That guy's whole production is insane https://shadertoy.com/user/iq

I don't want to dis shaders on shadertoy, they are amazing toys (which is why it's called shadertoy). And, that shader you linked to is amazing as well. But, for example on my 2015 MBP it runs at 8fps in a tiny sub portion of a window. If I go fullscreen in runs in 0.3fps. Yet this same machine can run The Witness at 60fps or GTA5 at 30fps and see the entire world.

My point is the shaders on shadertoy are exercises in doing something for fun with limits (one shader and a few inputs) and not about speed or optimization or the anything to do with the way any game engine would go about to get performance.

I'd like to just point out that iq used to work for Pixar[0] :)

[0] http://www.iquilezles.org/personal/curri/curri.htm

iq has a ton more examples of these on his site (including tiny executables which generate such images and animations):

http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarc...

http://www.iquilezles.org/prods/index.htm