The reference ships `anisotropic` at 1, which is *off*, so ground texture at a
grazing angle smears to mush a few yards out — which is most of the screen in
an outdoor scene. The row was registered and wired (`benilla_assets::
TexFilterSetting`, the reference's own `[1, 16]` clamp at `0x689110`) but sat
outside the preset ladder, so no rung ever spent it and even Ultra left it off.
Measured on an Elwynn vista (`WOW_CAPTURE=vista`, the offline harness
`docs/GRAPHICS.md` now documents), one knob changed, 1600x900:
* **34.1% of the frame moves** (490,600 of 1,440,000 pixels by more than 2),
mean |d| 4.21, max 212. By band it peaks at **66.5%** across y 420-479 and
runs 48-66% from y 300 to y 780 — exactly where the ground recedes to the
horizon, which is what anisotropy is for. For scale, the interior
prop-probe table's whole stake is 7.6% of pixels by at most 14.
* **+1.0 ms of GPU and nothing on the main thread** (gpu 0.8 -> 1.8 ms, main
unchanged at 4.2-8.4 ms). The filter policy confirms it lands: "mode 4
(trilinear, aniso off)" -> "mode 5 (trilinear + aniso) anisotropic=16".
That ms is one this client is not spending. It is main-thread bound with the
GPU about two thirds idle — flat ~3 ms in play at every framerate, 0.8 ms in
this capture — so a sampler state is the cheapest picture on the table.
Ladder: Classic and Low keep the reference's 1, Medium takes 4, High and Ultra
16. Classic is the reference client, so it is judged against the registered
default the way `farclip` already is, not against zero — `anisotropic` is not a
0/1 lane, its "off" *is* 1. The High column differs from the reference, so it
is declared in `SEEDED_DEVIATIONS` with its reason, and
`graphics_rows_pass_their_observers_unclamped` now drives all five rungs
through the real setter and reads the level back off the sampler policy.
The sampler is baked into each texture at load, so a rung change lands on the
next launch, as the reference's own options window says ("enabled upon
restart"). A player already on a Custom preset is not seeded and keeps their
saved value; `/console anisotropic 16` and a restart is the whole fix there.
`docs/GRAPHICS.md` is new: where the frame's budget actually is, the offline
capture-and-diff harness every claim here uses, what is already shipped and
unspent, and the ordered list of what the picture is missing — costed on this
engine, with upscaling placed where the measurement puts it rather than where
it is usually asked for.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01SgstFWtn1RxEJ5kVrpgYwn
gromandClaude Opus 5
b6f3bb001c