# GLSL / Shader particle system - how to store and retrieve data from a buffer

**URL:** <https://discourse.processing.org/t/glsl-shader-particle-system-how-to-store-and-retrieve-data-from-a-buffer/38253>\
**Category:** Coding Questions\
**Created:** [August 6, 2022, 4:05pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/glsl-shader-particle-system-how-to-store-and-retrieve-data-from-a-buffer/38253 "2022-08-06T16:05:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![scudly](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/scudly/32/5597_2.png) [@scudly](https://discourse.processing.org/u/scudly)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 8:52pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/glsl-shader-particle-system-how-to-store-and-retrieve-data-from-a-buffer/38253/3 "2022-08-07T20:52:55Z")

</div>

The more modern way to do this is using a compute shader since then you can use floats directly and don’t have four fragment shaders duplicating work, but then you have to peel back Processing’s covers to use OpenGL directly.

[https://discourse.processing.org/t/compute-shader-particle-system-in-processing/26611](https://discourse.processing.org/t/compute-shader-particle-system-in-processing/26611) shows how to use compute shaders from Processing.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.processing.org/t/glsl-shader-particle-system-how-to-store-and-retrieve-data-from-a-buffer/38253)._