Graphics Warrior GLSL

In this section, we will quickly learn how to run GLSL in the world of pixels.

What is GLSL?

GLSL stands for OpenGL Shader Language, which is a GPU-based rendering language supported by OpenGL. It's mainly used to write pixel rendering rules and utilize the GPU for computation.

How to learn?

We recommend The Book of Shaders, which is available for free online reading.

Advantages of Graphics Language

If we compare the Central Processing Unit (CPU) on the motherboard to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) on the graphics card, the CPU is like a super sports car, while the GPU is like a large bus.

For transporting a small number of people over a certain distance, a super sports car performs extraordinarily well.

However, if you want to perform highly repetitive tasks—such as computing an image—where you can imagine moving hundreds or thousands of people, then choosing a large bus is clearly the wise choice.

The programming languages we usually learn, such as C/C++, Java, and Python, mostly run directly on the CPU.

Whereas languages like GLSL are designed to run on the GPU.

When processing an image, the GPU can deploy many "workers" simultaneously to carry out highly repetitive tasks, with the specific work content defined by GLSL.

For more information on GLSL syntax, it is recommended to visit shadertoy.com. Find some interesting and simple effects to explore how they work.

Details:

Before running GLSL, we predefine many variables and functions. If you are a beginner, you can temporarily ignore this part.

• PixelsWorld V3.0.0 uses #version 330 core.

Click here to view additional predefined code.