
How to solve a maze using shaders (2017) [video] - espeed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULy4vtkw6w
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Waterluvian
Is "shaders" a name that doesn't work anymore? I always perceived them as
after effect functions to apply to a scene to do stuff. Ie. Shading. But they
seem to be little programs you can run in your GPU? I see more and more
examples of using shaders to do stuff that really isn't about taking an output
scene and making it pretty.

Or did shaders always have this extended role?

~~~
zamadatix
There was never a time they weren't turing complete (e.g. you could always
just run the same NAND shader iteratively on the same pixel buffer and compute
whatever you like using pixels as binary storage) but once GPUs moved away
from fixed pipelines it became easier to do whatever you wanted with them.
Nowadays there are also compute type shaders which are kind of what you are
talking about, running little functions on the GPU with no intention of
actually shading anything with it or even working with graphical entities for
that matter.

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eggy
I purchased Shadron as another shader program to play with since Shadertoy was
web-based, and I wanted something small and local. I have had great fun
playing with it especially while taking lunch at work. I don't code for a
living, so this is a true diversion for me during the workday.

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want2know
The first comment is about the constant Tau.

I never heard of Tau so I had to look it up and came across this: "pi is a
confusing and unnatural choice for the circle constant."

So now I am confused.

If a cicle has a diameter of 1 the circumference is pi.

Can someone explain in what context pi might be confusing?

Because the sinus/radians always relates to the radius instead of the
diameter?

~~~
terlisimo
The main arguments are that a circle is defined by its radius, not its
diameter, and that in most cases when you reference Pi in
mathematics/engineering you actually use 2Pi.

From the horse's mouth: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhjsSN-
AiU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhjsSN-AiU)

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wruza
Animations at 5:00 and 6:00, explanation at 1:00.

