Impressive Pixel Shader of a Snail (GLSL)

The wizard behind Shadertoy has struk once again with this beautiful demo showing an animated snail.

This demo has been ported to GeeXLab by our news hunter Stefan:


GeeXLab - Shadertoy demo Snail

The demo is available in the code samples pack in the host_api/GLSL_ShaderToy/ folder (snail_gl2.xml). The demo is also available in the X-MAS 15 pack HERE. To test the demo, just run GeeXLab (you can download the latest version from THIS PAGE) and load (or drag and drop) the demo (snail_gl2.xml) into GeeXLab (GeeXLab 0.9.2.0 is recommended).

I quickly benchmarked few GPUs with this demo. The default settings are 800×480 pixels in windowed mode. The anti-aliasing can be set directly in the pixel shader and is equal to 1 by default (line 30 in the snail_gl2.xml file). A value of 4 improves the visual quality but destroys the framerate 😉 (try for yourself). I benchmarked with AA=1.

Testbed: Core i5 6600K, ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming, 8GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance, Win10 64-bit, all hardware with stock clock speeds.

The demo runs fine without artifacts on an Intel HD Graphics 530!

Radeon R9 290X (Crimson 15.12) 89 FPS (avg)
GeForce GTX 960 (R361.43) 45 FPS (avg)
HD Graphics 530 (v4326) 10 FPS (avg)
A time lapse of the creation process of this demo with Shadertoy is available here:


Related posts:

  1. La Calanque, Heavy Pixel Shader Test
  2. RhodiumLC: Pixel Shader GPU Benchmark (OpenGL)
  3. (Shader Library) Electrocardiogram Effect (GLSL)
  4. MadShaders 0.1.0: Best GLSL Pixel Shaders in a Single App
  5. Procedural Apple in GLSL

4 thoughts on “Impressive Pixel Shader of a Snail (GLSL)”

  1. nuninho1980

    I get 120 fps at 800×480@0xAA on my EVGA GTX 780 Ti Classified. 🙂

    I tried to update to GeekLab 0.9.2.0 but this version doesn’t fix very bad performance of 4xAA!?!! 🙁 Why? But I think it’s bad optimized….

    1. nuninho1980

      AAh… Like SSS (Subsurface Scattering). 😉 Tried SSSS demo (DirectX 10) and to enable AA at 4x,,, 4xAA drops little performance. 🙂

  2. fellix

    Results from my GeForce GTX980 Ti:

    Default windowed — 150 FPS;
    Windowed & 4xAA — 8FPS;
    Fullscreen (2560×1440) — 21 FPS;

    Windows 10 and the latest WHQL drivers.

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