x1m4

9 ms·

1.
by x1m4 3y ago
This is an early prototype of a falling sand engine, which uses WebGPU for the simulation and path tracing for the lighting. Only works in latest desktop chrome and might freeze for a few seconds during startup.
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Show HN: A falling sand engine using WebGPU(voxelchain.app)
1 points by x1m4 3y ago|1 comments
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by x1m4 4y ago
For the lighting I'm using a mix of ray tracing and stochastic cone tracing. Cone tracing mainly because it's very cache friendly and almost doesn't introduce any noise. I'm not really using a regular cellular automata o
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by x1m4 4y ago
You should be able to click on the buttons with a left mouse click. Currently worlds that are exported as HTML doesn't contain any editing functionality except being able to interact with voxels.
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by x1m4 4y ago
I've actually spent the majority of development time on optimization rather than actually working on the overall product. The choice to create this project in the browser instead of native certainly made this more challenging! :> An
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by x1m4 4y ago
Does Chrome work for you?
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by x1m4 4y ago
Instead of WebGL, I'd recommend to give WebGPU a try first, as it's a much better designed API. I'd even say that once you've learned the few core concepts of WebGPU (such as command buffers), it's an easier to lear
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by x1m4 4y ago
I have no plans to open-source the engine, but there is a WIP effort [0] to allow programming with the public API that the engine exposes in the editor on the website. Currently the API is mostly used for procedurally generating worlds. - [
9.
by x1m4 4y ago
A few days ago there was actually a Keynote [0] by Brian Karis talking about his experiments with voxels while he was working on Nanite. - [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRnj_lnpORU
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by x1m4 4y ago
Thanks for the report! I've tried to tackle this issue multiple times now, but found that for some reason on MacOS M1, FireFox's WebGL implementation is severely broken on multiple features that the WebGL specification guarantees
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by x1m4 4y ago
At the current stage, the project is more like an editor and playground for designers and coders. But I'm planning on adding a player and entity system, which would allow creators to build actual tiny games with this.
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by x1m4 4y ago
Yes the DOF definitely needs some more work. For screenshots it somewhat works, but when actively exploring a scene, it's actually more confusing than useful. EDIT: Reduced the DOF intensity
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by x1m4 4y ago
Thank you! I've already tried to make a post a couple days ago, but it got immediately hit by the spam filters. Big thanks to the HN support for resolving this so quickly :>
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Show HN: VoxelChain – An Experimental Voxel Engine(voxelchain.app)
118 points by x1m4 4y ago|39 comments