Exact-pixel and production-perf comparison of 6c79d35c (+ only the A2
normal files, so no terrain mask is needed) against c51b07ef with no pack:
connected as +Acdream, visible window, one isolated config clone per
variant, pinned clocks. Open field: the only differences are idle pose,
mana digits and a passing flyer. Holtburg: same-binary-twice defines the
dynamic mask (9.8%); in the static 90% both self-diffs have ZERO pixels
with |d|>=8 while base+normals vs HEAD-off has 841/729 - all streaks inside
the animated lifestone. Buildings, ground, trees, sky and UI are clean.
Perf (uncapped Release, no automation observer, ACDREAM_FRAME_PROF=1):
Holtburg CPU p50 4.7 -> 4.1 ms, Arwic 6.0 -> 5.2 ms, GPU unchanged,
alloc/frame 574 KB -> 21 KB. No regression; F5b's '27.8 ms retail CPU' was
the observer.
Three false alarms recorded so nobody repeats them: the isolated gate
settings lack fieldOfView (90 vs the real 86.33 -> a 0.952 zoom); the real
%APPDATA% settings still selected acdream.atmospheric/low (pack ON); a
minimized GLFW window is throttled and never settles.
Tools: tools/vm0/capture-visible.ps1 (pre-campaign gate + -Exe/-Live/
-ConfigDir/-CharacterName/-PreCaptureCommand), tools/vm0/perf-run.sh,
and -BuildingDetailTextures on run-offline-pixel-gate.ps1. Baseline
patches under docs/research/evidence/vm0/.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Live cdb read on the PDB-paired retail client (owner's AMD GPU):
m_caps.bCanDoSinglePassDetailing = 1, trysinglepass = 1,
MaxSimultaneousTextures = 8, bTexOpDotProduct3 = 1,
LandscapeDetailTextures = 0, EnvironmentDetailTextures = 1,
landscape/object detail surfaces null, building/environment non-null,
tiling 4 everywhere.
So retail's detail combine on modern hardware is the texture-stage path in
D3DPolyRender::SetSurface (stage0 alpha PREMODULATE, stage1 colour
BLENDCURRENTALPHA): lerp(base*diffuse, detail.rgb, detail.a*diffuse.a) -
a mild DARKENING (~-10% mid-tones with 0x06006D58), not the
DSTCOLOR+INVSRCALPHA brightening that Campaign AR ported and that the
2026-08-21 findings doc + AR review both analysed. Those described the
fallback for adapters without D3DTEXOPCAPS_PREMODULATE; the reviewer's
guess that consumer drivers rarely advertised it was wrong.
VM1 now carries the re-port (SRCALPHA+INVSRCALPHA, detail.rgb /
detail.a*diffuseAlpha, neutral at a==0) together with the fade removal.
No distance fade exists on either path. Scripts are read-only attaches
with no breakpoints.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
