Soul Storm · Aiming flame readability

Weapon profile · Sculpt study · Mesh normal fidelity

A clear center without losing the living flame

The default Soul Storm sight is a living soul flame that forms a focused crosshair. The flame-card enlargement introduced an authoring defect: during the aiming transition, its shader aperture no longer followed the sight center. The flame could cover the intended target marker even though the fully focused endpoint looked correct.

This is a controlled Blender authoring comparison, not a Minecraft screenshot or native first-person acceptance. Both sides use the same camera, marker, lighting, frame and render settings. The pink square is a deliberately contrasting QA marker behind the sight.

Scoped correction

The v34 patch changes four shader-driver expressions. The mask center and distance metric now track the flame card's changing dimensions. A smooth opening through focus 0–0.35 clears the central aiming area earlier. The relaxed flame, fully focused sight, geometry and existing motion are preserved in the checks below.

Check	Result	Limit
Evaluated mask center	202 card samples over 101 frames; maximum error 0.0000006744 world units	Authoring coordinates only
Raw geometry	Exact hash equality for mesh positions, topology, UVs, shape keys and parent names	Shader changes intentionally excluded
Sampled evaluated motion	Exact hash equality over 101 frames for 438 mesh objects	Sampled animation, not continuous collision proof
Relaxed render	Pixel-identical	Controlled orthographic camera
Fully focused render	Pixel-identical	Controlled orthographic camera
Halfway transition	Marker is visibly exposed through the center	No native gameplay readability claim

Machine-readable evidence

Reproduce and edit

Download the small patch bundle. It requires the existing v33-R6 editable texture-study scene; its SHA-256 is checked before applying changes. The bundle contains the build script, controlled render setup, anchor test and geometry-preservation test. It avoids duplicating the complete source scene in another archive.

Tested with Blender 4.3.2. Follow README.md in the bundle. Retain the original scene for comparison and rollback.

Required next quality gates

• Bind the effect to the actual native aiming state and verify the native camera.
• Test changing FOV, resolution, bright and dark backgrounds, and moving targets.
• Verify hand fit, view obstruction and aim accessibility options.
• Confirm no gameplay, networking, compatibility or equivalent-work performance regression.
• Complete the wider weapon proportion, texture and concept-fidelity review.

This is a bounded authoring improvement. It does not mark Soul Storm or any other weapon as complete or playable.