Cinematic Particle Systems with OpenCL

High-particle-count simulations are becoming increasingly crucial in many different aspects of our world today: both in entertainment — within video games, movies, and the like — and in scientific fields, where particle systems are capable of simulating and visualizing many interesting phenomena. This paper will explore the possibility of parallelizing the simulation of these large particle systems and offloading them to very-parallel hardware which is usually only used for rendering: the video card. We will also touch briefly on ways to design a system for describing particle systems in a generalized way, though the majority of the work that is currently in a functional state centers around simulation and rendering.