Terrain cinematographer round — local-contrast de-light, material classes, tone shoulder

[AdaWorldAPI]

Rescues the commit stranded when #102 merged (pushed to the branch after the merge). One commit, cockpit/src/GeoHelix.tsx only — decode + shader, no asset rebake (the same relight applies to canyon, havel, and iceland-grid automatically).

The operator's polish round: "the renderer is exposing renderer artifacts rather than data artifacts … the renderer should become a terrain cinematographer." Four findings, four fixes:

1. White patches in distant mini-canyons — diagnosed against the source demgrid: they're REAL (0.85% near-white pixels concentrated 6–10% in the North Rim blocks = snow/clouds baked in the ESRI capture), amplified to paper-white by the WB stretch + warm key. Fix: a highlight shoulder (soft knee above 0.82 — nothing diffuse renders paper-white) + a snow material (cool neutral light response + a whisper of sheen — luminous but material, never key-painted orange).
2. Palette blur / muddy colour transitions — the previous flat de-light divided by the pixel's own luma, flattening local contrast. Now: local-contrast albedo extraction at decode (divide by the neighbourhood's blurred luma, separable box blur r=6) — the satellite's large-scale baked lighting normalizes away while the strata contrast survives crisp.
3. Satellite-noon lingering — key lowered (elevation 0.38→0.30) and warmed, shadow floor deepened, fill weakened: closer to gallery morning.
4. Material separation — per-vertex classes from albedo + KIND: rock rough-matte · vegetation slightly-subsurface (wider diffuse wrap ≈ light through canopy) · snow high-albedo cool · water the only specular (glints post-shoulder so the sparkle stays hot).

Verified headless on the 643k proxy: snow patches read luminous-but-material, strata crisper, forest softer than rock, plateau still dry, river meanders + glints intact. npx tsc --noEmit ✓ · npm run build ✓.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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Generated by Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Enhancements
  • Improved satellite terrain coloring with more consistent lighting and stronger local contrast, making sandstone formations easier to distinguish.
  • Refined terrain material rendering for clearer differentiation between snow, vegetation, exposed ground, and water.
  • Updated museum-style lighting for more natural highlights, shading, and surface depth.
  • Enhanced river visuals with improved banks, reflections, and subtle water highlights.

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Review failed

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ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 1f9f083d-1a44-436c-9576-850f8e085c27

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 643884a and 663f86a.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• cockpit/src/GeoHelix.tsx

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The photo-skin terrain path now applies local-contrast de-lighting during decoding. The SKIN shader adds luminance/chroma separation, snow and vegetation masks, revised museum lighting, and updated river, glint, and specular responses.

Changes

Photo-Skin Rendering

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Local-contrast terrain color decoding cockpit/src/GeoHelix.tsx	Satellite photo colors are converted through luminance extraction, two-pass box blurring, and bounded RGB gain rescaling.
SKIN material and river lighting cockpit/src/GeoHelix.tsx	The shader derives material masks, recomputes wrap lighting, and updates river, bank, glint, sheen, and specular behavior.

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant SkinPhoto
  participant decodeGrid
  participant SKINShader
  participant RiverLighting
  SkinPhoto->>decodeGrid: decode ver-9 photo colors
  decodeGrid->>decodeGrid: blur luminance grid and rescale RGB
  decodeGrid->>SKINShader: provide processed aColor
  SKINShader->>SKINShader: classify snow and vegetation
  SKINShader->>RiverLighting: apply channel, bank, and wetness response
  RiverLighting->>SKINShader: add glints and specular effects

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Possibly related PRs

• AdaWorldAPI/q2#92: Introduces the GeoHelix rendering path later modified here.
• AdaWorldAPI/q2#96: Overlaps the GeoHelix water, ice, and highlight shader paths.
• AdaWorldAPI/q2#97: Overlaps the photo-skin terrain and river lighting logic.

Suggested reviewers: claude

Poem

I’m a rabbit beneath the sandstone sun,
Watching blurred hues sharpen one by one.
Snow masks glow and rivers gleam,
Chroma dances through the dream.
New shader paths hop into view—
“A polished burrow!” I cheer, “well done!”

✨ Finishing Touches

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• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

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