Project 4: Griffin Evans

[grievans]

• https://github.com/grievans/Project4-WebGPU-Forward-Plus-and-Clustered-Deferred/tree/main
• Implemented 3 modes of rendering using WebGPU:
  • Naïve forward rendering
  • Forward+ rendering
  • Clustered Deferred rendering
• Feedback:
  • There were a few bugs in the base code which made setting up the Github deployment and doing performance analysis difficult
    • The stats.js gui used is meant to display run time in milliseconds, but the timer used only actually times the CPU-side calls to start up the shaders used and doesn't actually wait for the GPU-side execution to finish, meaning by default it appears to always output a time of 0 or occasionally 1 millisecond (since the CPU-side code finishes almost immediately).
    • For some reason, the lightRadius constant does not pass in to the shaders properly when deployed on the web, while it does when running locally. I fixed this in my code through hard-coding its value when used in the shaders.
  • I felt relatively lost initially, mostly about the API calls for the setting up of the pipelines and buffers; I think something like a simple intro project to experiment with similar to what we have in Project 0 for CUDA could be a beneficial addition at least as an optional component just to ease into the language more.