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docs: name the LA pose that is actually over the cap, which the commit record got wrong

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2026-08-24 19:16:46 -07:00
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@@ -878,3 +878,49 @@ and that nothing catches it.
The content programme this opens up — what a single cohesive California is still
missing, and in what order — is **`CALIFORNIA.md`**, kept separate because none
of it needs a new mechanism and all of it can be worked in parallel.
## Los Angeles at 7.7 km is over the triangle cap, and no budget cell stands there
Found by the review of the culling work, 2026-08-24, and recorded here because
the commit record for that work names a *different* LA pose — the 110 km one,
which after the terrain split measures 310,841 and is comfortably under. The pose
that is over the cap is not in any commit message, and this is the correction.
Measured with `scripts/cost-at.mjs` on the merged board at 34.05, -118.24:
| stand-off | before culling | after culling | cap |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 110 km | 341,803 | 310,841 | 400,000 |
| **7.7 km** | **773,282** | **604,332** | **400,000** |
| 2.5 km | 761,648 | 335,186 | 400,000 |
So the culling work **closed the 2.5 km breach and reduced the 7.7 km one by
22%**, and 7.7 km is still 51% over. It is a pre-existing defect that this work
improved rather than one it introduced — but it is live, it is reachable from the
board's own chapters, and it was never measured because `california-one` poses at
`california-overview` and nothing else does.
**Frustum culling cannot fix it.** At that stand-off 40,025 detail lots are
genuinely inside the frustum. The Southland is a basin ninety kilometres across
and at 7.7 km you are looking down the length of it; there is no camera geometry
that makes those buildings not on screen. What is wrong is the *lot size*: 160 m
is chosen for a metro seen from its own stand-off, and at 7.7 km over the basin
the board is drawing a hundred kilometres of city at that density.
The fix is a lot-size level of detail — the same mechanism the near-field 40 m
tier needs, pointing the other way. Two shapes, and the choice needs measuring
rather than arguing:
- **A stride.** Pack every Nth instance of a range, N from the stand-off. One
copy loop, no new geometry, no new draw call — the store already holds every
instance. The risk is shimmer: instance order within a range is lattice order,
so a stride is a spatially regular thinning and regular thinning of a grid is
exactly what aliases.
- **A second, coarser instance set per district**, built at 480 m and swapped in
by stand-off. No shimmer, and it costs build time and memory for lots that are
usually not drawn.
**Two things to do first, in this order.** Add a budget cell that stands at that
pose — `no budget cell stands there` is the actual defect, and a cap nobody
measures is not a cap. Expect it to fail on the day it lands; that is the point,
and it must not be answered by raising a number. Then fix it.