GPUParticlePlayground

A DirectX 11 based boid flocking simulation.

Features And Notes

• Requires DirectX 11
• Requires shader model 5.0 or higher.
• Normal map painting via realtime height map sampling.
  • Boids will collide with brush strokes.
  • No inter frame interpolation (fast movements can leave spotty strokes).
  • Also works as a voronoi cell painter (with very high brush size).
• Boid/Physics simulation
  • Simulation unit scale is in pixels.
  • Simulate up to 16,000 boids at once (for an average fps of 120 on test machine).
    • Could be increased but for ui design reasons this was an ok cap.
  • Runtime configuration to change boid simulation settings.
  • Runtime configuration to change physics simulation settings.
• Input
  • Q: Repel boids.
  • W: Restart Simulation.
  • E: Attract boids.
  • Left mouse button: brush paint.

Source File Appendix

• RootRenderer
  • Executes the render and simulation loop.
  • Creates and holds reference of runtime graphics resources.
• SH_CS_BoidCompute
  • Responsible for core boid simulation logic.
  • DirectX11 Compute Shader.
  • CSBoidMain kernel executes boid simulation on the gpu with 32 items per thread group.
• SH_IMG_Drawing
  • Screen space shader for normal map painting.
  • Outputs to an accumulative drawing buffer.
  • renders a 2D signed distance field where only positive values are visible.
    • normals are calculated by sampling the field around the active pixel.
• SH_PROC_BoidMesh
  • Procedurally generates quads out of boid instances.
  • Transforms boids from screen space to clip space.
• UIUtilities
  • UI Utility classes and interfaces.
• UISetting
  • UI ISetting interface implementation for setting instantiation.
• UIHandler
  • Handles UI logic and toggles user input.
  • Acts as an interface between RootRenderer and UISetting.