[HN Gopher] A Recursive Algorithm to Render Signed Distance Fields
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       A Recursive Algorithm to Render Signed Distance Fields
        
       Author : surprisetalk
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2026-03-11 14:10 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (pointersgonewild.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (pointersgonewild.com)
        
       | refulgentis wrote:
       | Tl;dr: SDFs are really slow but cool because they can compactly
       | define complex stuff; demoscene uses it. Sort of the functional
       | programming to trad renderings OOP. Would be cool if it was
       | faster. Optimizing an algorithm for CPU rendering using recursive
       | divide and conquer, 1 core with one object gets 50 fps. 100 fps
       | if you lerp a 10x10 pixel patch instead of doing 1 pixel.
       | Algorithm isn't optimized, fully. Also, turns out the author's
       | idea is previously known but somewhat obscure, it is referred to
       | as "cone marching"
        
       | 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
       | Holy crap! The demo is hitting 30 FPS from certain angles, on my
       | decade-old CPU
        
       | linolevan wrote:
       | Played around with the code to implement a little bit of SIMD.
       | Was able to squeeze out a decent improvement, ~250 fps avg, ~140
       | low, ~333 high (on an m4). Looks pretty straightforward to do
       | threading with as well. Cool stuff! Could work to bring more gpu
       | stuff back down to the cpu.
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-14 23:00 UTC)