DEVLOG | April 17, 2026

Camera and impact audio

This was a research day: less about ceremony, more about tightening the shape of the thing until it behaved a little more like itself. 42 commits landed or were available locally. There was also a decent amount of local conversation around the work, but the useful part is the trail it leaves: questions asked, decisions narrowed, and a few assumptions made explicit. The center of gravity was audio, asset, map, terrain.

What moved

research moved through resolve terrain and overlay unknown chunk provenance, name recovered HUD audio and scene assets, map aircraft subobjects to likely surface regions, close the far aircraft LOD as a black projected blip, reassess the rewrite plan after asset closure, tighten camera, impact audio, and smoke contracts, reassess the rewrite plan after camera and effects closure, and close the shared projection and FOV contract.

What I learned

The visual effects work keeps coming back to timing and restraint. Smoke reads best when it behaves like consequence: brief enough to belong to the event, persistent enough to tell you what just happened.

Source trail

• Local conversation signal: 7 working sessions.
• research 9cb662e: synthesize combat rules contract
• research 5e67600: land essential feel checklist
• research d8546fc: map post-synthesis closure wave
• research 8b2d622: tighten hot flight coefficient names
• research 1eab708: downgrade aircraft tuning cold tail
• research 9b15767: separate family seeds from aircraft state
• research 77e3a11: sharpen type3 draw style contract
• research 90c80c8: scan flyingc.dat for hidden texture evidence
• research 1718a7b: explain aircraft livery storage in type3 meshes
• research ee5f8bc: export reusable type3 models as obj
• research 7be9a88: resolve terrain and overlay unknown chunk provenance
• research bf50436: name recovered HUD audio and scene assets
• research ba0038f: map aircraft subobjects to likely surface regions
• research ac6a239: close the far aircraft LOD as a black projected blip
• research 275429e: reassess the rewrite plan after asset closure
• research 507a689: tighten camera, impact audio, and smoke contracts
• research ce199be: reassess the rewrite plan after camera and effects closure
• research 4076921: close the shared projection and FOV contract

The research lane stays research, and the implementation lane stays implementation. This post is a narrative summary of local work, not a publication of raw originals.