Run a real-time volumetric shader workload and observe rendering performance, frame timing, and visual stability directly in your browser.
This tool performs real volumetric shader rendering through WebGL2. Browser security restrictions prevent access to low-level GPU information such as exact temperature, power draw, or clock speed. We report verified driver context parameters and exact measured frame timing only — no synthetic or estimated data.
Customize volumetric ray-march steps, procedural noise octaves, density, and light attenuation.
Controls mathematical noise fractal octaves per step.
Higher steps increase visual clarity and GPU shader load.
Controls volumetric optical thickness and absorption.
Secondary shadow rays and Henyey-Greenstein scattering.
Controls the internal canvas rendering resolution.
Select benchmark duration or continuous run.
Parameters queried directly from your browser's WebGL 2.0 graphics driver context.
Learn how GPU ray marching works, what step counts reveal about compute limits, and why volumetric media stresses graphics pipelines.
A volume shader computes visual properties for semi-transparent, three-dimensional spatial media such as clouds, smoke, fog, and planetary atmospheres. Unlike standard 3D mesh rendering that only calculates color at the surface polygon, a volume shader computes density, light absorption, and in-scattering at multiple depths inside the volume.
Ray marching is a numerical rendering technique where a virtual camera ray steps forward incrementally through 3D space. At each step along the ray, the fragment shader samples mathematical noise equations, evaluates local matter density, and accumulates light attenuation until the ray exits the bounding volume or becomes fully opaque.
In surface rendering, each screen pixel often executes a fragment shader once. In volumetric ray marching, every single screen pixel executes the shader loop dozens or hundreds of times (once per step). At 1080p with 96 steps, your GPU computes over 190 million 3D mathematical samples per frame.
Ray march steps determine the spatial sampling frequency along the camera ray. Low step counts (32 steps) run faster but can cause visual banding (aliasing). Higher step counts (96 to 192 steps) yield silky smooth volumetric smoke and accurate shadow attenuation at the expense of higher GPU shader core utilization.
Render scale alters the internal drawing buffer resolution before outputting to your display. At 100%, each canvas pixel maps 1:1 with hardware pixels. At 150%, the GPU computes 225% more ray-marched fragments, isolating pixel fillrate bottlenecks and high-density memory bandwidth limits.
Frame time is the exact duration in milliseconds required by your graphics hardware to compute and deliver a complete frame. While FPS is an aggregate average frequency, frame time reveals the real-world smoothness of each interval (16.67ms corresponds to a steady 60 FPS).
1% Low FPS reflects the average frame rate of the slowest 1% of recorded frames during the benchmark. This highlights periodic shader compilation hitches, thermal throttling events, and driver stalls that high average FPS scores can conceal.
Volumetric ray marching depends heavily on fast floating-point arithmetic (ALU compute), wide SIMD execution units, and high L1/L2 cache hit rates. Dedicated gaming graphics cards with thousands of shader cores will significantly outpace integrated mobile or low-power laptop silicon.
Common questions regarding WebGL2 volumetric shader ray marching, hardware limits, and GPU performance.
