The experience boots silent and waits for a gesture (browser autoplay blocks
an un-gestured audio play()). Until now that gesture was an unlabelled Video
toggle — not obvious to a first-time viewer. Add a "Run simulation" button,
revealed over the black stage once media has preloaded; clicking it turns
Video on, snaps the audio dial to a gentle 2/10, dismisses the prompt, and
starts the soundtrack in that one gesture. Turning Video on directly still
begins the experience too (couples audio in, dismisses the button) via a
shared beginExperience(). Localised en/es/fr/ja.
E2E coverage updated (Playwright + pytest-playwright): button shown after
load, button starts video+audio+dismisses, and direct-Video-on path.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The post-load autoStart() flipped Video on and lifted audio to 3/10 with no
user gesture. Browser autoplay policy blocks an audio play() made outside a
gesture (muted video survives, sound does not), so auto-start showed video but
stayed silent. Boot SILENT instead and wait for the operator to turn Video on —
that click IS the gesture, and its handler couples audio to 3/10 and starts the
soundtrack in-gesture, so sound reliably comes up with video.
Updates the pytest e2e + Playwright e2e specs to assert boot-silent + the
video-on-couples-audio wiring instead of the old auto-start wiring.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Root cause: the steady-state loop (#vid-loop) restarts only via a narrow
timeupdate window (last 0.08s -> seek to LOOP_TAIL_S), with native loop off.
Headless Chromium reliably lands a final timeupdate in that window, but under
real-browser decode/GPU load a timeupdate can skip past it; the clip then fires
'ended' and freezes on its last frame ('videos aren't looping'). There was no
recovery path. Add an 'ended' listener that seeks back to the tail and resumes,
guaranteeing the loop regardless of the timeupdate race. No change to normal
playback. Proven by a Playwright regression test that forces the ended state.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Expanded-pools sky-scale work plus two experience tweaks:
- New `sky` altitude (airplane-window / low-flight layer) between orbit and
coast; RING_ORDER cosmos·orbit·sky·coast·reef·abyss. New clip pools across
all scales, re-baked the full adjacent-pair morph set (all-intra, LFS), and
removed the now-stale cosmos↔abyss transitions the old ring order produced.
- Auto-start: once the preload finishes the experience turns Video on and
raises the audio dial to 3/10 with no user gesture (app.js autoStart()).
- Dropped reef_hawaiian (text overlay — violates the text-free pool rule);
reef pool 7→6, manifest transitions 586→558.
Tests: rewrote tests/test_e2e_audio.py for the dial UI + auto-start; updated
the manifest morph-count assertions and the altitude-scrub target for the new
ring order. 302 pytest + 11 Playwright e2e + 9 node unit all green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator: slow click/auto transitions 2x and make them the same speed between any two
altitudes (2 away should take twice as long as 1). autoScrub duration is now
PROPORTIONAL to distance (PER_ALTITUDE_MS=1200, ~2x the old fixed 600ms total): a
label-click or wheel jump of N altitudes takes N*1200ms, so per-step speed is constant.
Manual drag is unaffected (operator drives its speed). E2E asserts a 2-step jump is
~2x a 1-step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator: audio turned off sometimes after landing on a new altitude. Root cause:
fadeVolume started a setInterval ramp that was never cancelled. When restAudio faded
the idle element to 0 and — within FADE_MS — that same element became the newly-landed
ACTIVE scale (assignElements reuses an element per soundtrack url), the stale fade-to-0
kept running and dragged the now-active element back to silence. Fix: cancelFade()
supersedes any in-flight fade when a new fade starts (fadeVolume) or a direct volume
is set (ensurePlaying). E2E proves a new fade supersedes a stale one (fails without
the fix).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator request. Replaces the Audio checkbox with a 0-10 range slider that sets the
master soundtrack gain (audioVol = level/10), scaling both the per-scale rest volume
and the two-track scrub crossfade. Level 0 = silent. Turning Video on for the first
time now raises audio to 3/10 (was: full on) so the experience opens gently; raising
the slider from 0 unlocks playback in-gesture (Safari). E2E: dial is range 0-10
default 0, and first video-on lifts it to 3/10.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator eyeball: a jolt/pause when the morph ends and the next altitude's loop
loads. Root cause: swapping vid.src to the base + seeking to the tail reloaded the
ON-SCREEN element (decode + seek stall). Now a dedicated #vid-loop element carries
the steady-state base loop; during a scrub it is PRELOADED to the clip we're heading
toward, seeked to the tail and paused on that exact frame. The paint shader reads the
active source (busy ? morph : loop), so landing is an instant source swap — no reload,
no seek. E2E asserts the loop element is armed + playing from ~3s after landing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator eyeball feedback: landing on an altitude jump-cut the loop back to frame 0.
Each morph reproduces the destination clip's first 3s (pipeline trim=0:3) and ends on
dst@~3s, so the steady-state loop now starts at LOOP_TAIL_S=3.0 and loops within
[3.0, duration] — the morph's last frame hands straight off to the loop, and the
morph-covered intro never re-shows at rest (removes the overlapping 'altitude video
that is part of the morph'). E2E asserts a landed clip loops from ~3s, not 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 5. Replaces the .rev-asserting zoom-out test with a turn-back test
(same forward morph seeked backward, audio recedes, re-locks the start clip); adds
a detent-crossing commit+lock test via a new window.__hefState diagnostic seam.
Full tier (6 tests) green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 4. onWheel + jumpToScale now animate pos via autoScrub() (drives the
same setPos scrub path, ~600ms, lands exactly on the integer + locks). Removes the
now-dead advance()/playTransition()/FAST_BLEND_RATE (the server /api/ring/advance
round-trip is no longer used by the client). Post-landing morph warm-up folded into
setPos's settle branch.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 3. A continuous float pos is the knob: setPos() seeks the segment's
morph currentTime by frac (throttled one seek/rAF), crossfades audio, sweeps the
needle live, and commits+locks+re-rolls on each integer crossing. Drag live-scrubs
(no more commit-on-release); release holds the blend (no auto-complete). Client-side
pool pick replaces the server round-trip for drag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 2. Adds <audio id=aud-b>; blendAudio(lo,frac) mixes the two
adjacent scale soundtracks by knob fraction (element reuse across crossings so
only the genuinely-new scale reloads); restAudio settles a single scale at rest.
Diagnostic readout now reports whichever element is audible.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Task 8. New simulator/e2e Playwright tier (§9 browser tier). altitude-lock.spec
proves: zooming plays the morph matching the landed clip (forward + .rev), and
the clip is LOCKED after landing (no change while parked). advance() records
played morph paths on window.__hefMorphs (diagnostic seam; reliable under the
blob cache).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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