Find: from the rtr folks -- gpu view sounds interesting


Seven Things for June 6th

It’s D-Day and it’s been awhile, so let’s get going. This is a LIFO of the 486 backlogged links I’ve collected for this blog:



  • GPUView looks like an interesting profiling tool from some students at Stanford (done as interns at Microsoft, which has a more official page), though I’ve heard it’s a bit of work to set up. If you’ve used it, how did you find it?

  • Open source code for a fast and scalable GLSL GPU implementation of the Perlin noise with functions, not textures.

  • NV Path Rendering is not what you might think, it’s about rendering text and 2D paths with quite a bit of elaboration available (think SVG or other 2D vector descriptions). GTC presentation here.

  • The book “Physically Based Rendering” is now in eBook form, including PDF (so I assume no DRM?). Annoyingly, it costs considerably more than the physical book on Amazon, but that’s the publisher’s doing.

  • Proland looked intriguing, a procedural terrain generator that creates based on view. Appears fairly elaborate, and a quick way to get some plausible-looking terrain data.

  • Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmarking system; from what I’ve heard, mobile platforms kind of set the clock back a fair number of year in terms of performance. Still, 3D is doable (it certainly was in 2002); here’s a starter list of 3D CAD apps for Android (many are on the iPad, too). I need to search out more, I’m interested in what’s out there.

  • Finally, in the category “this looks like a painting but is reality”, a photo taken in Namibia: