The hold-last-frame settle gated playLoop() behind a canplay event that doesn't
re-fire on an already-loaded element → the next altitude's video never started.
Reverted to the simple swap, and gate the universe on a full preload (every base +
every morph) so navigation is smooth with no on-demand stall. Adds a ?debug on-screen
media-state overlay for diagnosing real-browser playback.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
BenStullsBets
7c8c4b45cd