EDDYVEIL 5.9.3 FIRSTFRAME - PERFORMANCE NOTES

FIRSTFRAME FACTORY COST

The untouched installation still uses Low's expensive sample budgets. Shadow,
godray, reflection, atmosphere, cloud, bloom, AO, post, End-sky, colored-light,
screen-shadow, fantasy-particle, underwater, and underwater-particle qualities
are identical to Low. Brightness remains Dim and all camera blur effects remain
disabled.

Twenty-two presentation controls differ from Low, but they change bounded
strength, opacity, LOD bias, or existing analytic response. They add no render
target, framebuffer, pass, history buffer, ray loop, volume point, shadow tap,
or full-screen neighboring bloom read.

Factory bloom remains the local zero-neighbor highlight path. Shared post still
uses one opposing color pair for resolve, AO, colored bounce, blocklight fog,
and emissive aura. Detailed leaves retain two atlas reads because their third
sample is guarded to leaf quality three and above.

Generated PBR remains tier two and reuses the fragment's existing albedo for
normal derivation. Firstframe's stronger PBR value stays on the compact analytic
specular lobe while automatic mapped PBR on higher profiles retains the exact
microfacet branch. Generated PBR therefore adds zero neighboring atlas reads.

STILLTRACE REFLECTION COST

Stilltrace uses 5 / 7 / 9 / 12 deterministic coarse depth points from Low
through Ultra. Successful paths add 3 / 3 / 4 / 5 refinement reads and one
final validation read, for worst cases of 9 / 11 / 14 / 18 depth reads. Empty
sky, behind-camera rays, off-screen rays, non-horizontal faces, disabled
reflections, and failed crossings leave early before the full budget.

This is more work than Tidelock's incorrect single lookup, but remains well
below Complementary-style long screen-space searches and Eddyveil's historical
8 / 16 / 24 / 32 active macOS coarse march. A depth-slope correction improves
precision without another fetch. Low uses one color read, Medium three, and
High or Ultra five.

The trace has no pixel hash, random jitter, animated normal, wave gradient,
time, cursor coordinate, closest-point fallback, history buffer, framebuffer,
or extra pass. Every non-reflection sample budget is unchanged from Tidelock.

TIDELOCK REFLECTION COST

The active terrain reflection remains a single analytic projection with one
opaque-depth read and no trace, refinement, search, history, or variable loop.
The fresh install and Low use two symmetric scene-color taps instead of
Horizonlock's one sharp tap. This is the only added texture read in Tidelock.

Medium remains at three color taps. High and Ultra remain at five. Their tap
counts did not increase. Crossed ripple direction and radius reuse the
world-space surface gradient already calculated for the water normal, adding
no wave trigonometry, noise texture, or extra depth. The ripple never changes
the validated center coordinate.

All cloud, weather, god-ray, Nether-volume, water-body, AO, POM, shadow, bloom,
post, PBR, and Distant Horizons budgets remain unchanged from Astralforge.

ASTRALFORGE CELESTIAL COST

The larger Helios and black hole are analytic layered shapes. Neither uses a
texture lookup, scene-color read, depth read, framebuffer, ray march, loop,
render target, or additional pass. Their size comes from wider closed-form
masks rather than more samples.

Helios exits before its local basis and surface work outside the 33-degree
influence region. Its plasma warp runs only on pixels touching the stellar
sphere. The two orbital rings, spherical lighting, six-blade corona, and rim
are fixed arithmetic with no history or neighboring-pixel dependency.

The black hole exits outside its compact bounding region, retains exactly two
value-noise evaluations, and builds its near, middle, far, lens, and photon
layers from the same local coordinate. Existing cloud, water, weather, god-ray,
Nether-volume, AO, POM, shadow, bloom, and reflection budgets are unchanged.

HORIZONLOCK REFLECTION COST

The active terrain reflection has no trace loop or refinement loop. Low and
the fresh install use one opaque-depth read and one scene-color read per
eligible top-water fragment, replacing Raybound's four depth steps, optional
refinement, validation, and final color read.

Medium uses one depth and three fixed color reads. High and Ultra use one depth
and five fixed color reads for a stationary horizontal resolve. The source
coordinate has no wave, time, hash, random, or animated vertex input. Historical
reflection implementations are excluded from compilation.

CINDERFORGE MATERIAL COST

The factory and Low presets keep Generated PBR. Their new fallback derives a
normal from the albedo already sampled for the fragment, so it adds arithmetic
but no neighboring texture-atlas read. Higher modes read the normal and
specular atlases only when selected. Neutral maps remain safe fallbacks.

Mobs, hands, and block entities now use the same compact material response as
terrain. Portals, glass, signs, labels, damage overlays, and item sprites skip
work that would damage their intended appearance. Distant Horizons uses its
existing material ID and performs no texture-atlas lookup or screen-space ray.

CINDERFORGE NETHER COST

The visibility repair and atmosphere overhaul are constant lighting and color
changes. No Nether noise octave, volume point, framebuffer read, render target,
reflection step, or post pass was added. Every preset retains the v5.8.7 cloud,
weather, god-ray, Nether-volume, water, AO, POM, shadow, and post loop budgets.

RAYBOUND REFLECTION COST

Raybound trades Worldlock's incorrect two-depth shortcut for a deterministic
4 / 6 / 8 / 10-sample world-ray trace from Low through Ultra. Low adds at most
one refinement read; higher tiers add two. Successful pixels use one final
depth validation and one scene-color read. Empty sky and off-screen rays exit
early, and non-horizontal water fragments skip the tracer entirely.

The ray has no pixel hash, random jitter, animated normal, history buffer,
framebuffer, or added render pass. Its Low budget is half the historical active
macOS Low march and its Ultra budget is less than one third of the old Ultra
march. Every non-reflection loop budget remains unchanged from Worldlock.

WORLDLOCK REFLECTION COST

The stationary terrain mirror uses two fixed opaque-depth reads and one
conditional scene-color read. The first depth reconstructs a world-space range;
the second validates the reprojected locked source. This is one depth read more
than Deepanchor, but still has no 8 / 16 / 24 / 32 macOS ray loop, refinement
loop, history buffer, framebuffer, or extra pass.

Animated mesh height, Fresnel, and wave-facet visibility were removed from the
terrain coordinate and blend. All heavy cloud, weather, god-ray, reflection,
volume, particle, AO, POM, shadow, and post loop budgets remain unchanged.

DEEPANCHOR REFLECTION COST

The new finite world anchor replaces the former direction projection with a
flat reflection, stabilized height, finite distance, and one matrix projection.
It retains the same single depth lookup and conditional scene-color lookup.
There is still no active trace loop, refinement loop, history buffer, added
framebuffer, or additional pass.

Normal jump heights generate exactly the same world anchor. Animated wave work
was already present and continues to drive only the surrounding water response.

DEEPANCHOR NETHER COST

The darker Nether is a constant retune of existing sky, fog, volume, particle,
radiance, eye-response, and bloom paths. No noise octave, sample, loop, or scene
read was added. Nether volume counts remain 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 6 on macOS and
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 7 on Windows from Potato through Ultra.

CROWNFORGE SKY AND NETHER COST

The Helios Crown is closed-form shader math. It adds no texture lookup, render
target, framebuffer, pass, or ray sample. Pixels more than about 28 degrees
from Helios return before the local basis, square root, corona trigonometry, or
plasma detail. The old full-sky acos plus exponential 22-degree halo is replaced
by a dot-space smooth band evaluated only inside that guarded region.
Setting Sky Optics to Off compiles out the corona polynomial, rays, ring, halo,
and sun dogs while retaining the core star and its basic atmospheric glow.

The Nether sky reuses the three triplanar fields already computed for smoke and
fire. Its Furnace Heart, smoke vault, lava ocean, biome structures, and cracks
are analytic masks over those fields. The scene pass likewise reuses its two
existing fog fields for ceiling shade and broad cavern radiance.

Nether volume samples remain 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 6 on macOS and 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 7
on Windows from Potato through Ultra. Existing volume noise and streak values
now also shape forge shafts, spectral curtains, and ash sheets. No sample count,
water reflection cost, or cloud march budget changes in this release.

STILLWATER REFLECTION COST

The active real-scene water reflection no longer executes the 8 / 16 / 24 / 32
macOS or 10 / 16 / 24 / 36 Windows ray loops. Every enabled quality uses one
opaque-depth lookup plus one conditional scene-color lookup after validation.
The projection, edge fade, and above-water test are constant-cost arithmetic.

The foreground-dot fix adds one shared opaque-depth read in the final pass. It
then skips fantasy motes behind translucent surfaces and during rain, which is
cheaper than shading and blooming the unwanted particles.

EVERMIRROR WATER COST

The reflection fix does not increase any preset's ray-march loop. macOS remains
at 8 / 16 / 24 / 32 steps for Low / Medium / High / Ultra. Windows remains at
10 / 16 / 24 / 36. The persistent fallback reuses the nearest opaque position,
coordinate, and separation already recorded during the normal march. It adds no
depth search and performs one color fetch only when above-water geometry exists.

Changing fresh-install, Low, and Medium World Reflections from Glassy to
Mirrorlike changes blend strength only; it does not add samples or iterations.
The reduced sun ribbons are cheaper arithmetic and do not add any texture read.

The crossed wave modulation reuses the existing height and gradient. It adds no
noise texture, framebuffer, render pass, history buffer, or extra trigonometric
wave evaluation. Longer trace reach changes step spacing, not iteration count.

Ascendant reduces redundant full-screen reads, long ray loops, volumetric noise,
and shadow work across every quality tier. It does not claim a universal FPS
number because hardware, resolution, render distance, mods, and scenes differ.

QUALITY-LADDER WORKLOAD CHANGES FROM 5.7.9

                         Potato    Low       Medium    High      Ultra macOS
Cloud march points       12        16        40->30    52->40    60->48
Water SSR trace points   off       8         20->16    32->24    42->32
God-ray depth points     3         4         14->8     18->12    20->16
Weather volume points    1         1         5->3      7->5      8->6
Nether volume points     1         2         4->3      6->4      8->6
Contact-shadow points    off       3         5->4      8->6      12->8
POM march points         off       off       8->6      12->9     18->12
POM self-shadow points   off       off       4->3      6->4      8->6
Underwater particles     off       3         6->5      8->7      11->9

Windows Ultra uses 54 cloud, 36 water, 18 god-ray, 7 weather, and 7 Nether
volume points, down from 68, 48, 24, 9, and 9 respectively.

FRAMEBUFFER AND FILTERING SAVINGS

1. Medium and High now use eight shared color/depth neighbors for AO, colored
   bounce, fog glow, emissive aura, and edge reconstruction. Ultra uses twelve.
   The former separate reconstruction and lighting searches are removed.
2. All enabled bloom tiers remove four scene reads from the widest ring and use
   the current pixel's highlight energy to maintain sparkle and bloom presence.
3. Medium water support, refraction filtering, and reflection validation use a
   five-probe cross instead of a nine-probe neighborhood.
4. Medium water hit refinement drops from three iterations to two. High and
   Ultra retain three for difficult silhouettes.
5. Underwater High uses a three-read directional filter; Ultra retains the full
   five-read cross. The fourth 3D-noise octave is removed from Ultra water.
6. Distant Horizons Low, Medium, High, and Ultra shadow PCF use 2, 3, 4, and 4
   taps, and no longer evaluate trigonometric rotation per terrain fragment.

VISUAL RETUNE

Potato is now a coherent cinematic fallback instead of an effects-off mode.
Medium receives stronger atmosphere, foliage, water, radiance, sky optics, and
End identity with clearer fog. High receives stronger bloom, emissives, wetness,
foam, and color while reducing haze. Ultra fog is lowered one step so its added
volume detail remains visible instead of disappearing inside opacity.

The factory Custom configuration still uses the optimized Low sample budget and
Dim exposure. Bloom, water, fog, clouds, glass, PBR, dimensions, entities, and
Distant Horizons remain functional, and every displayed setting stays editable.
