OpenGL – Build high performance graphics

Implementing a particle simulation with the compute shader

In this recipe, we'll implement a simple particle simulation. We'll have the compute shader handle the physics computations and update the particle positions directly. Then, we'll just render the particles as points. Without the compute shader, we'd need to update the positions on the CPU by stepping through the array of particles and updating each position in a serial fashion, or by making use of transform feedback as shown in the Creating a particle system using transform feedback recipe in Chapter 9, Particle Systems and Animation. Doing such animations with vertex shaders is sometimes counterintuitive and requires some additional work (such as transform feedback setup). With the compute ...