HLSL and CG Shaders

[dave_m_moore]

Hi,
I wonder whether you guys can give me some pointers please.

I’ve written shaders before but not for Unity. I’ve read that CG shaders are considered to be obsolete and that it should be better to write shaders using HLSL. However, when I create shaders in Unity (2021.2.16) via Create->Shader->… all of these default shaders are CG shaders. No apparent default HLSL shaders are present.

So my questions are:
1). What are the downsides of using CG shaders, as it appears easier for a newbie to develop these from the default shader examples?
2). If I use CG shaders, will they work on non-NVidia hardware?
3). Are there any default HLSL shaders available that I can use as a base?

Thanks for any pointers,
Dave

[AcidArrow]

I don't know the difference between 'cg' and 'hlsl' in my custom shader (*noob...)

Here's the difference between CGPROGRAM and HLSLPROGRAM. CGPROGRAM automatically includes the UnityCG.cginc file. That's it. They're both using HLSL. They both work in the built in renderer and the SRPs. CGPROGRAM comes from the fact Unity used to use a shader programming language called Cg, but they moved to pure HLSL many, many years ago. It was a gradual transition, and they didn't take the time to remove the remaining references to "cg" until the SRPs. There are differences between t…