An embedded language for simulating and visualizing particle systems
Marcus Lindblom · 2003
English Particle systems are becoming a common sight in today’s video games as they are used for a variety of graphical effects, such as fire, smoke etc. Creating and maintaining them while retaining optimal performance has, however, got-ten harder as the diversity and flexibility of the latest programmable graphics processors have increased tremendously. A single particle system may therefore need several implementations and these are often written for speed rather than clarity. This report presents an embedded functional language that attempts to solve these problems, together with an optimizing compiler that generates C++-code (and is prepared to generate graphics processor code). The language unifies the particle system concepts of emitters and particles into objects which allow for more complex and interesting systems. The compiler outputs a C++-class which serves as a run-time system and controls object creation, simulation,