Added WebGPU rendering and feather LOD
Feathers now uses the same WebGPU path as the World Engine, while Aurelie sheds millions of distant triangles without losing her silhouette.
Today was about making the version of Willowglass I can see in my head run like a place instead of a stress test. Feathers now boots through the World Engine's WebGPU renderer by default, with the older WebGL path still available as a fallback.
That renderer change reached all the way into the creature. Aurelie's feathers, skin, eyes, ears, rocks, down coat, spray, fireflies, and crash dust all had rendering work that had been written for the old path. I rebuilt those materials for WebGPU rather than flattening away the details that make her feel alive.
“The creature can stay extravagant up close without paying the close-up price across the whole lake.”
The bigger gain came from treating distance honestly. The default follow camera does not need the same feather geometry as a face-filling close-up, so the new distant plumage level carries roughly 2.61 million triangles instead of about five million. The down coat also thins with distance and disappears only when it can no longer contribute to the image.
This is not a final performance pass. Willowglass Reach is still dense, the creature is still deliberately extravagant, and the real test is how it feels on the machine in front of me rather than a headless frame counter. But the engine and the character are finally moving in the same direction.
The accompanying clip is an automated demonstration captured with fixed simulation timing, not a live frame-rate benchmark.