Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem
Report a link problem
Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderWhat an awesome writeup. I am not even really personally invested in the problem as I don't play older video games, but I loved reading the story. I wish other open source projects would do similar writeups when they reach major accomplishments. If I just saw "specialized shaders replaced with ubershaders" on a feature update, I probably wouldn't think there was much of a story to it.
Has it really been 9 years since I started working on Ubershaders? I'm a little surprised no better solution has come along. Vulkan didn't even exist back then (and DirectX 12 had only just released) but instead of making things better, it digs it's feet even deeper into the assumption that all shaders will be known ahead of time (resulting in long "shader recompilation" dialogs on startup on many games). I've been tempted to build my own fast shader compiler…
Previous discussio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14884992 I decided to repost it as it is already 3 years, since the last repost and I suspect many have not seen it yet.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 1007
- Total comments
- 158
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-07-30 | Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible ProblemFirst breakout · Best thread | voltagex_ | 772 | 88 |
| 2019-08-22 | Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem (2017) | zbentley | 1 | 0 |
| 2020-02-13 | Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem (2017) | _bxg1 | 3 | 0 |
| 2020-03-20 | Ubershaders: A ridiculous solution to an impossible problem (2017) | VHRanger | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-04-21 | Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem (2017) | elcomet | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-10-21 | Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem (2017) | Akronymus | 1 | 1 |
| 2023-01-09 | Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem (2017) | tosh | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-05-15 | Ubershaders: A ridiculous solution to an impossible problem | Y_Y | 4 | 0 |
| 2024-05-16 | Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem (2017)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | Grognak | 222 | 69 |