Use storage buffers for clustered forward point lights (#3989)

# Objective

- Make use of storage buffers, where they are available, for clustered forward bindings to support far more point lights in a scene
- Fixes #3605 
- Based on top of #4079 

This branch on an M1 Max can keep 60fps with about 2150 point lights of radius 1m in the Sponza scene where I've been testing. The bottleneck is mostly assigning lights to clusters which grows faster than linearly (I think 1000 lights was about 1.5ms and 5000 was 7.5ms). I have seen papers and presentations leveraging compute shaders that can get this up to over 1 million. That said, I think any further optimisations should probably be done in a separate PR.

## Solution

- Add `RenderDevice` to the `Material` and `SpecializedMaterial` trait `::key()` functions to allow setting flags on the keys depending on feature/limit availability
- Make `GpuPointLights` and `ViewClusterBuffers` into enums containing `UniformVec` and `StorageBuffer` variants. Implement the necessary API on them to make usage the same for both cases, and the only difference is at initialisation time.
- Appropriate shader defs in the shader code to handle the two cases

## Context on some decisions / open questions

- I'm using `max_storage_buffers_per_shader_stage >= 3` as a check to see if storage buffers are supported. I was thinking about diving into 'binding resource management' but it feels like we don't have enough use cases to understand the problem yet, and it is mostly a separate concern to this PR, so I think it should be handled separately.
- Should `ViewClusterBuffers` and `ViewClusterBindings` be merged, duplicating the count variables into the enum variants?


Co-authored-by: Carter Anderson <[email protected]>

Author: superdump

Cargo.toml

@@ -612,7 +612,10 @@ min_sdk_version = 16
 target_sdk_version = 29
 
 # Stress Tests
+[[example]]
+name = "many_lights"
+path = "examples/stress_tests/many_lights.rs"
+
 [[example]]
 name = "transform_hierarchy"
 path = "examples/stress_tests/transform_hierarchy.rs"
-

crates/bevy_pbr/src/lib.rs

@@ -150,12 +150,10 @@ impl Plugin for PbrPlugin {
             )
             .add_system_to_stage(
                 RenderStage::Prepare,
-                // this is added as an exclusive system because it contributes new views. it must run (and have Commands applied)
-                // _before_ the `prepare_views()` system is run. ideally this becomes a normal system when "stageless" features come out
-                render::prepare_clusters
-                    .exclusive_system()
-                    .label(RenderLightSystems::PrepareClusters)
-                    .after(RenderLightSystems::PrepareLights),
+                // NOTE: This needs to run after prepare_lights. As prepare_lights is an exclusive system,
+                // just adding it to the non-exclusive systems in the Prepare stage means it runs after
+                // prepare_lights.
+                render::prepare_clusters.label(RenderLightSystems::PrepareClusters),
             )
             .add_system_to_stage(
                 RenderStage::Queue,

crates/bevy_pbr/src/light.rs

@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ use bevy_render::{
     color::Color,
     prelude::Image,
     primitives::{Aabb, CubemapFrusta, Frustum, Sphere},
+    render_resource::BufferBindingType,
+    renderer::RenderDevice,
     view::{ComputedVisibility, RenderLayers, Visibility, VisibleEntities},
 };
 use bevy_transform::components::GlobalTransform;
@@ -17,7 +19,8 @@ use bevy_window::Windows;
 
 use crate::{
     calculate_cluster_factors, CubeMapFace, CubemapVisibleEntities, ViewClusterBindings,
-    CUBE_MAP_FACES, MAX_POINT_LIGHTS, POINT_LIGHT_NEAR_Z,
+    CLUSTERED_FORWARD_STORAGE_BUFFER_COUNT, CUBE_MAP_FACES, MAX_UNIFORM_BUFFER_POINT_LIGHTS,
+    POINT_LIGHT_NEAR_Z,
 };
 
 /// A light that emits light in all directions from a central point.
@@ -709,6 +712,7 @@ pub(crate) fn assign_lights_to_clusters(
     lights_query: Query<(Entity, &GlobalTransform, &PointLight, &Visibility)>,
     mut lights: Local<Vec<PointLightAssignmentData>>,
     mut max_point_lights_warning_emitted: Local<bool>,
+    render_device: Res<RenderDevice>,
 ) {
     global_lights.entities.clear();
     lights.clear();
@@ -727,7 +731,13 @@ pub(crate) fn assign_lights_to_clusters(
             ),
     );
 
-    if lights.len() > MAX_POINT_LIGHTS {
+    let clustered_forward_buffer_binding_type =
+        render_device.get_supported_read_only_binding_type(CLUSTERED_FORWARD_STORAGE_BUFFER_COUNT);
+    let supports_storage_buffers = matches!(
+        clustered_forward_buffer_binding_type,
+        BufferBindingType::Storage { .. }
+    );
+    if lights.len() > MAX_UNIFORM_BUFFER_POINT_LIGHTS && !supports_storage_buffers {
         lights.sort_by(|light_1, light_2| {
             point_light_order(
                 (&light_1.entity, &light_1.shadows_enabled),
@@ -743,7 +753,7 @@ pub(crate) fn assign_lights_to_clusters(
         let mut lights_in_view_count = 0;
         lights.retain(|light| {
             // take one extra light to check if we should emit the warning
-            if lights_in_view_count == MAX_POINT_LIGHTS + 1 {
+            if lights_in_view_count == MAX_UNIFORM_BUFFER_POINT_LIGHTS + 1 {
                 false
             } else {
                 let light_sphere = Sphere {
@@ -763,12 +773,15 @@ pub(crate) fn assign_lights_to_clusters(
             }
         });
 
-        if lights.len() > MAX_POINT_LIGHTS && !*max_point_lights_warning_emitted {
-            warn!("MAX_POINT_LIGHTS ({}) exceeded", MAX_POINT_LIGHTS);
+        if lights.len() > MAX_UNIFORM_BUFFER_POINT_LIGHTS && !*max_point_lights_warning_emitted {
+            warn!(
+                "MAX_UNIFORM_BUFFER_POINT_LIGHTS ({}) exceeded",
+                MAX_UNIFORM_BUFFER_POINT_LIGHTS
+            );
             *max_point_lights_warning_emitted = true;
         }
 
-        lights.truncate(MAX_POINT_LIGHTS);
+        lights.truncate(MAX_UNIFORM_BUFFER_POINT_LIGHTS);
     }
 
     for (view_entity, camera_transform, camera, frustum, config, clusters, mut visible_lights) in

crates/bevy_pbr/src/material.rs

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ use std::marker::PhantomData;
 /// way to render [`Mesh`] entities with custom shader logic. For materials that can specialize their [`RenderPipelineDescriptor`]
 /// based on specific material values, see [`SpecializedMaterial`]. [`Material`] automatically implements [`SpecializedMaterial`]
 /// and can be used anywhere that type is used (such as [`MaterialPlugin`]).
-pub trait Material: Asset + RenderAsset {
+pub trait Material: Asset + RenderAsset + Sized {
     /// Returns this material's [`BindGroup`]. This should match the layout returned by [`Material::bind_group_layout`].
     fn bind_group(material: &<Self as RenderAsset>::PreparedAsset) -> &BindGroup;
 
@@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ pub trait Material: Asset + RenderAsset {
     #[allow(unused_variables)]
     #[inline]
     fn specialize(
+        pipeline: &MaterialPipeline<Self>,
         descriptor: &mut RenderPipelineDescriptor,
         layout: &MeshVertexBufferLayout,
     ) -> Result<(), SpecializedMeshPipelineError> {
@@ -93,11 +94,12 @@ impl<M: Material> SpecializedMaterial for M {
 
     #[inline]
     fn specialize(
+        pipeline: &MaterialPipeline<Self>,
         descriptor: &mut RenderPipelineDescriptor,
         _key: Self::Key,
         layout: &MeshVertexBufferLayout,
     ) -> Result<(), SpecializedMeshPipelineError> {
-        <M as Material>::specialize(descriptor, layout)
+        <M as Material>::specialize(pipeline, descriptor, layout)
     }
 
     #[inline]
@@ -137,7 +139,7 @@ impl<M: Material> SpecializedMaterial for M {
 /// way to render [`Mesh`] entities with custom shader logic. [`SpecializedMaterials`](SpecializedMaterial) use their [`SpecializedMaterial::Key`]
 /// to customize their [`RenderPipelineDescriptor`] based on specific material values. The slightly simpler [`Material`] trait
 /// should be used for materials that do not need specialization. [`Material`] types automatically implement [`SpecializedMaterial`].
-pub trait SpecializedMaterial: Asset + RenderAsset {
+pub trait SpecializedMaterial: Asset + RenderAsset + Sized {
     /// The key used to specialize this material's [`RenderPipelineDescriptor`].
     type Key: PartialEq + Eq + Hash + Clone + Send + Sync;
 
@@ -148,6 +150,7 @@ pub trait SpecializedMaterial: Asset + RenderAsset {
 
     /// Specializes the given `descriptor` according to the given `key`.
     fn specialize(
+        pipeline: &MaterialPipeline<Self>,
         descriptor: &mut RenderPipelineDescriptor,
         key: Self::Key,
         layout: &MeshVertexBufferLayout,
@@ -251,7 +254,7 @@ impl<M: SpecializedMaterial> SpecializedMeshPipeline for MaterialPipeline<M> {
         let descriptor_layout = descriptor.layout.as_mut().unwrap();
         descriptor_layout.insert(1, self.material_layout.clone());
 
-        M::specialize(&mut descriptor, key.material_key, layout)?;
+        M::specialize(self, &mut descriptor, key.material_key, layout)?;
         Ok(descriptor)
     }
 }

crates/bevy_pbr/src/pbr_material.rs

@@ -378,6 +378,7 @@ impl SpecializedMaterial for StandardMaterial {
     }
 
     fn specialize(
+        _pipeline: &MaterialPipeline<Self>,
         descriptor: &mut RenderPipelineDescriptor,
         key: Self::Key,
         _layout: &MeshVertexBufferLayout,