KAIVERSE Visual Pass — Antigravity Prompt

Version: v9.10.74 baseline

Prepared by: KAI Engineer session (June 28, 2026)

Purpose: Hand off visual improvements Ryan wants that require deep shader work — particularly planet texture quality, NMS-style atmosphere, and galaxy appearance. Ryan will share screenshots after you finish so he can verify.

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Context: What KAIVERSE Is

C:\KAI\kaiverse.js is a Three.js r128 browser 3D explorer — ~5570 lines, LF line endings (not CRLF). It renders a procedural solar system where 9 AI bot agents are planets orbiting a central "KAI Core" star. Ryan flies through it in first-person.

Hard rules you must not violate:

• NEVER whole-file-rewrite kaiverse.js — surgical byte-replace edits only. Whole-file writes have caused truncation and broken the file before.
• ALL edits to kaiverse.js must use Python open(f,'rb') + data.replace(old, new, 1) + open(f,'wb') — the file has mixed encoding behavior; the Edit tool will corrupt it.
• After every kaiverse.js change, run: node --check C:\KAI\kaiverse.js and verify output is SYNTAX OK before moving on.
• Never touch nsUpdateCamera movement/throttle — first-person flight controls are sacred.
• Don't change NS_SCALE, NS_BODY, NS_SPREAD, COSMOS — these affect everything.
• The secondary kaiverse-graphics.js file (C:\KAI\kaiverse-graphics.js) contains cloud/atmosphere shader helpers. You can edit it too, same rules.
• Bump the version in C:\KAI\The KAI Codex.md and C:\KAI\Cargo.toml after each meaningful change. Current version is 9.10.74. Increment minor (e.g., 9.10.75, 9.10.76…).

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What Was Already Fixed (v9.10.74 — do NOT redo)

These are done, skip them:

1. ✅ Spawn save bug — stale-clear threshold raised from 30M → 4.1B game units so saves at bot planet positions (192M units) are preserved

2. ✅ Nebula follows camera — NS.nebula.position.copy(NS.camera.position) added per-frame so gas clouds don't show parallax

3. ✅ Polar-cap stars — skybox fragment shader now places stars across full sphere (not just galactic plane); starBase = max(0.15, baseIntensity) ensures poles have stars

4. ✅ Bloom threshold lowered from 1.0 → 0.35 so core star actually blooms from far away

5. ✅ Core far-glow sprite — added r*22 size sprite in nsBuildCoreFX() so core is visible from 100M+ km

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Issue 1 — Pixelly Planet Textures That "Move Weirdly"

What Ryan sees

Planets look pixelated/blocky and the texture appears to swim/slide when the camera rotates or moves around the planet.

Root cause

nsMakePlanetTexture() in kaiverse.js creates a 2D canvas noise texture then UV-maps it onto the sphere (THREE.SphereGeometry). UV-mapped spheres have two problems:

1. The texture resolution is fixed (low); up close it looks pixelated.

2. UV seams and pole-pinching cause the "swim" artifact when rotating.

What Ryan wants

NMS-style solid rocky/gas surfaces that look real at any distance, with no obvious tiling or swimming.

How to fix: Triplanar ShaderMaterial

Replace nsMakePlanetTexture usage with a custom ShaderMaterial that does triplanar projection in the fragment shader — samples noise in 3D object-space (not UV space), so there's no seam and no swim.

Where: kaiverse.js — function nsBuildBodies() around line 2622–2625 for bot/channel nodes:

// Current (bad):
const tex=nsMakePlanetTexture(nsHashStr(n.name), n.kind==='channels'?'exotic':'rock');
mat=new THREE.MeshStandardMaterial({map:tex, bumpMap:tex, bumpScale:22.0, color:col, roughness:0.85, metalness:0.04, emissive:col, emissiveIntensity:0.08});

Replace with a THREE.ShaderMaterial that:

• Uses vObjectPos (object-space position passed from vertex shader) for triplanar blend
• Implements 3D Simplex/fbm noise in the fragment shader (copy the snoise + fbm functions already present in the skybox shader)
• Outputs albedo, normal approximation, and emissive all in one pass
• Tints the result by n.color

Vertex shader minimum:

varying vec3 vObjectPos;
varying vec3 vNormal;
void main() {
  vObjectPos = position;    // object-space, no UVs needed
  vNormal = normalize(normalMatrix * normal);
  gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * vec4(position, 1.0);
}

Fragment shader minimum:

varying vec3 vObjectPos;
varying vec3 vNormal;
uniform vec3 uColor;
uniform float uSeed;
// [paste snoise() + fbm() here]
void main() {
  // triplanar weights from world normal
  vec3 blendW = abs(vNormal);
  blendW = pow(blendW, vec3(4.0));
  blendW /= (blendW.x + blendW.y + blendW.z);
  
  vec3 scaledPos = vObjectPos / (length(vObjectPos) + 0.001) * 3.5 + uSeed;
  float nx = fbm(scaledPos.yz);
  float ny = fbm(scaledPos.xz);
  float nz = fbm(scaledPos.xy);
  float noise = nx*blendW.x + ny*blendW.y + nz*blendW.z;
  
  // map noise to color bands
  vec3 albedo = uColor * (0.5 + noise * 0.5);
  gl_FragColor = vec4(albedo, 1.0);
}

You'll need lights: true or switch to MeshStandard-compatible approach. An easier alternative: use onBeforeCompile to inject triplanar noise into the existing MeshStandardMaterial fragment shader — this preserves PBR lighting.

Make it look like NMS reference:

• Rock planets: 2-3 layered fbm octaves, high contrast between light/dark bands, slight reddish-brown/grey tint
• Gas giants: softer swirl noise, pastel banding (like Jupiter), 4+ octaves
• Scale the noise frequency relative to n.r so all planets look consistent regardless of size

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Issue 2 — NMS-Style Planet Atmosphere (Visible from Space)

What Ryan sees / wants

The reference NMS screenshots show a thick colored atmosphere rim glow that is:

• Visible from space as a colored halo around the planet (even from far away)
• Bright blue/teal on water worlds, orange/gold on desert worlds, purple on exotic worlds
• Gets thicker/more vivid as you approach the planet limb (Fresnel effect)
• Has a slight color gradient from core-color to the atmosphere rim color

Current code

nsMakeAtmosphere() in kaiverse-graphics.js creates a BackSide sphere shell. It uses additive blending. Check its current implementation — it may already be close, but the issue is:

1. Opacity might be too low to see from far

2. The Fresnel calculation might not be strong enough

3. The atmosphere scale might be too small

Fix approach

In kaiverse-graphics.js, find nsMakeAtmosphere and update its shader:

// Fragment: Strong Fresnel atmosphere rim
float rim = 1.0 - max(0.0, dot(normalize(vNormal), normalize(vViewDir)));
float atmosphere = pow(rim, 2.5);  // lower exponent = thicker atmosphere
float glow = atmosphere * uIntensity;
gl_FragColor = vec4(uAtmoColor * glow, glow * 0.85);

Also:

• Increase the atmosphere sphere size: currently 1.15x-1.25x planet radius → make it 1.4x so it's clearly visible from orbit
• The material needs side: THREE.BackSide (already correct) and transparent: true, depthWrite: false
• Boost uIntensity to 2.5–3.5 for vivid NMS-style look

The atmosphere color per planet type:

Look in nsPlanetDNA() (kaiverse.js) — it determines planet type from seed (rock, gas, ocean, exotic). Map types to atmosphere colors:

• ocean → #3af5ff (bright teal/cyan)
• rock → #ffaa44 (amber/orange)
• gas → #cc88ff (purple/lavender)
• exotic → #ff44cc (pink/magenta)
• default → use n.color tinted toward cyan

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Issue 3 — Galaxy Background Improvements

What Ryan sees / wants

The galaxy band (Milky Way-like backdrop) should be:

• Vivid, colorful spiral galaxy (NMS screenshots show rich purple/blue/magenta nebula colors)
• Bright enough that it's clearly a galaxy, not just a faint haze
• Stars distributed throughout (not just galactic plane) — already fixed in v9.10.74 but colors could be richer

Current code location

Skybox fragment shader: kaiverse.js lines ~742–769 (inside nsBuildStarfield()).

What to change

Colors: The current colEdge, colMid, colCore palette is very muted (dark purple/teal). Make it much more vivid:

// Current (muted):
vec3 colEdge = vec3(0.02, 0.0, 0.08);
vec3 colMid  = vec3(0.05, 0.2, 0.45);
vec3 colCore = vec3(0.2, 0.6, 0.7);

// Target (vivid NMS-style):
vec3 colEdge = vec3(0.04, 0.01, 0.18);   // deep violet
vec3 colMid  = vec3(0.12, 0.05, 0.55);   // vivid purple
vec3 colCore = vec3(0.55, 0.8, 1.0);     // bright blue-white core
// Add magenta highlight near band center:
color += vec3(0.6, 0.1, 0.4) * smoothstep(0.6, 1.0, intensity) * 0.4;  // magenta

Galaxy arm structure: Add a spiral-arm modulation to break up the uniform band into distinct arms:

// Spiral arm modulation (add before intensity computation)
float angle = atan(dir.z, dir.x);   // azimuthal angle in galactic plane
float radius = length(dir.xz);      // distance from galactic axis
float spiralPhase = angle * 2.0 + radius * 8.0;  // 2-arm spiral
float armMod = 0.5 + 0.5 * cos(spiralPhase);
float baseIntensity = exp(-planeDist * 6.0) * (0.6 + armMod * 0.4);

Overall brightness: Increase the alpha so the galaxy band is more opaque/vivid. Change:

gl_FragColor = vec4(color, max(clamp(intensity * 1.2, ...), starAlpha));
// → 
gl_FragColor = vec4(color * 1.4, max(clamp(intensity * 1.8, 0.0, 1.0), starAlpha));

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Issue 4 — Star Visual Quality

What Ryan wants

Stars should look like NMS stars:

• Larger, more vivid, with a clear glint/cross-star shape on the brightest ones
• Good coverage at poles (fixed in v9.10.74 in the skybox shader, but the THREE.Points starfield could also be improved)

THREE.Points star shader location

kaiverse.js lines ~820–835 — THREE.ShaderMaterial for the starfield.

Improvements:

1. Increase point size slightly: size attribute or size multiplier in the vertex shader

2. Add a bloom-like halo in the fragment shader (soft edge falloff per point):

// Fragment: round soft star with bright center
vec2 uv = gl_PointCoord - 0.5;
float d = length(uv) * 2.0;
float star = exp(-d * d * 4.0);   // soft gaussian
float spike = max(0.0, 1.0 - abs(uv.x)*8.0) * max(0.0, 1.0 - abs(uv.y)*8.0);  // cross spike
gl_FragColor = vec4(vColor * (star + spike * 0.3), star);

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Issue 5 — Core Star Brightness (Partially Fixed)

v9.10.74 already:

• Added far-glow sprite at r*22 (31M units)
• Lowered bloom threshold to 0.35

If still not bright enough: increase the far-glow sprite opacity (currently 0.18) and/or add a second even-larger sprite at r*60 with opacity 0.06 for extreme distances.

Also: the n.atmo.visible = d > n.r * 100 condition (line ~3717) hides the inner halo at close range — leave this alone, it prevents blowout when very close.

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File Map

Key function locations in kaiverse.js:

• nsBuildStarfield() — skybox shader + starfield Points (~line 660)
• nsBuildBodies() — planet mesh + material creation (~line 2606)
• nsBuildCoreFX() — core star rings/rays/sprites (~line 2593)
• nsMakeAtmosphere() — in kaiverse-graphics.js
• nsPlanetDNA() — planet type/traits from seed (somewhere ~line 2550+)
• nsStreamAmbient() — star wrapping per-frame (~line 1010)

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Priority Order

1. Planet texture triplanar (Issue 1) — most visually impactful, fixes the pixelly swimming look

2. Atmosphere NMS-style (Issue 2) — vivid rim glow visible from space

3. Galaxy colors + spiral arms (Issue 3) — richer background

4. Star quality (Issue 4) — nice but secondary

5. Core brightness (Issue 5) — check if v9.10.74 fixes were enough first

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Testing Protocol

After each change, Ryan hard-refreshes the browser (no server restart needed for kaiverse.js). He will send screenshots. Do NOT make multiple changes before he can verify — iterate one issue at a time.

Ryan will send screenshots of what it looks like, then you compare against the NMS reference style: vivid colored planet surfaces, thick atmosphere rim glow visible from orbit, bright galaxy band with spiral arm suggestion.