Low-level / relatively simple language, often tied to a satisfying visual result. Once it clicks, it's a cool paradigm to be working in, e.g. "I am coding from the perspective of a single pixel".
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lukan ◴[12 Nov 25 08:32 UTC] No.45897737[source]▶
I found them fun once they work, but if something did not work, debugging them I did not enjoy so much.
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1. FormFollowsFunc ◴[12 Nov 25 14:25 UTC] No.45900586[source]▶
I agree it’s very difficult to debug them. I sometimes rewrite my shaders in Vex and debug them in that. It’s a shader language that runs on the CPU in Houdini. You can output a value at each pixel which is useful for values outside the range of 0 to 1 or you can use printf(). I’m still looking for something that will transpile shaders into JavaScript.