Efficient Computational Noise in GLSL

Abstract

We present GLSL implementations of Perlin noise and Perlin simplex noise that run fast enough for practical consideration on current generation GPU hardware. The key benefits are that the functions are purely computational (i.e., they use neither textures nor lookup tables) and that they are implemented in GLSL version 1.20, which means they are compatible with all current GLSL-capable platforms, including OpenGL ES 2.0 and WebGL 1.0. Their performance is on par with previously presented GPU implementations of noise, they are very convenient to use, and they scale well with increasing parallelism in present and upcoming GPU architectures.