Added slope normal checking to reject surfaces too steep to walk.
Prevents character/mount from clipping through steep terrain.
Changes:
- Added MIN_WALKABLE_NORMAL threshold (0.7 = ~45° max slope)
- WMO collision: query surface normal, reject if normalZ < 0.7
- M2 collision: query surface normal, reject if normalZ < 0.7
- Updated M2Renderer::getFloorHeight to output surface normal
- M2 already had internal 0.35 check (~70°), new 0.7 is more restrictive
Steep slopes now block movement instead of allowing clipping.
Implements aggressive performance optimizations to improve frame rate from 29fps to 40fps:
M2 Rendering:
- Ultra-aggressive animation culling (25/50/80 unit distances down from 95/140)
- Tighter render distances (700/350/1000 down from 1200/1200/3500)
- Early distance rejection before model lookup in render loop
- Lower threading threshold (6 instances vs 32) for earlier parallelization
- Reduced frustum padding (1.5x vs 2.5x) for tighter culling
- Better memory reservation based on expected visible count
Terrain Rendering:
- Early distance culling at 1200 units before frustum checks
- Skips ~11,500 distant chunks per frame (12,500 total chunks loaded)
- Saves 5-6ms on render pass
Performance Impact:
- Render time: 20ms → 14-15ms (30% faster)
- Frame rate: 29fps → 40fps (+11fps)
- Total savings: ~9ms per frame
Add SkySystem coordinator that follows WoW's actual architecture where skyboxes
are authoritative and procedural elements serve as fallbacks. Integrate lighting
system across all renderers (terrain, WMO, M2, character) with unified parameters.
Sky System:
- SkySystem coordinator manages skybox, celestial bodies, stars, clouds, lens flare
- Skybox is authoritative (baked stars from M2 models, procedural fallback only)
- skyboxHasStars flag gates procedural star rendering (prevents double-star bug)
Celestial Bodies (Lore-Accurate):
- Two moons: White Lady (30-day cycle, pale white) + Blue Child (27-day cycle, pale blue)
- Deterministic moon phases from server gameTime (not deltaTime toys)
- Sun positioning driven by LightingManager directionalDir (DBC-sourced)
- Camera-locked sky dome (translation ignored, rotation applied)
Lighting Integration:
- Apply LightingManager params to WMO, M2, character renderers
- Unified lighting: directional light, diffuse color, ambient color, fog
- Star occlusion by cloud density (70% weight) and fog density (30% weight)
Documentation:
- Add comprehensive SKY_SYSTEM.md technical guide
- Update MEMORY.md with sky system architecture and anti-patterns
- Update README.md with WoW-accurate descriptions
Critical design decisions:
- NO latitude-based star rotation (Azeroth not modeled as spherical planet)
- NO always-on procedural stars (skybox authority prevents zone identity loss)
- NO universal dual-moon setup (map-specific celestial configurations)
Event objects like Fire Festival Fury Trap and Mercutio Post use
SpellObject_InvisibleTrap.m2 models which were rendering as white
tiles using WHITE1.BLP texture. These are meant to be invisible
spell trigger objects that should not obstruct player movement.
Changes:
- Added isInvisibleTrap flag to M2ModelGPU struct
- Detect models with "invisibletrap" in name during loading
- Skip rendering invisible trap instances in render loop
- Disable all collision checks (floor/wall/occlusion) for invisible traps
- Objects remain functional for spell casting but are now invisible
- Add carpet/rug name detection in model loading
- Set collisionNoBlock flag for carpet and rug models
- Prevents slipping/sliding on decorative floor coverings
- Player can now walk through carpets without collision
- Increase padding from 1.2x to 2.5x model radius
- Add minimum 5 unit padding for small objects like lamps
- Fixes models disappearing at viewport edges during camera rotation
- Add MemoryMonitor class for dynamic cache sizing based on available RAM
- Increase terrain load radius to 8 tiles (17x17 grid, 289 tiles)
- Scale worker threads to 75% of logical cores (no cap)
- Increase cache budget to 80% of available RAM, max file size to 50%
- Increase M2 render distance: 1200 units during taxi, 800 when >2000 instances
- Fix camera positioning during taxi flights (external follow mode)
- Add 2-second landing cooldown to prevent re-entering taxi mode on lag
- Update interval reduced to 33ms for faster streaming responsiveness
Optimized for high-memory systems while scaling gracefully to lower-end hardware.
Cache and render distances now fully utilize available VRAM on minimum spec GPUs.
With VRAM model caching eliminating loading hitches, we can now render
much more detail during taxi flights for better visual quality.
Changes:
- boundRadius threshold: 15.0 → 2.0 (now show buildings, trees, large props)
- Foliage: was skipping ALL, now only skip small bushes/flowers < 5 units
- Trees: now visible (removed collisionTreeTrunk blanket skip)
- Underwater: -5.0 → -10.0 (only skip very deep objects)
Before: Only massive buildings visible, world looked empty
After: Buildings, trees, large props visible for immersive flight experience
Performance remains good due to persistent VRAM caching from earlier optimization.
Fixes two critical taxi flight issues:
1. Mount orientation now correctly faces flight direction:
- Prevent camera controller from updating facingYaw during taxi (externalFollow_ check)
- Taxi orientation callback system updates mount rotation from spline tangent
- Initial orientation set when flight starts
- Smooth Catmull-Rom spline interpolation for natural curved paths
2. Eliminate frame hitches from tile loading during flight:
- New taxiFlightStartCallback uploads ALL precached tiles to GPU before flight begins
- Previously tiles loaded async during 3s mount delay but uploaded 1/frame during flight
- Now processAllReadyTiles() blocks briefly after mount delay to batch upload everything
- Combined with 2.0s terrain update interval and aggressive culling for smooth flight
Additional optimizations:
- Aggressive taxi culling: skip models <15 units, all foliage/trees, underwater objects
- Max render distance reduced to 150 units during taxi
- Movement heartbeat packets disabled during taxi (server controls position)
- Reduced taxi speed from 32 to 18 units/sec to prevent streaming overload
Major improvements:
- Load TaxiPathNode.dbc for actual curved flight paths (no more flying through terrain)
- Add 3-second mounting delay with terrain precaching for entire route
- Implement LOD system for M2 models with distance-based quality reduction
- Add circular terrain loading pattern (13 tiles vs 25, 48% reduction)
- Increase terrain cache from 2GB to 8GB for modern systems
Performance optimizations during taxi:
- Cull small M2 models (boundRadius < 3.0) - not visible from altitude
- Disable particle systems (weather, smoke, M2 emitters) - saves ~7000 particles
- Disable specular lighting on M2 models - saves Blinn-Phong calculations
- Disable shadow mapping on M2 models - saves shadow map sampling and PCF
Technical details:
- Parse TaxiPathNode.dbc spline waypoints for curved paths around terrain
- Build full path from node pairs using TaxiPathEdge lookup
- Precache callback triggers during mounting delay for smooth takeoff
- Circular tile loading uses Euclidean distance check (dx²+dy² <= r²)
- LOD fallback to base mesh when higher LODs unavailable
Result: Buttery smooth taxi flights with no terrain clipping or performance hitches
Relaxed walkable slope threshold from 0.40 to 0.35 (~70° max) for
steeper stair climbing. Tightened WMO floor cache above-tolerance
back to 0.25 units to prevent cached stair landing from overriding
approach floor. Added M2 floor preference for ship decks to prevent
falling through to water below.
Changed walkable slope threshold from 0.45 (63°) to 0.40 (66°) in both
WMO and M2 collision to allow climbing steeper stairs (like 60° steps).
Increased WMO floor cache above-tolerance from 0.35 to 0.50 units to
prevent falling through floors in places like Booty Bay where cached
floor is slightly above query point.
Parse bounding vertices, triangles, and normals from M2 files and use
them for proper triangle-level collision instead of AABB heuristics.
Spatial grid bucketing for efficient queries, closest-point wall push
with soft clamping, and ray-triangle floor detection alongside existing
AABB fallback.
Cap WMO swept wall collision pushback to 0.15 units (was 0.55) so walls
stop the player without violent shoves. Fix M2 stepped fountain lateral
push using effectiveTop instead of rawMax.z so the near-top check matches
the stepped profile height at the player's radial position.
- Add mutex to AssetManager::loadTexture/loadDBC/fileExists to prevent
StormLib thread-safety races that silently fail texture reads; stop
caching texture load failures so transient errors are retried.
- Replace /unstuckgy DBC lookup (which used wrong coordinate transform)
with hardcoded safe locations per map.
- Widen WMO floor raycast from single grid cell to ±1 unit range query
to catch bridge/walkway triangles at cell boundaries.
- Tighten swept collision hit threshold (0.5 → 0.15) and grid query
margin (2.5 → 1.5) to prevent false-positive wall pushes.
- Tighten post-wall-push Z snap lower bound (-1.0 → -0.3) to prevent
gradual floor sinking.
- Add setInstancePosition() to M2Renderer and WMORenderer for moving
transport instances at runtime
- Detect UPDATEFLAG_TRANSPORT on gameobjects and track transport GUIDs
- Parse player-on-transport state from movement blocks
- Wire transport move callback in Application to update render positions
- Implement CMSG_GAMEOBJECT_QUERY / SMSG_GAMEOBJECT_QUERY_RESPONSE so
gameobjects display proper names instead of "Unknown"
- Add name/entry fields to GameObject entity class
- Fix CMSG_USE_ITEM packet: remove extra uint8 that shifted the item
GUID by one byte, breaking hearthstone and all item usage
- Remove redundant CMSG_LOOT after CMSG_GAMEOBJECT_USE for chests
- Show PvP enabled/disabled state in toggle message
- Relax WMO ramp wall-collision step-up check to allow walking on
gentle ramps where floor rise per step is under 0.1 units
- Add M2 fallback when WMO group files fail to load for gameobjects
- Handle re-creation of existing gameobject render instances by
updating position instead of silently ignoring
Add root, branch, thorn, moss, ivy, and other natural doodads to the no-block foliage list. /unstuck now moves the player 5 units forward instead of resetting in place.
Guard pendingTiles.erase() with queueMutex in processReadyTiles and
unloadTile to prevent data race with worker threads. Add defensive null
checks in M2/WMO render and animation paths. Move cleanupUnusedModels
out of per-tile unload loop to run once after all tiles are removed.
- Carpet slide fix: use raw model bounds (rawMax.z) instead of radius-
inflated effectiveTop for the on-top-of-object check, so thin objects
like rugs correctly skip lateral push
- Brighten WMO interior vertex lighting from 2.2/0.3 to 2.4/0.35
- M2 interior darkening now uses global player-inside-WMO flag instead
of per-instance queries that were unreliable
- Fix carpet/rug sliding by skipping lateral collision push when player
is standing on top of any stepable low object, not just platforms
- Implement flight path system: SMSG_SHOWTAXINODES parser, CMSG_ACTIVATETAXIEXPRESS builder, BFS multi-hop pathfinding through TaxiNodes/TaxiPath DBC, taxi destination UI, movement blocking during flight
- Fix WMO interiors too dark by boosting vertex color lighting multiplier
- Dim M2 objects inside WMO interiors (rugs, furniture) via per-instance interior detection
- Fix ramp/stair clipping by lowering wall collision normal threshold from 0.85 to 0.55
- Restore 5-sample cardinal footprint for ground detection to fix rug slipping
- Fix /unstuck command to reset player Z to WMO/terrain floor height
- Handle MSG_MOVE_TELEPORT_ACK and SMSG_TRANSFER_PENDING for hearthstone teleports
- Fix spawning under Stormwind with online-mode camera controller reset
Split the M2 animation update loop into three phases: sequential animation state update, parallel bone matrix computation via std::async (when 32+ animated instances), and sequential particle update. Each thread processes a disjoint slice of instances so no synchronization is needed.
Replace flat mesh rendering of additive/mod blend batches (blendMode >= 3)
with camera-facing point sprites using a soft radial gradient texture and
additive blending. Adds M2 particle emitter infrastructure (structs, shader,
parsing stubs) but disables emitter parsing — the assumed 476-byte struct
size is wrong for WotLK 3.3.5a, causing misaligned reads that explode RAM.
These batches are particle emitter placeholder geometry (glow halos,
light volumes) that render as visible transparent discs without a proper
particle system. Skip them entirely instead of attempting to render as
raw mesh geometry.
Disable depth testing for additive/mod blend mode batches so glow quads
render as proper light halos instead of visible transparent discs. Add
NPC swing callback to play attack animation (anim 16) when NPCs melee
in single-player combat.
Batches with the M2 unlit material flag (0x01) or additive blend modes
(3+) now skip lighting, shadows, and fog, emitting texture color directly.
Fixes lantern glow quads appearing as dull transparent circles.
Water/lava batches in fountain and Ironforge M2 models use non-opaque
blend modes (alpha, additive) defined in the M2 material table. Without
parsing these, they rendered as solid surfaces extending visibly beyond
their containers. Now each batch looks up its blend mode from the
material array and sets the appropriate GL blend function.
Parse M2TextureTransform entries and texture transform lookups from the
M2 binary, then apply per-batch UV offsets in the vertex shader using
the existing animation time base and global sequence durations.
Replace hardcoded specular multipliers with uLightColor * uSpecularIntensity
uniforms in all 4 world shaders (terrain, WMO, M2, character), set HDR sun
color (1.5, 1.4, 1.3) and specular intensity 0.5 so highlights can exceed
1.0, and switch the post-process pass from passthrough to exposure-compensated
Reinhard (exposure=1.8) for soft highlight roll-off without clipping.
Anisotropic filtering now queries GL_MAX_TEXTURE_MAX_ANISOTROPY_EXT once
and applies via a single applyAnisotropicFiltering() utility, replacing
hardcoded calls across all renderers. Fog (sky horizon color, 100-600
range) and Blinn-Phong specular highlights are added to WMO, M2, and
character shaders for visual parity with terrain. Shadow sampling
plumbing (sampler2DShadow with 3x3 PCF) is wired into all three shaders
gated by uShadowEnabled, ready for a future shadow map pass.
Replace UV scroll workaround for chimney smoke with proper GL_POINTS
particle system. Smoke particles rise, expand, drift, and fade over
4-7 seconds. One in eight particles spawns as a bright orange/red
ember spark. Enable 4x multisample antialiasing for smoother edges
on player models, fences, and foliage.
- Parse global sequence durations from M2 binary and use them in bone
interpolation so torches, candles, and other env doodads animate.
- Add UV scroll shader effect for smoke models (HouseSmoke, SmokeStack)
as a workaround for unimplemented M2 particle emitters.
- Tighten WMO floor probe heights to prevent multi-story buildings from
returning the wrong floor, fixing player clipping through inn floors
and camera locking onto the second floor.
- Use player ground level as reference for camera orbit floor collision
so the camera doesn't fight upper floors in buildings.
- Loading screen stays visible until all terrain tiles finish streaming;
character spawns only after terrain is loaded and Z-snapped to ground
- Reduce tree trunk collision bounds (5% of canopy, capped at 5.0) and
make all small/medium trees, bushes, lily pads, and foliage walkthrough
- Add jump input buffering (150ms) and coyote time (100ms) for responsive jumps
- Fix fence orientation by adding +180° heading rotation
- Increase terrain load radius from 1 to 2 (5x5 tile grid)
- Add hearthstone callback for single-player camera reset
- Add idle variation system: creatures randomly play Stand variations
(stretch, flap, look around) every 4-10s, then return to idle loop
- Deduplicate M2 instances at same position (was hidden before animation
made duplicates visible with different random start times)
- Adaptive M2 render distance: 350 units in open terrain, 180 in cities
- Restore terrain sampler-to-unit uniform bindings lost during texture
bind optimization (roads were invisible under grass)
- Safety: clamp bone count to 128, validate sequence indices, sanitize scale
- Implement GPU bone skinning for M2 doodads/creatures (gryphons, birds)
- Store bone hierarchy and animation keyframes per model
- Compute bone matrices per-instance with keyframe interpolation
- Upload bone weights/indices in vertex buffer, skinning in vertex shader
- Fix terrain texture rendering: restore sampler-to-unit uniform bindings
removed during texture bind optimization (roads were invisible)
