m-schuetz / CuRast

What is CuRast?

CuRast is a C++ viewer using CUDA-based software rasterization to render billions of triangles from GLB/GLTF models in real-time. It tackles massive, dense meshes from photogrammetry—like Zorah's 13.5 billion triangles or Venice's 400 million—without precomputed LODs or acceleration structures, via a pipeline that efficiently handles tiny-to-large triangles. Drag-and-drop files into the app for instant viewing on RTX GPUs, with options for compressed loading to fit in VRAM.

Why is it gaining traction?

It crushes Vulkan by 2-5x on huge models (12x for instanced draws), proving compute shaders beat fixed-function pipelines for triangle soups. No preprocessing means quick tests on raw scans, and benchmarks like 67ms for 13B triangles hook anyone chasing Nanite-style extremes without game-engine overhead.

Who should use this?

Graphics researchers benchmarking rasterizers on photogrammetry data, 3D reconstruction devs visualizing unoptimized scans, or engine hackers prototyping software pipelines for billion-triangle scenes.

Verdict

Grab it if you're on CUDA/Windows with an RTX card and need to render absurd triangle counts—results impress. At 1.0% credibility (76 stars, Windows-only, basic docs), it's raw research code; fork and contribute for Linux/multi-mesh support.

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