Eddyveil Shaders v5.9.3 - macOS
Build: FIRSTFRAME-FACTORY-SHOWCASE-2026-08-14

Firstframe makes the shader's raw built-in configuration the intended opening
experience. A new user selects the ZIP and sees this presentation immediately,
without choosing a profile or opening the settings screen.

Firstframe fresh-install presentation

1. Iris opens at Profile Custom and Brightness Dim from the raw shader defaults.
2. Twenty-two visible controls differ intentionally from Low. Cloud opacity,
   cirrus, sky optics, daily moods, biome color and weather, auroras, and storm
   illumination provide a stronger opening sky without more volume samples.
3. Generated PBR strength, surface gloss, AO, leaf transmission, emissive aura,
   bloom rolloff, wetness, water refraction, foam, caustics, sharpening, glass,
   and eye adaptation are raised without new framebuffer or neighboring reads.
4. Detailed leaves retain the same two color reads as Low. The third guarded
   leaf texture sample remains exclusive to quality three and above.
5. Generated PBR remains at tier two and derives its normal from the albedo
   already fetched by the material. It performs zero neighboring atlas reads.
6. Strong generated PBR now stays on the compact analytic specular lobe. Exact
   mapped PBR modes still use the full microfacet response on higher profiles.
7. Shadow, godray, reflection, atmosphere, cloud, bloom, AO, post, End-sky,
   particles, underwater, screen-shadow, and colored-light qualities match Low.
8. Bloom quality remains zero, POM and camera blurs remain off, blocklight fog
   remains at two, and the shared two-neighbor post path remains active.
9. Named Potato, Low, Medium, High, and Ultra profiles are unchanged. Selecting
   one remains an explicit user choice after the opening Custom presentation.

Firstframe performance contract

1. Added full-screen texture reads: zero.
2. Added cloud, reflection, godray, weather, shadow, AO, or particle samples: zero.
3. Added render targets, history buffers, framebuffers, or passes: zero.
4. The only extra work is bounded strength arithmetic already compiled by Low.

Stilltrace replaces the failed one-source shortcut with a deterministic planar
screen-space trace. It keeps the world ray stationary while allowing only the
water material around it to animate.

Stilltrace reflection repair

1. Terrain uses the undisplaced horizontal plane and a constant up normal.
   Animated mesh height, wave gradients, time, and hashes never enter its ray.
2. Walking, swimming, boats, bobbing, and jumping retain the same 1.72-block
   mirror eye. Camera yaw and pitch only project the already-fixed world ray.
3. Low, Medium, High, and Ultra use 5, 7, 9, and 12 deterministic coarse depth
   points. Compact refinement and one depth-slope correction resolve hits.
4. Reconstructed geometry must sit above water and within a narrow world-space
   distance of the mirror ray. Screen-edge and underwater impostors are rejected.
5. There is no nearest-point, closest-depth, screen-row, horizon, anchor, or
   finite-source rescue. A failed hit returns to the analytic environment.
6. Low uses one confirmed color read, Medium three, and High or Ultra five.
   Color blur is fixed and never changes hit position or visibility.
7. Terrain opacity is capped at 0.70 so refraction, Fresnel, surface ripples,
   highlights, and the real water body remain visible around reflected scenery.
8. Every non-reflection loop, framebuffer, pass, preset, and platform-specific
   optimization remains unchanged from Tidelock.

Tidelock separates stationary terrain placement from the moving appearance of
real water. Reflected scenery now follows a finite world source while crossed
ripple roughness affects only its color resolve.

Tidelock reflection repair

1. The live water screen row is no longer used to select reflected terrain.
2. A fixed 1.72-block mirror eye height builds the source world position for
   normal ground, shore, boat, swimming, walking, and jump viewpoints.
3. The source is reprojected as the real camera moves, making its UV follow the
   same opaque mountain, tree, entity, or structure instead of a screen patch.
4. Low shoreline tolerance and screen-edge coverage were widened without
   admitting deep underwater geometry or the ocean floor.
5. World-space crossed ripples vary blur direction, radius, and transparency,
   but never modify the center depth coordinate or terrain visibility test.
6. The terrain blend is reduced from chrome-like coverage so animated water,
   Fresnel, refraction, and the existing wave material remain readable.
7. Low uses one depth and two color reads. Medium uses one plus three; High and
   Ultra use one plus five. No ray march, search, refinement, or history exists.

Astralforge replaces the flat daytime and nighttime celestial masks with
larger, depth-ordered analytic forms while keeping their cost tightly bounded.

Astralforge 3D celestial overhaul

1. Helios has a shaded spherical plasma core, asymmetric surface light, a
   thicker stellar rim, and a six-blade corona instead of a flat bright disc.
2. Two tilted, broken orbital rings pass behind and in front of the sphere,
   giving the daytime object readable volume as the camera moves.
3. The nighttime black hole is larger and uses separate far, middle, and near
   accretion layers around a spherical shadow with an asymmetric photon shell.
4. Upper and lower gravitational lens arcs wrap the far disk around the core;
   the near ribbon then occludes it in the correct foreground order.
5. Helios is about 37 percent larger at the core and 21 percent wider at the
   corona. The black-hole core is about 21 percent larger.
6. Both objects remain closed-form shader math. No texture read, framebuffer,
   loop, ray march, render target, or extra pass was added.

Horizonlock removes the sparse per-pixel depth search that produced the
reported horizontal reflection bands. The active terrain layer is now one
continuous horizon-mirrored image across the complete water surface.

Horizonlock reflection repair

1. Each horizontal water fragment projects the same world horizon for its
   azimuth and mirrors the opaque scene vertically around that horizon.
2. Neighboring pixels therefore select neighboring scene pixels. They cannot
   jump among unrelated ray hits, silhouettes, or closest-point rescues.
3. Reconstructed source geometry must sit above the undisplaced water plane
   and align with the water fragment's azimuth. Underwater terrain is rejected.
4. Wave normals, animated vertex height, frame time, hashes, cursor position,
   and jump height never enter the terrain reflection coordinate.
5. Low and the fresh install use one depth read and one color read. Medium uses
   three fixed color reads; High and Ultra use five. No trace loop remains.
6. Historical planar, anchor, and ray-march functions are compiled out.

Cinderforge fixes the split lighting model that made Nether terrain glow while
mobs, hands, block entities, and particles collapsed into gray darkness. It
also extends Eddyveil's physical material response far beyond terrain without
increasing the expensive atmosphere or reflection sample budgets.

Cinderforge Nether lighting

1. All forward geometry now shares a ceiling-aware ambient model. Piglins,
   armor, held items, block entities, and lit particles receive warm cavern
   fill, amber blocklight, and restrained lava bounce instead of Overworld gray.
2. The final atmosphere uses smoke-black distance depth, a warm near haze, and
   controlled biome accents rather than a full-screen red multiplier.
3. Netherrack, basalt, blackstone, soul sand, and soul soil are no longer
   classified as lava emission. Lava and magma retain focused glow.
4. The Furnace Heart, lava ocean, forge gates, biome structures, and existing
   volume fields remain, but shadows retain material color and readable shape.

Cinderforge material expansion

1. Terrain, mobs, hands, opaque and translucent block entities, and Distant
   Horizons terrain now receive dimension-aware physical material response.
2. LabPBR and OldPBR atlases provide mapped normals, smoothness, metals, AO,
   porosity, subsurface response, and emission where a resource pack supplies
   them. Neutral or missing maps fall back safely.
3. Vanilla textures use eight generated material families: metal, polished
   stone, wood, rough stone, soil, ice, ceramic, and cloth.
4. The fresh-install Generated mode derives its normal detail from the albedo
   sample already fetched by each material. It adds no neighboring atlas read.
5. Portals, glass depth repair, signs, name tags, damage overlays, and item
   sprites retain protected rendering paths.
6. Distant Horizons uses a textureless material-ID BRDF, avoiding atlas reads,
   screen-space rays, and extra passes on far terrain.

Raybound replaces Worldlock's guessed screen anchor with a geometrically
correct deterministic reflection ray.

Raybound reflection repair

1. The active terrain ray begins on the undisplaced horizontal water plane and
   is reflected in world space. Camera yaw and pitch never create or alter it.
2. The current view matrix transforms that same ray only so it can intersect
   Iris's visible opaque depth. Every rotation therefore tests identical world
   positions instead of choosing a new source around the crosshair.
3. Screen-pixel hash jitter, animated water normals, Fresnel, and moving facets
   are absent from terrain coordinate generation and terrain visibility.
4. Deterministic curved stepping, silhouette entry, one or two refinement
   steps, above-water validation, and a strict near-ray rescue replace the
   invalid two-sample range guess.
5. Low / Medium / High / Ultra use 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 coarse samples. This is more
   work than Worldlock's incorrect shortcut but far below the historical
   8 / 16 / 24 / 32 active macOS march.
6. Like every screen-space reflection, geometry outside the current camera
   buffer falls back to the analytic sky instead of inventing terrain.

Worldlock removes the remaining mouse-turn crawl from real terrain reflections
without restoring the expensive screen-space ray march.

Worldlock camera-stationary reflections

1. Water vertices now preserve their undisplaced block-height plane. Animated
   mesh displacement never enters the mountain reflection coordinate.
2. The mirror ray is created entirely from world positions and a stabilized
   eye height. Camera yaw and pitch are used only to project the same locked
   world source alongside the real terrain.
3. One depth lookup recovers terrain range at a fixed world anchor. That range
   is snapped to a two-block world interval and reprojected onto the mirror ray;
   a second depth lookup validates the final above-water source.
4. Real terrain visibility is independent of Fresnel and moving wave facets.
   Waves still control water gloss, sky reflection, distortion, transmission,
   tint, foam, and highlights without turning mountains on and off.
5. Runtime cost is two constant depth reads and one conditional scene-color
   read. No trace loop, history buffer, framebuffer, or render pass was added.

Deepanchor fixes Crownforge's remaining vertical reflection instability and
restores the Nether's intended dark cavern exposure without removing its new
structures or increasing any quality tier's heavy sample budget.

Deepanchor reflection stabilization

1. The geometry reflection no longer projects an infinite direction with w=0.
   Each water fragment creates a finite anchor in world space and projects that
   point into the current opaque scene.
2. Normal shoreline, swimming, and boat views use a stable reflection eye
   height relative to the water plane. A normal jump therefore produces zero
   movement in the reflected world anchor.
3. Elevated views blend back to their real camera height. Underwater views
   retain the actual signed height instead of using the above-water stabilizer.
4. The terrain image uses a flat mirror plane. Animated waves still shape
   Fresnel, facets, transmission, tint, foam, and highlights without dragging
   reflected mountains vertically.
5. The path still performs one opaque-depth lookup and one conditional color
   lookup. It adds no ray march, framebuffer, history buffer, or render pass.

Deepanchor Nether exposure

1. Base skies and biome horizons are darker, while the Furnace Heart remains a
   focused high-contrast landmark instead of bleaching its surrounding sky.
2. Lava horizons, forge gates, vault veins, soul curtains, warped auroras,
   crimson canopies, and basalt fractures retain their shapes at lower energy.
3. Fog, cavern bounce, underlight, volume shafts, particles, world radiance,
   eye response, and bloom were balanced individually; no flat dim overlay was
   placed across the dimension.
4. All Nether volume and mote sample counts remain unchanged from Crownforge.

Crownforge replaces the ordinary daytime disk with Eddyveil's Helios Crown and
turns the Nether into a biome-reactive forge dimension. The pass is designed
around closed-form shapes and reuse of noise already paid for by the existing
atmosphere so its large visual change does not require a larger march budget.

Crownforge daytime overhaul

1. Helios combines an overbright stellar core, slowly rotating sixfold corona,
   axial rays, an inner ring, a 22-degree halo, and horizontal sun dogs.
2. The corona's sixfold shape uses a polynomial instead of atan. Pixels beyond
   the Crown's 28-degree influence return before basis, square-root, or trig
   work, and the effect uses no texture read or atmosphere sample.
3. Clear daylight uses deeper blue zeniths, brighter cyan horizons, a broad
   gold solar wake, restrained violet counterglow, and weather visibility.
4. Volumetric clouds receive cooler dimensional shade, warmer sun-facing
   bodies, and brighter silver linings without a new density or light probe.
5. Overworld water receives separate gold body light and white-gold Helios
   sparkle while Stillwater's planar geometry path remains unchanged.

Crownforge Nether overhaul

1. The fixed Furnace Heart is a colossal broken forge star with an overbright
   core, fractured halo, axial rays, and biome-reactive color.
2. Reused triplanar smoke builds a vaulted ceiling, glowing cracks, a jagged
   lava ocean, and distant forge-gate rhythm with no extra noise lookup.
3. Soul valleys gain tall spectral curtains; warped forests gain green aurora
   roots; crimson forests gain branching canopy light; basalt deltas gain pale
   heat fractures; wastes emphasize the furnace horizon and gate silhouettes.
4. World-space ceiling shade, cavern bounce, fog color, lava underlight, and
   the existing volume samples carry the biome identity onto visible terrain.
5. Existing Nether volume and mote loops keep their prior sample counts. Their
   already-computed streak field now shapes broad shafts and curtains.

Stillwater foundation

Stillwater removed the active center-biased screen-space ray march and supplied
the constant-cost full-surface foundation. Deepanchor now generates its source
coordinate from a finite world-space mirror anchor, while the previous trace
loop remains absent from the runtime call path.

Stillwater reflection stabilization

1. Each water pixel reflects toward a finite world anchor across a flat
   world-space water plane and projects that point into the opaque scene.
2. The result spans the full visible surface and has no crosshair-centered hit
   corridor, stochastic trace jitter, depth-crossing search, or march loop.
3. One opaque-depth lookup validates the source; one scene-color lookup occurs
   only for visible above-water geometry inside safe screen borders.
4. Analytic waves remain in the material response while the terrain coordinate
   stays flat, coherent, and free of vertical wave drag.
5. Translucent-depth detection blocks Overworld fantasy motes behind water and
   glass. Rain now fades those motes fully instead of leaving bright speckles.
6. The active reflection cost is constant across Low, Medium, High, and Ultra.

Ascendant rebuilds the complete quality ladder. Potato, Medium, High, and Ultra
High now receive the same visual-performance attention previously given to the
factory and Low paths, while the fresh-install Custom presentation remains
immediately cinematic.

Core rendering changes

1. Medium through Ultra share one quality-scaled framebuffer neighborhood for
   scene reconstruction, AO, colored bounce, blocklight fog, and emissive aura.
   The near pair also supplies edge-aware resolve and nameplate protection.
2. Clouds reject empty macro cells and solid interiors before expensive noise.
   Medium, High, and Ultra use 30, 40, and 48 march points on macOS; sunlight
   probing scales from analytic on Medium to deep self-shadowing on Ultra.
3. Water SSR uses nonlinear jittered progress, stricter hit support, and 16, 24,
   and 32 trace points on Medium, High, and Ultra. Medium refraction and
   reflection validation use compact five-tap kernels.
4. Medium, High, and Ultra god rays use 8, 12, and 16 smooth depth samples.
   Overworld weather uses 3, 5, and 6 samples; Nether volumes use 3, 4, and 6.
5. Every nonzero bloom quality removes its widest four-read ring and restores
   energy with local highlight extraction instead of additional framebuffer IO.
6. Contact shadows, POM, POM self-shadow, underwater blur/noise/particles, and
   shadow reach are rebalanced around useful detail instead of brute-force taps.
7. Distant Horizons shadow filtering replaces per-fragment sin/cos rotation
   with a hash-derived basis and scales PCF taps by quality.
8. Potato gains analytic clouds, cinematic tonemapping, local highlight bloom,
   readable water, sky variation, and dimension identity at quality-zero loops.
9. Medium is the balanced hero preset. High emphasizes clear radiant materials.
   Ultra keeps the broadest atmosphere, PBR, water, and lighting without the old
   excessive fog or redundant sample growth.

No fixed FPS result is promised. Resolution, GPU, render distance, Distant
Horizons, mods, entities, weather, and scene complexity determine real frame
rate. Ascendant materially reduces the dominant source-level GPU workloads and
is validated across factory, profile, Distant Horizons, and option-risk states.
