A scene is an entry in the open registry LabScenes, shown on a plate: a
flat lit disc, the package's own small sky with the sun at one hour, and
a frame clock. Headless each camera (lab_shot, lab_shot_at) settles and
is written as build/lab/<scene>/<shot>.png (a stored PNG, written here);
in a window N and P step through them. tools/lab/run.sh and sheet.py
make the contact sheet; tools/lab/plate_build.py makes plate/.
ludic.render3d gains r3d_plate_mode (no terrain, grass or water is made)
and r3d_sky_path. quit() in a program with no frame loop links. The
example takes ~120 MB resident, 417 MiB peak footprint. Reseed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
fn(int, float) -> bool is a type, fn name is any top-level function's value, and a call through
a local, a global, a record field, a slice element, a parameter or a result of a function type
is an indirect call; two function types mix only when equal, a call checks its argument count,
and a value may be null (examples/functions/values.ludic). Job.parallel_for keeps its worker
check.
render3d's scene is registered rather than required by name: r3d_on_draw, r3d_on_casters and
r3d_on_stream_fill (hooks.ludic). The two rendering examples register theirs - and had defined
scene_draw_casters with no parameter while the renderer passed one, which nothing checked.
render3d declares numbers float itself; smooth.ludic is converted to floats and returns when
r3d_init fails instead of running on into a segfault. Noise.* check their argument count (a call
one short crashed the compiler). selfhost-build says why it failed. The migration tool reads a
declared float as evidence. Seed regenerated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A numbers float file adapts decimal literals to a fixed operand or slot, and refuses to
promote a computed int to a float implicitly: there it is almost always float bits. Explicit
float(x) is always allowed.
render3d's numbers are float, converted by tools/migrate/floatbits.py - a whole-program
inference of which ints carried IEEE bits (union-find over flows, calls, returns, buffers,
nested buffers and lexical scopes) and a rewriter to operators, Math.* and float literals,
with float_bits / float_from_bits left only where bits really cross (runtime scratch
buffers, mixed buffers). Seed regenerated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The shipping default had NO anti-aliasing at all: the temporal resolve was removed, the
setting's first option went on saying "Temporal", and MSAA defaults to one sample, so
every machine without DLSS drew grass and needle cards with nothing smoothing an edge.
FXAA in the sharpen pass, which already reads the neighbourhood and runs last on the LDR
image. No history, so it cannot drag or smear a reflection. 25.5% less single-pixel
staircase on edge pixels.
The trap, recorded because it inverted the result: the unsharp delta must be computed
from the RAW image and only then applied to the anti-aliased colour. Centre from FXAA and
neighbours from the raw texture measures half smoothing and half signal, so the mask
sharpens precisely what FXAA softened - 29% WORSE than no anti-aliasing at all.
Depth of field for the photo mode: a disc whose radius is the circle of confusion,
normalised by focus distance so a landscape shot is not a macro, with taps rejected
unless they are at least as out of focus as the pixel they blur into - which is what
stops a sharp foreground haloing into a blurred background. Between the scene and the
bloom, so a blurred highlight still blooms. Skipped whole when the aperture is shut.
400 frames in ordinary play: GL 7.1 s, VK 7.2 s - the lens does not draw there.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Everything before this made the air a COLOUR APPLIED TO A SURFACE. Nothing put light
in the space between surfaces, so the basin had no shafts, no pooled mist and no rays
off a ridge at any hour, whatever was done to the fog.
A half-resolution march from the camera to the depth buffer, asking the same shadow
the rest of the frame asks - the cascades, the baked height-field shadow and the cloud
mask - so a shaft is cast by the actual trees and the actual ridge and a passing cloud
dims its own rays. Henyey-Greenstein scattering, because real air throws light forward.
Density and a separate ground-hugging mist layer ride the sun's elevation, so mist
forms in the cold at either end of the day and burns off by mid-morning.
Composited with the bloom pyramid's own tent upsample under ONE/ONE - what was wanted
and already there - and before bloom, so a shaft blooms. Into post_hdr, not post_scene:
post_scene is what the water refracts and shafts added there would sit under the lake.
The tuning that mattered was the sky term, which is added at every step: at 0.06 it
accumulated into a flat grey wash lifting lit and shadowed air equally, which is the
contrast a shaft is made of, and the valley came out one pale sheet. At 0.012 the sun
dominates and there is light rather than fog. I cut the density and mist three times
before the frame looked like air instead of paint.
R3D_NOVOL=1 for an A/B; Off in Settings skips the pass whole.
400 frames at 07:00: GL 7.1 -> 7.3 s, VK 7.2 -> 7.4 s. Backends agree to 0.08/255.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Aerial perspective is a curve now. A low sun shines through far more air than a
high one and shines ALONG the ground rather than down onto it, so density, height
falloff and forward scatter all ride the sun's elevation; overcast thickens the air
and flattens the scatter, because a grey sky has no disc to scatter from. `lowsun`
falls away BELOW the horizon as well as above it, or the middle of the night gets a
dawn's haze with no dawn to justify it.
The term that was missing entirely is distance DESATURATION. Blending a saturated
green ridge toward a saturated blue noon sky leaves a saturated ridge - which is why
the same valley read as a photograph at dusk, where the fog colour happened to be a
warm grey, and as a toy at one o'clock. A surface is now pulled toward its own
luminance faster than the fog itself arrives. Measured far/near saturation at the
camp: 07:00 1.11 -> 0.89, 09:00 1.04 -> 0.93, 13:00 0.98 -> 0.89.
The grade is the hour's too - nine literals bound at the draw, written by
daylight_set now. Noon is the case worth naming: direct sun is warm-white and the
only thing filling a midday shadow is a blue sky, so noon gets a cool balance over a
blue-lifted shadow with hard contrast, and dawn and dusk the reverse. Ground R-B,
lit vs shadowed: 07:00 +42.8/+14.2 -> +48.9/+15.1, 13:00 +32.2/+14.8 -> +25.2/+2.9.
Gain is left alone deliberately: the grade is `c * gain + lift * (1 - c)`, so warming
it warms the whole frame, and warming it at noon made one o'clock yellower than seven
in the morning - the opposite of the point.
The visible sky is relit. Turning a photograph on its axis does not change what
colour it was taken at, so every sunset had a mid-morning blue overhead. An analytic
sky supplies the chroma and the photograph keeps the luminance: the cloud stays where
it is and goes orange at dusk, the zenith goes deep blue at noon, and no second sky
is shipped. It fades out under the horizon and eases off under cloud.
The ground bounce follows the ground, crossing meadow to rock at the map's treeline
instead of being one green constant everywhere including above the scree.
R3D_NOAIR=1 restores all of it, so a before-and-after comes from one binary at one
hour; it joins R3D_NOCLOUD / R3D_NOSHADOW / R3D_NOGI.
Verified on macOS OpenGL, macOS Vulkan (MoltenVK) and Windows Vulkan (RTX 3070 Ti).
Backends agree: mean difference 0.15-0.88/255 within a machine. Across machines the
ORIGINAL renderer already differed by 5.02/255 at 19:12 and this build differs by
2.80, so cross-platform variance is pre-existing and did not grow. 400 frames: GL
7.4 s before and after, VK 7.0 s before and after.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every R3D_* read goes through r3d_env_has / r3d_env (env.ludic): a headless
build honours them as before, a windowed build only when R3D_DEV is set to
anything but "0", so a shipped game never reaches a debug view, feature kill,
file writer or hardware fake. Documented in docs/SHIPPING.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
HDR output: an HDR10 swapchain (A2B10G10R10, ST 2084 over BT.2020) when the
setting asks and the display offers it, with HDR metadata. The tonemap's HDR10
variant keeps the SDR picture up to a 200-nit paper white and rolls highlights
on to 1000 nits; the overlay's converts the interface to the same white. The
screen and LDR images go 10-bit with it; screenshots refuse while it is on.
OpenGL and the Vulkan SDR frame are unchanged. The instance asks for
VK_EXT_swapchain_colorspace. HDR metadata only where the loader has
vkSetHdrMetadataEXT: Streamline's interposer does not, and calling the thunk
crashed the game the moment the swapchain came up HDR10. PC 4K monitor: HDR10,
validation 0. R3D_HDR overrides the setting.
DLSS:
- the vertical jitter offset flips with Streamline's image (rows from the top):
unflipped, Quality resolved the ground into concentric rings;
- preset K in every mode: the default M put Performance at 18 ms a frame at 4K
on an RTX 3070 Ti (33 fps against 41 with DLSS off; with K, 60);
- the camera is jittered only while this frame holds a token and the last
evaluate worked.
R3D_DLSS_PRESET, R3D_CAM_LOG (the camera and DLSS state a frame) and
R3D_NOGRAIN for measuring.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
streamline.ludic: slInit before the Vulkan instance, feature support per
adapter, a frame token per frame, Reflex sleep and PCL latency markers, and
DLSS super resolution on the lit HDR frame (Halton jitter, depth + zero
motion vectors with camera motion from clipToPrevClip, matrices carrying
the Vulkan path's y flip and depth remap). Bloom, tonemap and sharpen read
the upscaled size. The device asks for privateData and present_id, which
Streamline's hooks need. R3D_DLSS / R3D_REFLEX / R3D_SL_LOG for tests.
gpu_feature_implemented: DLSS and Reflex.
ludic bundle (Windows): app native "<dir>" copies native libraries beside
the executable.
Verified on an RTX 3070 Ti: DLSS Quality evaluates 1280x720 -> 1920x1080.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The reflection pass is a second copy of the terrain, the vegetation and the actors, and it ran on
every frame of a map with water - looking straight down at a meadow included. The mirrored body is cut
into rectangles where the ground lies below it (32 m over the height map in 8 x 8 blocks, the sea
beyond it coarse), and the pass runs when one meets the view frustum and its water is not all dry
where it shows, outside the frame or behind the ground. Three wrong turns on the way, each kept in a
comment: bounding spheres (a 156 m cell reached into the view from behind the camera), sight lines
that never asked whether the point was in the frame, and a walk of every rectangle every frame (0.1 s
per 400 frames on the PC until the blocks). Built once in 6.6 ms.
Mac, the five shot viewpoints: view c (the meadow) 225 reflection draws -> none; a, b, d, e unchanged;
OpenGL frames byte-identical; self-tests 59/59 on OpenGL and Vulkan; MoltenVK validation adds nothing.
PC camp (lake in view): 1882 draws either way, 3.8 s for 400 frames either way, three runs each,
self-tests 59/59, validation 0. R3D_REFL_ALWAYS=1 runs the pass every frame; R3D_REFL_DBG=1 prints the
test once.
R3D_ACTOR_CENSUS=<frame> prints the lit pass's actors grouped by model: town is 17 models and 69 draws,
and only four rigid models repeat (17 actors) - too little for instancing to be worth a shader variant.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- sky_start_yaw: a game that turns the sky at boot sets it before r3d_init and the image-based light
is baked once at that yaw; sky_set_yaw to a yaw already baked bakes nothing.
- terrain_init_step: the height field and normals, the sun shadow, the materials, the patches and
programs as separate steps; r3d_load_count is 8, so a loading bar moves through the terrain (half
the start-up) instead of jumping over it. terrain_init runs the four in a row as before.
- The per-cascade actor cull centres its sphere at half the model's height and sizes it by the
larger of height and radius: centred at the radius, it dropped a head at a cascade's edge (11 px
in town, found by the drawstats comparison). Lake was byte-identical before and after.
OpenGL frames at the five viewpoints unchanged; the game's 59 self-tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- r3d_open opens the window with nothing baked; r3d_load_count / r3d_load_step run the rest (sky
and light, terrain, shadow and screen targets, cover and actors, grass) so a game can present a
loading frame between them. r3d_init is the same calls in a row.
- sky_set_quality(width): the prefiltered sky light at 256 / 512 / 1024, baked again.
- post_set_msaa(samples): multisampling on OpenGL, remade in place (post_msaa_live is false on
Vulkan); post_free frees the multisampled framebuffer too.
- STREAM_BUDGET_US is a variable; r3d_fog_scale multiplies the fog the day sets.
- Vulkan buffers carry UNIFORM_BUFFER usage: the frame's ring is bound as uniform buffers and was
created without it (VUID-VkWriteDescriptorSet-descriptorType-00330, found on MoltenVK).
OpenGL frames at the five viewpoints unchanged; the game's 59 self-tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A game ended its frame with Gl.swap() and shot it with Gl.screenshot, which tied it to OpenGL
and made it name Gl.* only so the parser would splice the GL runtime. gpu_present and
gpu_screenshot carry both (and name Gl.* themselves, so importing render3d is enough), and
r3d_present / r3d_screenshot are what a game calls. The Vulkan backend takes both over.
OpenGL frames byte-identical at the five viewpoints; 59 self-tests pass with no GL error.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The last of milestone 1: no OpenGL call is left in render3d outside gpu.ludic but the clock
and the CPU-side buffer helpers.
- gpu_program builds a program and remembers the variant it came from (vertex, fragment and
defines as one line - the SPIR-V manifest's key), so a backend that cannot compile at run
time finds the pipeline for the same handle. gpu_use_program and gpu_program_free replace
32 uses and 2 frees; the overlay's program is recorded under overlay.vert|overlay.frag.
- gpu_query_new / _begin / _end / _result carry R3D_PROF's timers.
- gpu_open, gpu_vsync, gpu_renderer_name and gpu_resize_check carry the context.
- r3d_program_tess is gone: nothing called it and no tessellation shader exists.
- R3D_GLCHECK also checks after framebuffer and renderbuffer changes, viewport, draw buffers,
program use, texture parameters, the resize check and between frames.
OpenGL frames are byte-identical at the five viewpoints; 59 self-tests pass with and without
R3D_GLCHECK, with no GL error; ludic-dev test 140 passed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Framebuffers and their attachments, renderbuffers (multisampled too), draw and read buffers,
completeness checks, blits, viewports, clears, the screen framebuffer, the multisample enable,
the wireframe switch and GL error checks now go through gpu_fb_* / gpu_rb_* / gpu_viewport /
gpu_clear / gpu_blit / gpu_check, and no other file names them. Each call is the one GL call it
replaces, in the same order: the fixed viewpoints render bit-identically and the game's
self-tests report exactly what they did.
What is attached to each framebuffer - colour slots, a depth texture or one layer of an array,
renderbuffers and their samples - is recorded as it is attached, for a backend that builds
render passes and image views. gpu_read_screen is the frame read-back a photograph takes.
R3D_GLCHECK=1 checks, around every draw, clear and blit, that the bound framebuffer is complete
and that no error is left behind, naming the framebuffer. It has already narrowed the old
"gl error 1286 at terrain shadow bake": the error is pending before a draw after the map self-
test, so it comes from a call that is not a draw, clear or blit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Render state (depth, blending, culling, colour writes, alpha-to-coverage, depth bias,
scissor) and uniforms go through gpu_* / u_* and nowhere else; OpenGL state is cached and
only changes reach the driver. Frames are bit-identical to before at the fixed viewpoints.
R3D_GFX=gl|vk or gpu_request chooses a backend, falling back to OpenGL with a reason.
gpu_caps_probe() asks Vulkan, on Windows, for the 1.3 floor, ray tracing, mesh shaders, the
NVIDIA RTX generation, Reflex and HDR colour spaces, for a game's settings to grey out what
a machine cannot use; R3D_CAPS pretends to be a given card for tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The queue was only emptied by the next outline_model call, so the last highlighted tree kept
its rim after the player looked away. r3d_frame now calls outline_frame, which drops a batch
the previous frame closed and nobody reopened.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Needle-card crowns are many cut-out quads deep and a discarding shader turns early depth
rejection off, so every card behind the front one ran the full lighting shader. The near
tree LODs now write depth first (depth.frag, the same alpha coverage test), terrain under
them is rejected before shading, and the lit pass draws them with no discard and an equal
depth test (invariant gl_Position). R3D_NOPREPASS=1 restores the old path.
Dense forest on a Windows PC: 61 -> 78 fps at 3840x2160, 116 -> 164 fps at 1920x1080.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A water body other than the reflecting one drew its whole bounding rectangle,
so the corners outside the lake's carved ellipse showed water over dry ground;
those bodies now discard outside the ellipse. r3d_fog_base (default 0) is the
height the height fog is measured from, so maps sharing one datum at different
heights get the same air.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
`Gl.*` binds the whole OpenGL 4.1 core API — every entry point of the
platform gl3.h with every GL_* constant, generated by `ludic-dev glgen`
with per-call ABI thunks. Windowed builds get an NSOpenGLContext on the
existing window at Retina resolution; headless builds render into an
offscreen CGL context, so a program that uses Gl.* renders and
screenshots identically under the test harness. It links gl.ll, the
thunks and OpenGL.framework only when used; every other build stays
byte-identical.
packages/ludic.render3d is a physically based renderer written on that
surface: HDRI image-based lighting, GPU-generated terrain with scanned
PBR materials, CDLOD, cascaded shadows, glTF with skinning, instanced
vegetation with impostors, procedural grass, water, SSAO, and an HDR
pipeline with bloom, auto-exposure and ACES.
It also carries this session's work on it: the terrain at half its cost
(10.3 -> 5.4 ms of frame), the streaming hitch that got worse the longer
you played, a resize that emptied the world, and the packaging that lets
a game use the renderer from its own repository — `ludic assets`, the
material manifest shipping with the package, and shader lookup falling
back to the install root. See changes/ for each, with its numbers.
The camping game that drove all of it has moved out to its own
repository, Maroon Lake; examples/rendering/smooth.ludic stays as the
renderer's example here.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
