[osg-users] Pragmatic shader - a new #pragma directive proposition

[Robert Milharcic]

Hi Sebastian,

> Hi Robert,
>> Hi Sebastian ,
>>
>>>>
>>>> First of all, the lightning shader only illustrates one of the cases where (optionally) repeating a code block containing substitution parameter can be useful. I used the multi-light lightning as an illustration only.
>>>>
>>>>>> First, thank you for your input. Yes, that is more or less the same approach I'm currently using. The downside of this approach is that it requires additional nontrivial code logic for the uniform array management (u_LightColor) and that is why I started to look at the alternatives.
>>>>> What could be more complicated there than to setup individual uniforms? Sorry this doesn't pass as a valid argument. If you have to hold the number of used lights somewhere you can hold a reference to the uniform as well.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sorry, but that is not what I had in mind.  The problem here is the management of the array uniform's content and not the reference to it or the light count etc. Let say I only want to disable one of the lights, say LIGHT0 eg. stateset->setDefines("LIGHT0", osg::StateAttribute::OFF). What will you do?
>>> Let's say you have a fixed maximum on N, than you create a UBO/Array of this size and provide a count-uniform for the maximum valid entries.
>>> If a light gets disabled, you simply remove it, copy it to the back and set your count to N-1.
>>> In the shader you simply loop from 0 to count instead of N. That might break compiler optimization, but it won't hurt too much I guess.
>>> When using the setDefine, OSG will have to issue a recompile of this new variant, which will degrade performance if all combinations are needed.
>>>
>>> Assume 16 Lightsource, that will produce 65536 possible shader programs ... and that is only 16, not 500, or 1000 ...
>>> Having 1024 individually switchable Lightsources would totally wreck your idea of having an alternative to my solution.
>>> 2^1024 might exceed the numbers of atoms in the known universe, so there is not a remote chance to solve this with shader combinations...
>>>
>>
>> The question was purely rhetorical. I just wanted to prove my point regarding the uniform's content management vs already provided setDefines("LIGHT0", osg::StateAttribute::OFF). I didn't expect all that. Sorry for the fuzz :)  BTW, I'm not planing to toggle all possible on/off combinations just to see all the permutations, the normal graph usage is what I'm after.
> Normal graph usage might exactly trigger a lot of combinations. My point is not that theoretical if you take into account that basically everyone could have used the feature if it was part of the core, thus the example is a practical one :-)
> I didn't want to prove anything here, I simply wanted to point out some practical problems.
>

I know and I'm grateful for that. Anyway, based on feedback, I already ditched the idea and I'm now looking into alternative possibilities, mainly if shader composition can be extended in a nonintrusive way.

>>
>>> Exactly, that was my intention, to add a higher degree of complexity and hopefully solve some problems that "turing-complete" language can't.
>>> Turing complete solves all computable problems ;-)
>>> I do understand your motivation, but I still don't see the gain really.
>>> I've presented some alternative ways to solve your problem, as I came across some of those challenges too.
>>> The idea Robert mentioned might be a good one, basically we could use some kind of callback to let the user-code preprocess the shader, wait actually we can already do this, when it is loaded via a LoadCallback :-)
>>> Actually I'm preprocessing my shader code when it's loaded to perform "include" and automated shader-define setup, so this might work for your "loop" too.
>>>
>>
>> That would defeat the purpose of the #pragma(tic) shader composition. You may then as well pre-parse #pragma import_defines and #pragma requires and pre-generate all the shader permutations. The purpose of #pragma(tic) shader composition is shader generation based on current define set (see the osg::State).
> Yes and? I'm parsing include hierarchies and therefore need to add the defines found there to the #pragma import_defines. The bulk work done by the osg::State is to determine if a new program needs to be compiled based on the set of defines.
> My composition is purely to keep the shader code maintainable and reusable. Currently some of the "Ubershaders" have 20-30 defines, which seriously don't want to write in the the import_defines by hand.
> Again I simply wanted to point out some possibilities to get you your loop-mechanism.
>

I see. Thank you for that, too.

Cheers,
Robert Milharcic