8k x 8k Real-time computational fluid dynamics

This is a short clip from a fluid simulation running at 4K internally, with 8K texture advection, and displayed on a 6-screen, 6K display wall. More details: this is a 2D semi-Lagrangian fluid solver in vorticity-streamfunction variables written in OpenGL compute shaders and running at about 30 fps on a dual-GPU machine. The internal solution resolution is 4096x4096, and the vorticity-velocity inversion is done using a multigrid method written entirely in compute shaders (no CUDA, no OpenCL). The advection uses a semi-Lagrangian method that is 2nd order in time and 4th order in space and operates on an 8192x8192 color texture. There is no applied diffusion and limited numerical diffusion. On the left is a convected color scalar field, on the right is the vorticity field. Each field is reduced about 3.5:1 to fit on this 5760x2400 pixel screen. You can try this out on any computer that’s not made by Apple by downloading opengl-with-luajit from