AAA overhaul — wave 3

capture wave3-r3 vs baseline · 18 frame pairs · generated 2026-07-28T02:28:48.888Z

What I need from you: the technical calls are already handled — seams, shadows, z-fighting, frame rate and build health are measured and fixed automatically. What I cannot decide for you is taste: has the art direction drifted somewhere you did not ask it to go? Scroll the pairs, and tell me either "keep going" or which specific frames went the wrong way.

Performance

comeback-city fps109 -24.6% vs 144 frame work3.42ms +179.7% vs 1.22ms draw calls380 -18.1% vs 464 triangles784790 +11.8% vs 702141
penguin-village fps125 -13.0% vs 144 frame work5.17ms +233.3% vs 1.55ms draw calls703 -10.5% vs 785 triangles590635 +17.7% vs 501888

No console errors during capture.

Critic verdicts

Blind A/B judge — wave3-r3, 18 pairs, sides randomised, keys not read FAIL total 65

Clean 18/18 sweep for one build — 9 lefts and 9 rights, so the randomisation held and my identification is coherent, not a side bias. The winning build kills the hard black sky-dome seam, replaces the grey-pill HUD row with a real tile hierarchy, gives the road actual asphalt grain, a dashed centreline and a 3D red/white rumble curb, and hazes the skyline into the sky. Zero ties: every pair had decisive or clear pixels. But the winner still scores 65/110 and fails hard on camera (4), frame integrity (5), lighting/grounding (5), materials (5) and kart (5) — rival karts render as flat unlit colour blocks, an iceberg mass sits inside the camera in pair-18, and the player kart is repeatedly guillotined by the viewport corner.

sky 7lighting 5materials 5trackLegibility 7environment 7kart 5vfx 6camera 4post 7hud 7frameIntegrity 5

Blockers

Still wants fixing

rubric-critic (AAA_KART_RUBRIC.md, wave3-r3, 18 frames + capture-manifest) FAIL total 63

The road rebuild landed and Comeback City's edge is now genuinely AAA-grade — a lit 3D curb, discrete checker teeth, continuous edge lines, one unbroken drivable silhouette. Penguin Village got the belt fixed but NOT the sky: measured horizon saturation is 0.02–0.10 with an undefined hue, i.e. it is still literally neutral overcast, and its ice band reads as painted concrete against a road only 12/255 darker than its own shoulder. Materials remain the floor (97% of adjacent pixels on asphalt/snow/icebergs/buildings differ by ≤2), and the rival-palette hue-gate fix overshot into max-chroma plastic (S=0.94).

sky 7lighting 5materials 4trackLegibility 7environment 6kart 5vfx 6camera 3post 7hud 7frameIntegrity 6

Blockers

Still wants fixing

artefact-hunter FAIL total 60

Zero console errors, and the rebuilt road is a real win where the sun rakes it — but three NEW broken reads shipped: a fully channel-clipped cyan light column erasing ~2.3% of penguin-village-p0_33 (measured (66,255,255) over road that was (72,63,75) in wave 2), kerb white teeth rendering periwinkle blue (103,142,200) wherever the key light does not rake them, and boost chevrons torn into disconnected triangles on the new crowned road. Frame work also nearly doubled (CC 1.92->3.42ms, PV 2.56->5.17ms) and fps left the 144 cap, min 86.

sky 8lighting 5materials 5trackLegibility 7environment 6kart 4vfx 4camera 4post 5hud 8frameIntegrity 4

Blockers

Still wants fixing

Every frame, before and after

comeback-city · progress 0.06 144fps / 464 draws  →  108fps / 380 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.15 144fps / 464 draws  →  118fps / 380 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.24 144fps / 464 draws  →  99fps / 380 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.33 145fps / 465 draws  →  101fps / 381 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.45 144fps / 465 draws  →  86fps / 382 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.56 143fps / 464 draws  →  120fps / 380 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.67 144fps / 465 draws  →  92fps / 381 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.78 144fps / 464 draws  →  125fps / 380 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

comeback-city · progress 0.9 144fps / 464 draws  →  128fps / 380 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.06 144fps / 778 draws  →  118fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.15 144fps / 786 draws  →  138fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.24 144fps / 786 draws  →  134fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.33 144fps / 786 draws  →  122fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.45 144fps / 786 draws  →  143fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.56 144fps / 787 draws  →  97fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.67 144fps / 786 draws  →  130fps / 704 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.78 144fps / 786 draws  →  127fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after

penguin-village · progress 0.9 144fps / 786 draws  →  119fps / 703 draws

BEFORE
before
AFTER
after