Parse M2RibbonEmitter data (WotLK format) from M2 files — bone index,
position, color/alpha/height tracks, edgesPerSecond, edgeLifetime,
gravity. Add CPU-side trail simulation per instance (edge birth at bone
world position, lifetime expiry, gravity droop). New m2_ribbon.vert/frag
shaders render a triangle-strip quad per emitter using the existing
particleTexLayout_ descriptor set. Supports both alpha-blend and additive
pipeline variants based on material blend mode. Fixes invisible spell
trail effects (~5-10%% of spell visuals) that were silently skipped.
- FXAA path: repurpose _pad field as 'desaturate' push constant; when
ghostMode_ is true, convert final pixel to grayscale with slight cool
blue tint using luma(0.299,0.587,0.114) mix
- Non-FXAA path: apply a high-opacity gray overlay (rgba 0.5,0.5,0.55,0.82)
over the scene for a washed-out look
- Both parallel (SEC_POST) and single-threaded render paths covered
- ghostMode_ flag set each frame from gameHandler->isPlayerGhost()
- Post-FXAA unsharp mask: when FSR2 is active alongside FXAA, forward
the FSR2 sharpness value (0–2) to the FXAA fragment shader via a new
vec4 push constant. A contrast-adaptive sharpening step (unsharp mask
scaled to 0–0.3) is applied after FXAA blending, recovering the
crispness that FXAA's sub-pixel blend removes. At sharpness=2.0 the
output matches RCAS quality; at sharpness=0 the step is a no-op.
- MSAA guard: setFXAAEnabled() refuses to activate FXAA when hardware
MSAA is in use. FXAA's role is to supplement FSR temporal AA, not to
stack on top of MSAA which already resolves jaggies during the scene
render pass.
FSR EASU and FSR2 sharpen fragment shaders had a manual Y-flip to undo
the now-removed postprocess.vert flip. Strip those since the vertex
shader no longer flips, making all postprocess paths consistent.
Also flip the default mouse Y-axis to match user expectation (mouse
down = look up / flight-sim style) and make FSR1 disable MSAA on
enable, matching FSR2 behaviour (FSR provides its own spatial AA).
postprocess.vert.glsl had `TexCoord.y = 1.0 - TexCoord.y` which
inverted the vertical sampling of the scene texture. Vulkan textures
use v=0 at the top, matching framebuffer row 0, so no flip is needed.
The camera already flips the projection matrix (mat[1][1] *= -1) so
the scene is rendered correctly oriented; the extra inversion in the
postprocess pass flipped FXAA output upside down.
Fixes: FXAA shows camera upside down
Also fixes: FSR1 upscale and FSR3 sharpen passes (same vertex shader)
Trivial/low-level quests now show gray '!' / '?' markers instead of
yellow, matching the in-game distinction between available and trivial
quests. Add grayscale parameter to QuestMarkerRenderer::setMarker and
the push-constant block; application sets grayscale=1.0 for trivial
markers and 0.0 for all others.
Read the ambient color from the MOHD chunk (BGRA uint32) and store it
on WMOModel as a normalized RGB vec3. Pass it through ModelData into
the per-batch WMOMaterialUBO (replacing the unused pad[3] bytes, keeping
the struct at 64 bytes). The GLSL interior branch now floors vertex
colors against the WMO ambient instead of a hardcoded 0.5, so dungeon
interiors respect the artist-specified ambient tint from the WMO root
rather than always clamping to grey.
- Selective neighborhood clamp: only modify history when there's actual
motion or disocclusion — static pixels pass history through untouched,
preventing jitter-chasing from the shifting variance box
- Tonemapped accumulation: Reinhard tonemap before blend compresses bright
edges so they don't disproportionately cause jitter
- Jitter-aware sample weighting: blend 3-20% based on sample proximity
- Soft MV dead zone: smoothstep instead of step avoids spatial discontinuity
- Aggressive velocity response: 30%/px motion, 50% cap, 80% disocclusion
- Terrain loading: radius 3 (49 tiles) to prevent spawn hitches,
processOneReadyTile for smooth progress bar updates
FSR2 temporal upscaling:
- De-jitter scene color sampling (outUV - jitterUV) for frame-to-frame
consistency, eliminating the primary source of temporal jitter
- Remove luminance instability dampening (was causing excessive blur)
- Simplify to uniform 8% blend (de-jittered values are consistent)
- Gamma 2.0 for moderate neighborhood clamping
- Motion vector dead zone: zero sub-0.01px motion from float precision noise
Loading screen:
- Reduce tile load radius from 3 to 2 (25 tiles) for faster loading
- Process one tile per iteration for smooth progress bar updates
- Motion shader: zero out sub-0.01px motion to eliminate float precision
noise in reprojection (distant geometry with large world coords)
- Accumulate: tighten neighborhood clamp gamma 3.0→1.5 to catch slightly
misaligned history causing ghost doubles
- Reduce max jitter-aware blend 30%→20% for less visible oscillation
- Add luminance instability dampening: reduce blend when current frame
disagrees with history to prevent shimmer on small/distant features
- Motion vectors: single unjittered reprojection matrix (80 bytes) instead of
two jittered matrices (160 bytes), eliminating numerical instability from
jitter amplification through large world coordinates
- Sharpen pass: fix Y-flip for correct UV sampling, double-buffer descriptor
sets to avoid race with in-flight command buffers
- MSAA: auto-disable when FSR2 enabled, grey out AA setting in UI
- Accumulation: variance-based neighborhood clamping in YCoCg space,
correct history layout transitions
- Frame index: wrap at 256 for stable Halton sequence
Full FSR 2.2 pipeline with depth-based motion vector reprojection,
temporal accumulation with YCoCg neighborhood clamping, and RCAS
contrast-adaptive sharpening.
Architecture (designed for FSR 3.x frame generation readiness):
- Camera: Halton(2,3) sub-pixel jitter with unjittered projection
stored separately for motion vector computation
- Motion vectors: compute shader reconstructs world position from
depth + inverse VP, reprojects with previous frame's VP
- Temporal accumulation: compute shader blends 5-10% current frame
with 90-95% clamped history, adaptive blend for disocclusion
- History: ping-pong R16G16B16A16 buffers at display resolution
- Sharpening: RCAS fragment pass with contrast-adaptive weights
Integration:
- FSR2 replaces both FSR1 and MSAA when enabled
- Scene renders to internal resolution framebuffer (no MSAA)
- Compute passes run between scene and swapchain render passes
- Camera cut detection resets history on teleport
- Quality presets shared with FSR1 (0.50-0.77 scale factors)
- UI: "Upscaling" combo with Off/FSR 1.0/FSR 2.2 options
- 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
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.
- 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)
Add hard discard at radius 0.35 so no fragment beyond that point
reaches the additive blend stage. Tighten disc, glow, and edge
fade to fit within the cutoff boundary.
Remove isInterior restriction from WMO shadow sampling so city
buildings (flagged as interior groups) correctly receive shadows.
Apply shadow to interior-lit surfaces. Enable shadows by default
and persist the setting across sessions.
- Tighten celestial glow falloff and edge fade to eliminate visible quad boundary
- Add opacity support to minimap display shader, synced with UI opacity setting
- Fix audio double/triple-scaling by removing redundant master volume multiplications
- Rename "Original Soundtrack" toggle to "Enable WoWee Music"
- Add About tab with developer info and GitHub link
Alpha blending caused faint quad edges to be visible against the sky
gradient. Additive blending correctly adds glow light without the
outline artifact. Edge fade starts earlier and discard threshold raised.
- Replace dark edge RGB on alpha-tested foliage with mip-4 average color
proportional to alpha (low alpha = low trust in original RGB)
- Raise foliage alpha cutoff to 0.4 and remove dither band for cleaner edges
- Disable depth test on insect particles so they don't vanish behind foliage
- Exempt dragonflies/butterflies/moths from foliage animation freeze
- Spawn dark point-sprite insects buzzing around cattails/reeds/kelp/seaweed
- Fix firefly M2 particles: exempt from alpha dampening and forced gravity
- Make water shoreline/crest foam more irregular with UV warping and bluer tint
- Fix HeightMap::getHeight() to use interleaved 17-wide row layout
matching MCVT storage (was using wrong 9-wide contiguous indexing)
- Guard terrain bump mapping normalize against zero-length vectors
to prevent NaN propagation and GPU faults
Shadow casting: foliage batches now bind their actual texture in the shadow
pass with alpha testing, producing leaf-shaped shadows instead of solid cards.
Uses a per-frame resettable descriptor pool for texture sets.
Shadow receiving: foliage fragments now sample the shadow map with PCF
instead of using a flat constant darkening.
Replaces single-tap shadow sampling with 3x3 grid PCF (36-sample equivalent
with hardware bilinear filtering) for smooth shadow edges. Adds normal-offset
bias to eliminate shadow acne on oblique surfaces without peter-panning.
Extends the WMO normal mapping/POM system to character M2 models with
bone-skinned tangents. Auto-generates normal/height maps from diffuse
textures using luminance→height, Sobel→normals (same algorithm as WMO).
- Expand vertex buffer from M2Vertex (48B) to CharVertexGPU (56B) with
tangent vec4 computed via Lengyel's method in setupModelBuffers()
- Tangents are bone-transformed and Gram-Schmidt orthogonalized in the
vertex shader, output as TBN for fragment shader consumption
- Fragment shader gains POM ray marching, normal map blending, and LOD
crossfade via dFdx/dFdy (identical to WMO shader)
- Descriptor set 1 extended with binding 2 for normal/height sampler
- Settings (enable, strength, POM quality) wired from game_screen.cpp
to both WMO and character renderers via shared UI controls
POM fixes: use blurred height only for ray march (keep crisp Sobel for
normals), reduce pomScale 0.03→0.012, clamp grazing angle denominator
to 0.15, hard-limit max UV offset, smooth fadeout at steep view angles.
Add Normal Map Strength slider (0.0-2.0) in Video settings for user
control over surface detail intensity. Persisted across sessions.
Generate normal+height maps from diffuse textures at load time using
luminance-to-height and Sobel 3x3 filtering. Compute per-vertex tangents
via Lengyel's method for TBN basis construction.
Fragment shader uses screen-space UV derivatives (dFdx/dFdy) for smooth
LOD crossfade and angle-adaptive POM sample counts. Flat textures
naturally produce low height variance, causing POM to self-select off.
Settings: Normal Mapping on by default, POM off by default with
Low/Medium/High quality presets. Persisted across sessions.
Dedicated Vulkan pipeline with alpha blending AND depth writes so
windows look transparent at oblique angles without see-through artifacts.
Fresnel alpha ranges from 0.4 (grazing) to 0.95 (head-on) with sun
glint, reflections, and silver-lining specular.
- Fix MLIQ vertex stride: each vertex is 8 bytes (4 flow + 4 height), not 4
- Use MLIQ tile flags to mask out tiles with no liquid (bridges, covered areas)
- Disable wave displacement on WMO water to prevent edge slosh artifacts
- Convert screen-space depth to vertical depth for shoreline foam and water
transparency, preventing false shoreline effects on occluding geometry
- Add underwater blue fog overlay and scene fog shift (terrain water only)
- Add getNearestWaterHeightAt to avoid false underwater detection from
elevated WMO water surfaces
- Tint refracted scene toward water color to mask occlusion edge artifacts
- Lower WMO water by 1 unit to match terrain water level
- Skybox now uses DBC sky colors (skyTop/skyMiddle/skyBand1/skyBand2) instead
of hardcoded C++ color curves, with 3-band gradient and Rayleigh/Mie scattering
- Clouds receive sun direction for lit edges, self-shadowing, and silver lining
- Fixed sun quad box artifact with proper edge fade in celestial shader
- Lens flare attenuated by fog, cloud density, and weather intensity
- Replaced garish green/purple lens flare ghosts with warm natural palette
- Added zone-based weather system for single-player mode with per-zone rain/snow
configuration, probability-based activation, and smooth intensity transitions
- Server SMSG_WEATHER remains authoritative when connected to a server
Player interaction ripples: vertex shader adds radial damped-sine displacement
centered on player position, fragment shader adds matching normal perturbation
for specular highlights. Player XY packed into shadowParams.zw, ripple strength
into fogParams.w. Separate 1x render pass for water when MSAA is active to
avoid MSAA-induced darkening — water renders after main pass resolves, using
the resolved swapchain image and depth resolve target. Water 1x framebuffers
rebuilt on swapchain recreate (window resize).
