Dev emulates an entire RISC-V PC inside a pixel shader, aiming to run Doom in VRChat
Michael_Moroz_ · x · 2026-10-07
Developer Michael Moroz open-sourced ShaderEmu: a full 32-bit RISC-V computer emulated entirely in a pixel shader. It can boot Linux to a desktop with its own emulated GPU, with Doom as the end goal.
The key constraint is the target platform VRChat, which only allows Direct3D 11 pixel shaders (no compute shaders, no UAVs) — so the whole machine lives in textures that fragment shaders rewrite each frame. The project focuses on accelerating everything possible; the emulated CPU runs a few million instructions per second. The author also got a "somewhat working" browser with minimal CSS, but it can only load some pages via Udon, with no real internet connection or data transfer.
The repo includes Linux boot support, Unity/VRChat integration, optimization experiments, and tooling, MIT-licensed.
Related event: Developer Emulates RISC-V Computer in VRChat Shader, Runs Doom(3 posts)→
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