# Campaign AR Stage 1 automated gate

**Date:** 2026-08-22
**Verdict:** PASS — every Stage 1 gate that does not require physical visual or
desktop-performance judgment is complete. Those judgments were deliberately
outside this automated report and subsequently passed in the
[Stage 1 live-gate report](2026-08-22-atmospheric-stage1-live-gate.md).

## Scope

This report covers the current authored-celestial implementation: the visible
above-horizon sun, dominant haloed moon, secondary moon, and no-source states;
the selected source's direction-versus-energy handoff; the 336-byte render-pack
shadow ABI; the unchanged authoritative retail path; and local deterministic
performance and lifetime contracts.

It does not itself claim that a physical display proves shadow alignment,
source-transition continuity, temporal pixelation/shimmer quality, or desktop
frame pacing. It did not itself begin Campaign AR Stage 2; the subsequent
project-owner live approval did.

## Results

| Gate | Result |
|---|---|
| Shader compilation | 24/24 Vulkan shader pairs ready |
| Retail shader preservation | all 18 pre-campaign SPIR-V SHA-256 oracles exact; no tracked retail SPIR-V change |
| Focused App renderer validation | 344/344 passed |
| Core sky loader | 14/14 passed |
| SDK and standalone pack validator | 30/30 passed |
| MossTank plugin regression | 48/48 passed |
| Forced locked restore | passed for the complete solution graph |
| Complete Release build after locked restore | passed, 0 warnings, 0 errors |
| Fresh-process hermetic Release gate | 14,928/14,928 passed, 0 skipped, 0 failed, 14 assemblies |
| App assembly inside the complete gate | 5,823/5,823 passed |

The release evidence bundle is
[`artifacts/atmospheric-rendering/stage1-moon-release-gate/`](../../artifacts/atmospheric-rendering/stage1-moon-release-gate/).
Its `release-gate-summary.json`, TRX files, logs, environment inventory, and
`SHA256SUMS.txt` are the machine-readable authority for the fresh-process total.

## Performance and lifetime coverage

The complete App gate includes these deterministic contracts:

- `DirectionalShadowCasterFrameTests.WarmStableFrame_AllocatesZero` builds a
  9,500-static-caster scene, warms it, then performs 256 stable frames with
  zero managed bytes, no additional scene-index copy, no classification, and
  no topology rebuild.
- `DirectionalShadowCasterFrameTests.WarmDenseChangedFrames_AllocateZeroAndReadNoSceneRecords`
  proves dense animated-transform refresh stays allocation-free and does not
  reread scene records.
- `AtmosphericCpuStageProfilerTests.WarmedObservationAllocatesNothing` and
  `AtmosphericGpuTimerSamplingTests.WarmSamplingDecisionsAllocateZero` keep the
  measurement path allocation-free after warmup.
- `RenderPackLongCycleConvergenceTests.RepeatedPackResizeFailureGenerationAndFlightCyclesConvergeExactly`
  repeatedly crosses Low, Medium, High, retail selection, resize, injected
  failure/recovery, both frame-flight slots, render-generation replacement,
  and terminal disposal for 12 cycles. Every pack resource, registration,
  receiver candidate, transform owner, texture slot, and pipeline-format lease
  returns to its exact baseline.
- `RenderPackLongCycleConvergenceTests.DeviceRecreationIsFullRendererTeardownThenANewContextAndDevice`
  proves recreation is complete old-renderer/context/device teardown followed
  by an independent activation generation on a fresh device.

These are CPU-side and recording-RHI gates. The historical physical AMD rows
remain valid for their exact pre-moon binaries and stated scope, but they are
not reused as current sun-and-moon image-quality or desktop-performance proof.

## Authoritative-path and scope audit

- Shader regeneration expands includes and injects pack-only definitions only
  for pack shaders. Unchanged retail sources retain their existing committed
  binaries; the source manifest still forces a recompile after a real source
  edit.
- The exact pre-campaign retail SPIR-V oracle passes after ordinary shader
  regeneration.
- No source file under `src/AcDream.Runtime` changed for this campaign gate.
- No physics or collision source changed.
- No retail GLSL source changed.
- Pack-off production integration continues to require zero enhancement passes,
  resources, casters, cascades, draws, or dispatches and its pinned framebuffer
  and resource ledger remain exact.

## Pending project-owner gate

When the desktop is healthy, launch the corrected Release client against ACE
and stop for the project owner to judge:

- sun, dominant-moon, and secondary-moon shadow alignment;
- sun-to-moon, moon-to-moon, and no-source transitions;
- temporal pixelation/shimmer during camera and celestial motion; and
- desktop smoothness, frame pacing, and FPS behavior.

Stage 2 and campaign closeout remain gated on that explicit approval.