Shader Printf in HLSL and DX12

Overall Approach Setting Up The Print Buffer The “Magic” Debug Info Buffer Dealing With The String Problem A Cursed Path Packing It All Into A Buffer Reading Back On The CPU Going Beyond Printf CR LF Unless you’re fortunate enough to to be working exclusively in Cuda, debugging GPU shaders is still very much “not great” in the year 2024. Tools like RenderDoc and PIX are amazing and do provide the ability to step through a shader and inspect variables, but they’re fundamentally tied to a “capture” workflow.