PrepareRenderBatches rebuilt the full EnvCell visibility snapshot every
frame any indoor/building root was resolved: a Parallel.ForEach dispatch
over every GpuReady EnvCell landblock (with per-landblock locks), a fresh
outer dictionary plus one fresh inner dictionary per visible cell, a new
snapshot object, and a complete transparency rescan - all while standing
perfectly still. The NeedsPrepare flag existed since Phase A8 as the
intended rebuild gate but was never read by production code.
This wires the gate on the snapshot's actual inputs:
- landblock commits/removals (the existing NeedsPrepare flag),
- the visible-cell filter (content-compared; the caller reuses one
scratch HashSet across frames),
- the trim window (center/radius),
- mesh render-data availability - new
ObjectMeshManager.RenderDataAvailabilityVersion, bumped at publish,
pending-release hide, release completion, and teardown, because the
snapshot bakes per-cell transparency from TryGetRenderData and a
late-arriving transparent shell must reclassify its cell,
- the camera: eye position under a 1 mm ABSOLUTE epsilon (swallows the
documented ~36 um rest jitter, dirties on any real movement; the VP
translation row scales with AC's ~5e4 world coordinates where a
relative tolerance would mask sub-meter motion) plus rows 1-3 of
view*projection (position-independent rotation x projection) under
relative 1e-5.
Skipping is pool-safe: RenderCore re-anchors _poolIndex to the active
snapshot's PostPreparePoolIndex on every call, so consecutive Renders
without an intervening Prepare reuse scratch lists past the snapshot's
owned region exactly as within-frame passes already do. The empty-filter
branch is now also idempotent instead of allocating a fresh empty
snapshot per frame. Render still receives the current frame's
view-projection every frame (the U.4 stale-matrix rule) - only the
snapshot rebuild is gated.
Pixels must be identical; needs the standard user visual pass (dungeon +
town-near-buildings) before the change is considered accepted.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Lands the working A8 indoor-rendering and streaming fixes accumulated this
session. User has verified these visually to some degree (e.g. lifestone /
translucent meshes confirmed fine under the FrontFace flip; bridge / wall /
collision regressions confirmed fixed after travel); not every path has been
exhaustively gated. The cellar-flap defect remains OPEN and will be solved
the retail-faithful way via a dedicated brainstorm (see handoff docs).
Rendering core (reviewed, high confidence):
- EnvCellRenderer SSBO stride fix: upload packed Matrix4x4[] (64B) instead of
the 80B CPU InstanceData struct the shader never expected — fixes the
transform/texture "explosion" for any draw with >1 instance (cells that
dedupe to a shared cellGeomId). Real root cause.
- WB-style global FrontFace(CW) + per-batch CullMode carried through the MDI
layout (GroupKey + BuildIndirectArrays + DrawIndirectRange split into
same-cull runs with absolute uDrawIDOffset per run).
- EntitySet partitioning (IndoorPass / OutdoorScenery / LiveDynamic) +
WorldEntity.BuildingShellAnchorCellId so building shells scope to their
dat-derived building cell instead of rendering everywhere.
- RenderOutsideInAcdream (look into buildings from outside) +
CollectVisiblePortalBuildings frustum cull of portal bounds.
- Sky-when-inside-building + per-cell audit probe + GL-state probe.
Streaming / perf (test-covered; not independently code-reviewed this session):
- Near/far priority queues so near work wins over far; PromoteToNear carries
full landblock + mesh data; LandblockEntriesWithoutAnimatedIndex avoids
rebuilding the animated-lookup dict in the hot draw path. Fixes the
bridge-not-appearing / missing-walls / broken-collision-after-travel
regressions and improves post-transition FPS.
Tooling + docs:
- tools/A8CellAudit: offline dat cell/portal/building dumper (portals +
buildings modes) — reproduces the cellar-flap investigation with no launch.
- docs/research cellar-flap root-cause + option-2 handoff (the didInsideStencil
double-duty finding + the WB-recursive design decision + brainstorm prompt),
entity-taxonomy, replan, issue-78 visibility investigation.
Diagnostics retained on purpose: ACDREAM_A8_DIAG_* gates, portal_stencil.vert
provisional pos.w clamp, and the probe families are kept (env-var gated, zero
cost when off) because the pending option-2 cellar-flap brainstorm needs them.
Strip in the option-2 ship commit.
Indoor branch stays behind ACDREAM_A8_INDOOR_BRANCH=1 (default off = pre-A8
visual). Build green; App tests + Core (streaming/dispatcher/loader) tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The post-Wave-5 indoor branch chaos (flickering, missing walls, GPU 100%,
~10 FPS) is caused by two interconnected pool-management bugs in
EnvCellRenderer that line-by-line WB comparison surfaced in 30 minutes.
Neither was found by the five post-Wave-5 speculative fixes because none
of them inspected the pool path.
Bug #1 — GetPooledList missing list.Clear():
The reuse branch returned pool lists with prior-frame data still inside.
PrepareRenderBatches' merge phase pattern `gfxDict[k] = list; list.AddRange(...)`
assumes empty lists. Without Clear(), lists grow unbounded each frame, GPU
draws cumulative instance counts, and per-instance transforms become a stew
of past + present data. Mirrors WB ObjectRenderManagerBase.cs:1221-1233.
Bug #2 — Render uses snapshot.BatchedByCell.Count instead of PostPreparePoolIndex:
The snapshot author dropped WB's PostPreparePoolIndex field calling it
"scenery-only," then "compensated" in Render by setting _poolIndex to the
cell count. The cell count has no relation to the pool — Prepare may have
used 50+ pool lists for an 18-cell scene. Render's filter-path GetPooledList
then returns lists that ARE in snapshot.BatchedByCell, corrupting the snapshot
mid-Render. Restoring PostPreparePoolIndex (WB VisibilitySnapshot.cs:31)
correctly places Render's pool cursor past the snapshot's owned region.
Bug #3 (minor) — PopulateRecursive hardcoded isSetup:false for nested parts:
Setup IDs use high-byte 0x02 (per retail). WB ObjectRenderManagerBase.cs:813
checks `(partId >> 24) == 0x02` to detect nested Setups. Our port always
passed isSetup:false, silently dropping any nested Setup (its TryGetRenderData
returns IsSetup=true, Render's `!IsSetup` guard skips the draw). Probably
rare in EnvCells but fixed for completeness.
Regression coverage:
- GetPooledList_ReusedList_IsClearedBeforeReturn — would have failed pre-fix
- GetPooledList_FreshList_IsAlwaysEmpty — sanity check
- Snapshot_PostPreparePoolIndex_IsInitSettable — compile-time guarantee
- Snapshot_PostPreparePoolIndex_DefaultsToZero — defensive default
86/86 App tests pass. Build green. The fix is the audit's primary
deliverable; the GL state probe option-1 apparatus follows in a separate
commit as defense-in-depth for any unidentified residual issue.
Full audit + WB cross-reference in
docs/research/2026-05-28-a8-env-cell-renderer-audit-findings.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The core port. 1013 LOC of WB-faithful rendering algorithm:
- GetEnvCellGeomId : WB EnvCellRenderManager.cs:94-103 verbatim
- PrepareRenderBatches : WB EnvCellRenderManager.cs:247-373 verbatim
(parallel frustum-cull, per-cell slow path,
ThreadLocal merge, atomic snapshot swap)
- Render(filter:) : WB EnvCellRenderManager.cs:395-511 verbatim
(filter-driven gfxObj group + draw call build)
- RenderModernMDIInternal : WB BaseObjectRenderManager.cs:709-848
(single-slot variant; resize buffers,
group by cull mode + additive, MDI draw)
- PopulatePartGroups : WB EnvCellRenderManager.cs:572-580 verbatim
(Setup part recursion via PopulateRecursive)
- RegisterCell / FinalizeLandblock / RemoveLandblock — streaming seam
(no WB analog; bridges acdream's existing StreamingController +
LandblockStreamer to the renderer's per-cell instance store)
Documented deviations from WB:
- Drop _useModernRendering branch (Phase N.5 mandatory modern path)
- Drop SelectedInstance/HoveredInstance highlights (no editor state)
- _activeSnapshotGlobalGroups/GfxObjIds as sibling fields on the class
rather than on the snapshot (EnvCellVisibilitySnapshot per Task 4 spec
only carries BatchedByCell + VisibleLandblocks; global groups only
used in the unfiltered Render(pass) path which we don't take)
- ConcurrentDictionary<uint, EnvCellLandblock> keyed by full 32-bit
landblock id (WB uses ushort packed key; acdream uses full id throughout)
10 unit tests (GetEnvCellGeomId determinism + bit-33 dedup flag +
NeedsPrepare + dispose semantics + RemoveLandblock idempotence). Build
green; 23/23 Wave 1+2 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
