- Overlap M2 and character animation updates via std::async (~2-5ms saved)
- Thread-local collision scratch buffers for concurrent floor queries
- Parallel terrain/WMO/M2 floor queries in camera controller
- Seed new M2 instance bones from existing siblings to eliminate pop-in flash
- Fix shadow flicker: snap center along stable light axes instead of in view space
- Increase shadow distance default to 300 units (slider max 500)
- Normal map CPU work (luminance→blur→Sobel) moved to background threads,
main thread only does GPU upload (~1-2ms vs 15-22ms per texture)
- Load screen warmup now waits until ALL spawn/equipment/gameobject queues
are drained before transitioning (prevents naked character, NPC pop-in)
- Exit condition: min 2s + 5 consecutive empty iterations, hard cap 15s
- Equipment queue processes 8 items per warmup iteration instead of 1
- Added LoadingScreen::renderOverlay() for future world-behind-loading use
Each loadTexture call was generating a normal/height map inline (3 full-image
passes: luminance + blur + Sobel). For models with 15-20 textures this added
30-40ms to the 70ms model upload. Now deferred to a per-frame budget (2/frame
in-game, 10/frame during load screen). Models render without POM until their
normal maps are ready.
Move all DBC lookups (CharSections, ItemDisplayInfo), texture path resolution,
and BLP decoding for humanoid NPCs to background threads. Only GPU texture
uploads remain on the main thread via pre-decoded BLP cache.
Move CPU-heavy BLP texture decoding from main thread to background worker
threads for all hot paths: terrain M2 models, WMO doodad M2s, WMO textures,
creature models, and gameobject WMOs. Each renderer (M2, WMO, Character) now
accepts a pre-decoded BLP cache that loadTexture() checks before falling back
to synchronous decode.
Defer WMO normal/height map generation (3 per-pixel passes: luminance, box
blur, Sobel) during terrain streaming finalization — this was the dominant
remaining bottleneck after BLP pre-decoding.
Terrain streaming stalls: 1576ms → 124ms worst case.
- Replace per-frame VMA alloc/free of material UBOs with a ring buffer in
CharacterRenderer (~500 allocations/frame eliminated)
- Batch all ready terrain tiles into a single GPU upload during load screen
(processAllReadyTiles instead of one-at-a-time with individual fence waits)
- Lift per-frame creature/GO spawn budgets during load screen warmup phase
- Add background world preloader: saves last world position to disk, pre-warms
AssetManager file cache with ADT files starting at app init (login screen)
so terrain workers get instant cache hits when Enter World is clicked
- Distance-filter expensive collision guard to 8-unit melee range
- Merge 3 CharacterRenderer update loops into single pass
- Time-budget instrumentation for slow update stages (>3ms threshold)
- Count-based async creature model upload budget (max 3/frame in-game)
- 1-per-frame game object spawn + per-doodad time budget for transport loading
- Use deque for creature spawn queue to avoid O(n) front-erase
- Worker threads: use (cores - 1-2) instead of cores/2, minimum 4
- Outer upload batch in processReadyTiles: ALL model/texture uploads per
frame share a single command buffer submission + fence wait
- Upload multiple models per finalization step: 8 M2s, 4 WMOs, 16 doodads
per call instead of 1 each (all within same GPU batch)
- Terrain chunks: 64 per step instead of 16
- Skip redundant M2 file I/O: thread-safe uploadedM2Ids_ set lets
background workers skip re-reading+parsing models already on GPU
- processAllReadyTiles (loading screen) and processOneReadyTile also
wrapped in outer upload batches
Every uploadBuffer/VkTexture::upload called immediateSubmit which did a
separate vkQueueSubmit + vkWaitForFences. Loading a single creature model
with textures caused 4-8+ fence waits; terrain chunks caused 80+ per batch.
Added beginUploadBatch/endUploadBatch to VkContext: records all upload
commands into a single command buffer, submits once with one fence wait.
Staging buffers are deferred for cleanup after the batch completes.
Wrapped in batch mode:
- CharacterRenderer::loadModel (creature VB/IB + textures)
- M2Renderer::loadModel (doodad VB/IB + textures)
- TerrainRenderer::loadTerrain/loadTerrainIncremental (chunk geometry + textures)
- TerrainRenderer::uploadPreloadedTextures
- WMORenderer::loadModel (group geometry + textures)
Terrain finalization was uploading all 256 chunks (GPU fence waits) in one
atomic advanceFinalization call that couldn't be interrupted by the 5ms time
budget. Now split into incremental batches of 16 chunks per call, allowing
the time budget to yield between batches.
M2 instance creation had O(N) dedup scans iterating ALL instances to check
for duplicates. In cities with 5000+ doodads, this caused O(N²) total work
during tile loading. Replaced with hash-based DedupKey map for O(1) lookups.
Changes:
- TerrainRenderer::loadTerrainIncremental: uploads N chunks per call
- FinalizingTile tracks terrainChunkNext for cross-frame progress
- TERRAIN phase yields after preload and after each chunk batch
- M2Renderer::DedupKey hash map replaces linear scan in createInstance
and createInstanceWithMatrix
- Dedup map maintained through rebuildSpatialIndex and clear paths
- Add magma/slime rendering path to water shader (fbm noise, crust/molten/core coloring)
- Fix WMO liquid height filter rejecting high-altitude zones like Ironforge (Z>300)
- Allow interior WMO magma/slime MLIQ groups to load (skip only water/ocean)
- Mark LAVASTEAM.m2 as spell effect for proper additive blend, hide emission mesh
- Add isLavaModel flag for M2 ForgeLava/LavaPots UV scroll fallback
- Add isLava material detection in WMO renderer for lava texture UV animation
- Fix WMO material UBO colors for magma (was blue, now orange-red)
- Add case-insensitive "glass" detection for WMO window materials
- Make instance (WMO-only) glass highly transparent (12-35% alpha)
so underwater scenes are visible through Deeprun Tram windows
- Keep normal world windows at existing opacity (40-95% alpha)
- Disable shadow mapping for interior WMO groups to fix dark
indoor areas like Ironforge
- Add movementSuppressTimer to camera controller that forces all movement
keys to read as false, preventing held W key from carrying through
loading screens (fixes always-running-forward after instance portals)
- Increase shadow frustum default from 60 to 72 units (+20%)
- Make shadow distance configurable via setShadowDistance() (40-200 range)
- Add shadow distance slider in Video settings tab (persisted to config)
stepX/stepY were transposed: columns stepped south instead of east and
rows stepped east instead of south, mirroring all overworld water. Also
fix per-chunk origin to use layer.x for east offset and layer.y for south.
Remove frame throttling that skipped shadow updates in dense scenes,
causing visible flicker on player and NPCs. Reduce shadow half-extent
from 180 to 60 for 3x higher resolution on nearby shadows.
- Stronger wall collision push (0.35/0.15) and swept push (0.45/0.25)
for interior/exterior WMOs to reduce clipping through tunnel walls
- Use all triangles (not just pre-classified walls) for collision checks
- Allow invisible collidable triangles (MOPY 0x01 without 0x20) to block
- Pass insideWMO flag to all collision callers, match swim sweep to ground
- Widen swept hit detection radius from 0.15 to 0.25
- Restrict camera zoom to 12 units inside WMO interiors
- Fix /unstuck launching player above WMOs: remove +20 fallback, use
gravity when no floor found
- Slash and Enter keys always focus chat unless already typing
WMO origins can be far from their visible geometry, causing large city
buildings to be culled from the shadow pass. Use world bounding box for
instance culling and per-group AABB culling. Also increase WMO shadow
cull radius to match the shadow map coverage (180 units).
Fix VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST crash by allocating per-frame scene history
images (color + depth) instead of a single shared image that raced
between frames in flight. Water refraction can now be toggled via
Settings > Video > Water Refraction.
Without refraction: richer blue base colors, animated caustic shimmer,
and normal-based color shifts give the water visible life. With
refraction: clean screen-space refraction with Beer-Lambert absorption.
Disabling clears scene history to black for immediate fallback.
The glm::quat(w,x,y,z) constructor was receiving swapped X/Y components,
causing doodads like the Deeprun Tram gears to be oriented horizontally
instead of vertically. Also use createInstanceWithMatrix for instance WMO
doodads to preserve full rotation from the quaternion.
Classify light shafts, portals, spotlights, bubbles, and similar M2
doodads as spell effects so they render with additive blending instead
of as solid opaque objects.
Set camera yaw from server orientation on world load so teleports face
the correct direction.
Reduce area trigger minimum radius (3.0 sphere, 4.0 box) to prevent
premature portal firing near tram entrances.
WMO interior doodads (gears, decorations) were blocking player movement
via M2 collision. Skip collision for all WMO doodad M2 instances since
the WMO itself handles wall collision.
Also filter WMO wall collision using MOPY per-triangle flags: only
rendered+collidable triangles block the player, skipping invisible
collision hulls.
Revert tram portal extended range (no longer needed with collision fix).
Parse MOPY per-triangle flags in WMO groups and exclude detail/decorative
triangles (flag 0x04) from collision detection. This prevents invisible
walls from objects like gears and railings in WMO interiors.
Add WotLK area trigger IDs 2173/2175 to extended-range tram triggers.
- Equipment-driven geoset selection: read GeosetGroup1 from ItemDisplayInfo
for legs/feet/chest to pick covered mesh variants (1302+ pants, 402+ boots,
802+ sleeves) instead of always defaulting to bare geosets
- Prevent per-instance skin override from replacing baked/composited armor
textures on equipped NPCs
- Set bald NPC hair texture slot to skin texture so scalp isn't white
- Skip white fallback textures in per-instance hair overrides
- Remove debug texture dump, reduce NPC logging to DEBUG level
- Remove bogus 2-byte skip after materialId in MLIQ parser that shifted
all vertex heights and tile flags by 2 bytes (garbage data)
- Skip liquid loading for interior WMO groups (flag 0x2000) to prevent
indoor water from rendering as outdoor canal water
- Clear movement inputs on teleport/portal to prevent auto-running after
zone transfer (held keys persist through loading screen)
- Fix Stormwind barracks floor: interior WMO groups named "facade" were
incorrectly marked as LOD shells and hidden when close. Add !isIndoor
guard to all LOD detection conditions so interior groups always render.
- Fix water exit stair clipping: anchor lastGroundZ to current position
on swim exit, set grounded=true for full step-up budget, add upward
velocity boost to clear stair lip geometry.
- Re-enable NPC humanoid equipment geosets (kEnableNpcHumanoidOverrides)
so guards render with proper armor instead of underwear.
- Keep instance portal GameObjects animated (spinning/glowing) instead
of freezing all GO animations indiscriminately.
- Fix equipment disappearing after instance round-trip by resetting
dirty tracking on world reload.
- Fix multi-doodad-set loading: load both set 0 (global) and placement-
specific doodad set, with dedup to avoid double-loading.
- Clear placedWmoIds in softReset/unloadAll to prevent stale dedup.
- Apply MODF rotation to instance WMOs, snap player to WMO floor.
- Re-enable rebuildSpatialIndex in setInstanceTransform.
- Store precomputeFloorCache results in precomputed grid.
- Add F8 debug key for WMO floor diagnostics at player position.
- Expand mapIdToName with all Classic/TBC/WotLK instance map IDs.
Low-vertex groups (<100 verts) were incorrectly marked as distance-only
LOD shells in small WMOs like Stockades. Now only applies this heuristic
to large WMOs (50+ groups) where it's needed for city exterior shells.
- NPC hair/skin textures now use per-instance overrides instead of shared
model-level textures, so each NPC shows its own hair color/style
- Hair/skin DBC lookup runs for every NPC instance (including cached models)
rather than only on first load
- Fix keyframe binary search to use float comparison matching original
linear scan semantics
- Replace O(n) linear keyframe search with O(log n) binary search in both
M2 and Character renderers (runs thousands of times per frame)
- Smoke particle removal: swap-and-pop instead of O(n²) vector erase
- Character render backface cull: eliminate sqrt via squared comparison
- Quaternion validation: use length² instead of sqrt-based length check
Use cached model flags (isValid, isSmoke, isInvisibleTrap, isGroundDetail,
disableAnimation, boundRadius) on M2Instance instead of models.find() in
the hot culling paths. Also complete cached flag initialization in
createInstanceWithMatrix().
- Glow sprites now use dedicated vertex buffer (glowVB_) separate from
M2 particle buffer to prevent data race when renderM2Particles()
overwrites glow data mid-flight
- Move fadeAlpha from shared material UBO to per-draw push constants,
eliminating cross-instance alpha race on non-double-buffered UBOs
- Smooth adaptive render distance transitions to prevent pop-in/out
at instance count thresholds (1000/2000)
- Distance-tiered character bone throttling: near (<30u) every frame,
mid (30-60u) every 3rd, far (60-120u) every 6th frame
- Skip weapon instance animation updates (transforms set by parent bones)
- Split M2 instances into fast-path index lists (animated, particle-only,
particle-all, smoke) to avoid iterating all 46K instances per frame
- Cache model flags (hasAnimation, disableAnimation, isSmoke, etc.) on
M2Instance struct to eliminate per-frame hash lookups
- Replace full rebuildSpatialIndex on position/transform updates with
incremental grid cell remove+add, preventing 8.5ms/frame rebuild cost
- Advance animTime for all instances (texture UV animation) but only
compute bones and particles for the ~3K that need it
M2_UPDATE: 10.7ms → 2.0ms, FPS: 35 → 55-59
The single sceneColorImage races between frames with MAX_FRAMES_IN_FLIGHT=2:
frame N-1's water shader reads it while frame N's captureSceneHistory writes
it via vkCmdCopyImage. Pipeline barriers only sync within a single command
buffer, not across submissions on the same queue.
This caused VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST after ~700 frames on any map with water.
Disable the capture entirely for now — water renders without refraction.
TODO: allocate per-frame scene history images to eliminate the race.
The previous commit changed std::move to copy for terrain/mesh data to fix
the empty-cache bug. But copying ~8 MB per tile × 81 tiles caused a 60s
streaming timeout.
The tile cache was already broken before — putCachedTile stored a shared_ptr
to the same PendingTile whose data was moved out, so cached tiles always had
empty meshes. Remove the putCachedTile call entirely; tiles re-parse from
ADT files (asset manager file cache hit) when they re-enter streaming range.
The softReset cache clear from the previous commit remains as safety for
map transitions.
Three fixes:
1. Water captureSceneHistory gated on hasSurfaces() — the image layout
transitions (PRESENT_SRC→TRANSFER_SRC→PRESENT_SRC) were running every
frame even on WMO-only maps with no water, causing VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST.
2. Tile cache invalidation: softReset() now clears tileCache_ since cache
keys are (x,y) without map name — prevents stale cross-map cache hits.
3. Copy terrain/mesh into TerrainTile instead of std::move — the moved-from
PendingTile was cached with empty data, so subsequent map loads returned
tiles with 0 valid chunks from cache.
Also adds diagnostic skip env vars (WOWEE_SKIP_TERRAIN, WOWEE_SKIP_SKY,
WOWEE_SKIP_PREPASSES) and a 0-chunk warning in loadTerrain.
Add null checks for vertex/index buffers, pipelines, and zero-count
draws in WMO render path. The shadow pass already had buffer validation
but the main render() was missing it, which could cause GPU crashes
on WMO-only maps like Stockades (26 groups).
After VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST, beginFrame returns VK_NULL_HANDLE but
renderWorld() and renderHUD() were still called, passing the null
handle to vkCmdBindPipeline which triggered a validation abort.
Root cause: LOGIN_VERIFY_WORLD path did not set areaTriggerCheckTimer_ or
areaTriggerSuppressFirst_, so the Stockades exit portal (AT 503) fired
immediately on login, teleporting the player back to Stormwind and crashing
the GPU during the unexpected map transition.
Fixes:
- Set 5s area trigger cooldown + suppress-first in handleLoginVerifyWorld
(same as SMSG_NEW_WORLD handler already did for teleports)
- Add deviceLost_ flag to VkContext so beginFrame returns immediately once
VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST is detected, preventing infinite retry loops
- Track device lost from both fence wait and queue submit paths
- Extract initializeRenderers() from loadTestTerrain() so WMO-only maps
(dungeons/raids) initialize renderers directly without a dummy ADT path
- Defer setState(IN_GAME) until after processing any pending deferred world
entry, preventing brief IN_GAME flicker on the wrong map
- Remove verbose area trigger debug logging (every-second position spam)
Reset descriptor pools in CharacterRenderer/M2Renderer/WMORenderer on map
change to prevent VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST from pool exhaustion. Defer re-entrant
SMSG_NEW_WORLD during active world load to avoid recursive cleanup crashes.
Gate swim bubbles on swimming state, skip redundant shadow pipeline re-init,
add WOWEE_SKIP_* env vars for render isolation debugging.
- Fix WDT chunk magic constants to big-endian ASCII (matching ADTLoader)
- Add minimum effective size for box area triggers (90 units, like sphere 45-unit radius)
- Add areaTriggerSuppressFirst_ flag to prevent portal ping-pong on map transfer
- Add WMORenderer::clearAll() to clear models/textures on map change (prevents GPU crash)
- Increase WMO texture cache default to 8GB
- Fix setMapName called after loadTestTerrain so WMO renderer exists
- Save/restore player position around CMSG_AREATRIGGER to prevent bad DB persistence
- Fix shutdown hang: skip vmaDestroyAllocator (walked thousands of allocations),
replace unsafe pthread_timedjoin_np with plain join + early-exit checks in workers
- Bank window: full icon rendering, click-and-hold pickup (0.10s), drag-drop for
all bank slots including bank bag equip slots, same-slot drop detection
- Loading screen: process one tile per frame for live progress updates
- Camera reset: trust server position in online mode to avoid spawning under WMOs
- Fix PLAYER_BYTES/PLAYER_BYTES_2 field indices, preserve purchasedBankBagSlots
across inventory rebuilds, fix bank slot purchase result codes
Water strafe used opposite sign convention from land movement.
Land: strafeLeft += right, strafeRight -= right.
Water was: strafeLeft -= right, strafeRight += right.
Now matches land.
Coastal areas like Booty Bay had gaps in ocean water where MH2O
data didn't cover harbor chunks (only 34/256 chunks had ocean
entries). For sea-level ocean surfaces (type=2, height~0), the
mask is now initialized to fully visible instead of empty, letting
depth testing against terrain handle land occlusion naturally.
unloadAll() now uses a 500ms deadline with pthread_timedjoin_np to
avoid blocking indefinitely when worker threads are mid-prepareTile
(reading MPQ archives / parsing ADT files). Threads that don't finish
within the deadline are detached so the app can exit promptly.
unloadAll() joins worker threads which blocks if they're mid-tile
(prepareTile can take seconds for heavy ADTs). Replace with softReset()
which clears tile data, queues, and water surfaces without stopping
worker threads — workers find empty queues and idle naturally.
- Add VK_DESCRIPTOR_POOL_CREATE_FREE_DESCRIPTOR_SET_BIT to water material
descriptor pool so individual sets can be freed when tiles are unloaded
- Free descriptor sets in destroyWaterMesh() instead of leaking them
- Add terrain manager unloadAll() during logout to properly clear stale
tiles, water surfaces, and queues between sessions
- Add diagnostic logging for water surface loading, material allocation
failures, and render skip reasons to investigate missing water
