Measured during T-1213, through the production canvas builder on Ferrath: at
Quarter and below, morphology collapses to ONE zone and vegetation to ONE
class. The uniform frames in the 2026-08-06 descent ladder were those rungs
drawing exactly what they contain.
The cause is arithmetic, not a missing feature. At the uniform 2x2 px display
ratio a 3440x1440 window gives 540 gridunits on the short axis, so:
Quarter 512 m -> 0.948 m/gridunit -> 0.474 m/px ~1 subtile per pixel
Block 128 m -> 0.237 m/gridunit 4 gridunits per voxel
Chunk 64 m -> 0.119 m/gridunit 8 gridunits per voxel
Block and Chunk magnify beneath the finest datum that can exist, so they can
only ever draw one voxel larger. Quarter lands within 5% of one subtile per
pixel and becomes the floor.
Stated as a rule so it survives the constants moving: the deepest Atlas rung
is the one at which a screen pixel shows one subtile. It is derived from the
data model rather than chosen, and it moves automatically if the subtile does.
WHAT THIS IS NOT. Chunk remains the 64 m stream/derive unit of D-243 and stays
vital — it is what Phase 5 derives first-person walkable content on, and
D-012's load-around-the-player is expressed in chunks. Block remains the 128 m
generator planning unit. Only Atlas VIEWABILITY is retired; the containment
ladder is untouched. This record governs what the map draws, not what the
generator builds.
The justification is the Atlas's purpose (Jeroen): it exists to give the player
information, and a rung earns its place by answering a question the rung above
cannot. Once a pixel is a subtile there is no finer datum to answer with.
The resulting Global -> Region -> District -> Quarter steps at ~93x -> 100x ->
4x. That unevenness is NOT from this change — the rungs removed were 4x and 2x
steps carrying no information — it is D-243's one non-power-of-2 rung, and
T-1218 already exists to re-balance it. A compensating rung above Region was
considered and declined here; it belongs with that ticket.
CLAUDE.md's cascade line updated in the same commit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
jpmschweitzerandClaude Opus 5
b429f633e6