Fixes two critical taxi flight issues:
1. Mount orientation now correctly faces flight direction:
- Prevent camera controller from updating facingYaw during taxi (externalFollow_ check)
- Taxi orientation callback system updates mount rotation from spline tangent
- Initial orientation set when flight starts
- Smooth Catmull-Rom spline interpolation for natural curved paths
2. Eliminate frame hitches from tile loading during flight:
- New taxiFlightStartCallback uploads ALL precached tiles to GPU before flight begins
- Previously tiles loaded async during 3s mount delay but uploaded 1/frame during flight
- Now processAllReadyTiles() blocks briefly after mount delay to batch upload everything
- Combined with 2.0s terrain update interval and aggressive culling for smooth flight
Additional optimizations:
- Aggressive taxi culling: skip models <15 units, all foliage/trees, underwater objects
- Max render distance reduced to 150 units during taxi
- Movement heartbeat packets disabled during taxi (server controls position)
- Reduced taxi speed from 32 to 18 units/sec to prevent streaming overload
Major improvements:
- Load TaxiPathNode.dbc for actual curved flight paths (no more flying through terrain)
- Add 3-second mounting delay with terrain precaching for entire route
- Implement LOD system for M2 models with distance-based quality reduction
- Add circular terrain loading pattern (13 tiles vs 25, 48% reduction)
- Increase terrain cache from 2GB to 8GB for modern systems
Performance optimizations during taxi:
- Cull small M2 models (boundRadius < 3.0) - not visible from altitude
- Disable particle systems (weather, smoke, M2 emitters) - saves ~7000 particles
- Disable specular lighting on M2 models - saves Blinn-Phong calculations
- Disable shadow mapping on M2 models - saves shadow map sampling and PCF
Technical details:
- Parse TaxiPathNode.dbc spline waypoints for curved paths around terrain
- Build full path from node pairs using TaxiPathEdge lookup
- Precache callback triggers during mounting delay for smooth takeoff
- Circular tile loading uses Euclidean distance check (dx²+dy² <= r²)
- LOD fallback to base mesh when higher LODs unavailable
Result: Buttery smooth taxi flights with no terrain clipping or performance hitches
Remove active group fast path from getFloorHeight to fix bridge clipping.
Replace ground smoothing with immediate step-up snap (WoW-style: snap up,
smooth down). Accept upward Z from wall collision at all call sites. Skip
floor-like surfaces (absNz >= 0.45) in wall collision to prevent false
wall hits on ramps. Increase getFloorHeight allowAbove from 0.5 to 2.0
for ramp reacquisition. Prefer highest reachable surface in floor selection.
Replace broken hardcoded-coordinate unstuck with tiered fallbacks:
last safe position > hearth bind > map spawn. Track safe positions
only on real geometry, let player fall after 500ms with no ground,
and auto-trigger unstuck after 5s of continuous falling.
Add CameraController::teleportTo() that directly places the player at
the target position without the expensive floor-search loop in reset().
The loop does hundreds of WMO collision checks which hangs in cities.
Render mount M2 model under player with seated animation, apply creature
skin textures, server-driven speed via SMSG_FORCE_RUN_SPEED_CHANGE, and
/dismount command. X11 XUngrabPointer on crash/hang to always release mouse.
- M2 interior darkening now uses global player-inside-WMO flag instead
of per-instance queries that were unreliable
- Fix carpet/rug sliding by skipping lateral collision push when player
is standing on top of any stepable low object, not just platforms
The previous approach used getFloorHeight which has tight spatial query
bounds and couldn't find WMO floors far above the player. Now uses
reset() which does multi-radius WMO/terrain scanning.
- Implement flight path system: SMSG_SHOWTAXINODES parser, CMSG_ACTIVATETAXIEXPRESS builder, BFS multi-hop pathfinding through TaxiNodes/TaxiPath DBC, taxi destination UI, movement blocking during flight
- Fix WMO interiors too dark by boosting vertex color lighting multiplier
- Dim M2 objects inside WMO interiors (rugs, furniture) via per-instance interior detection
- Fix ramp/stair clipping by lowering wall collision normal threshold from 0.85 to 0.55
- Restore 5-sample cardinal footprint for ground detection to fix rug slipping
- Fix /unstuck command to reset player Z to WMO/terrain floor height
- Handle MSG_MOVE_TELEPORT_ACK and SMSG_TRANSFER_PENDING for hearthstone teleports
- Fix spawning under Stormwind with online-mode camera controller reset
- Skip wall collision sweep entirely when player isn't moving (saves all
collision calls when standing still)
- Reduce max sweep steps from 4 to 2 with 1.0f step size (all paths:
follow, free-fly, swimming)
- Cache floor height between frames, reuse when position changes <0.5 units
- Fix floor height not updating after walking off tall objects (fountain etc)
by always smoothing toward detected ground instead of ignoring drops >2 units
- Reduce free-fly ground probes from 5 to 1
- Disable WMO camera collision (raycast + floor probes) for performance
- Add spatial grid to raycastBoundingBoxes for when camera collision is re-enabled
Build a 2D triangle grid per WMO group at load time so getFloorHeight and
checkWallCollision only test triangles in nearby cells instead of brute-forcing
all triangles. Also reduce sweep steps (12→4), ground probes (3→1), camera
floor probes (5→2), throttle isInsideWMO to every 10 frames, and early-out
wall collision on first hit.
Split inventory into bags-only (B key) and character screen (C key). Vendor window
auto-opens bags with sell prices on hover and right-click to sell. Add camera intro
pan on all login/spawn/teleport/hearthstone events and idle orbit after 2 minutes.
Add quest log UI, SMSG_MONSTER_MOVE handling, deferred creature spawn queue, and
creature fade-in/movement interpolation for online mode.
- Remove complex ramp/edge filtering that was skipping building walls
- Simpler wall detection: any vertical geometry above step height
- Add intro camera pan on game start
- Add texture-sorted batch merging with glMultiDrawElements to reduce draw calls
- Pre-compute merged batches at load time instead of per-frame
- Add persistent floor height cache with disk save/load (cache/wmo_floor_cache.bin)
- Reduce collision focus radius and sweep steps for faster collision checks
- Add floor cache size to performance HUD
- Reduce WMO group distance culling to 80 units
Centralizes all coordinate conversions in core/coordinates.hpp with
proper canonical WoW coords (+X=North, +Y=West, +Z=Up). Fixes critical
tile calculation bug that was loading wrong surrounding tiles during
terrain streaming, and fixes position sync sending ADT-raw format
instead of canonical coordinates to the server.
- Loading screen stays visible until all terrain tiles finish streaming;
character spawns only after terrain is loaded and Z-snapped to ground
- Reduce tree trunk collision bounds (5% of canopy, capped at 5.0) and
make all small/medium trees, bushes, lily pads, and foliage walkthrough
- Add jump input buffering (150ms) and coyote time (100ms) for responsive jumps
- Fix fence orientation by adding +180° heading rotation
- Increase terrain load radius from 1 to 2 (5x5 tile grid)
- Add hearthstone callback for single-player camera reset
- Implement orbit camera with smooth zoom and collision detection
- Add 50° slope limiting with sliding (prevents mountain climbing)
- Add first-person mode that hides player model and weapons
- Add floor clearance check to prevent camera clipping through ground
- Improve WMO wall collision with proper height range checks
- Add two-sided floor collision detection for WMO geometry
- Increase M2 render distance slightly for better visibility
- Add loading screen system with stb_image for JPEG loading
- Two loading screen images (orc and dwarf) randomly selected
- Display loading screen while terrain data loads
- Cache WMO inverse matrices to reduce per-frame computation
- Stub WMO liquid rendering (needs coordinate system fix)
- Update spawn point to Stormwind Trade District
- Spawn position changed to (-9080, -100, 100) which is on actual terrain
- The terrain mesh uses WoW coordinates from ADT files directly
- Camera/spawn position must use same coordinate system as terrain
- Cleaned up getHeightAt comments to clarify coordinate system
- Removed debug logging from WMO floor detection
- Increase WMO render distance from 1500 to 3000 units for better city loading
- Increase M2 render distance from 500 to 1000 units
- Increase terrain load radius from 4 to 6 tiles (~3200 units)
- Add raycast-based camera collision that zooms in when obstructed by walls/objects
- Move spawn point outside chapel to road near Stormwind gate
- Add ground height smoothing to prevent stumbling on uneven terrain
Movement:
- Fix speed controls: Shift=sprint (28), normal run (14), Ctrl=walk (5)
- Reduce character height for doorway clearance (eye height 1.2)
- Add working crouch (C or X key) with smooth transition (eye height 0.6)
- Jump to stand up from crouch
M2 Animation:
- Add animation time tracking per M2 instance
- Add procedural swaying animation in vertex shader
- Update animation each frame for vegetation movement
