re: withdraw the eff3 explanation and the flash advice; add a calibration-free

test that refutes 105

Two claims shipped this morning are withdrawn, and the port had already acted
on one of them.

WITHDRAWN 1: "eff3 was never drawn because a 2-unit flash peak is sub-frame."
eff3's alpha is non-zero for t in (58,64), and the capture's frames 133 and 134
sit at t = 60.0 and 62.2 -- squarely inside that window, with eff2 and eff4
both drawn in the same frames. It should have been submitted and was not. The
absence is real and UNEXPLAINED; it is not sampling phase.

WITHDRAWN 2: "a port drawing all five flashes shows more sweep than the
console". No evidence behind it. The port checked against its own renderer and
found it draws them sequentially at their declared times, never more than two
at once -- which is exactly what frames 131-135 show the game doing. The
pile-up worth warning about was the rest() bug, now fixed.

Kept, at the port's request: a frame-by-frame comparison of the build-in WILL
disagree about which flash lands in which frame -- 2 units per submitted frame
against this run's 2.231 units per presented frame -- and neither side is
wrong. Without that stated, the discrepancy reads as a port defect.

Added, and stronger than the argument it replaces: a calibration-free test of
105 vs 120. The glow's draw is omitted when its alpha reaches zero, and the
smallest alpha actually submitted across 807 drawn frames is 1, so the culling
threshold is read off the data rather than assumed. Measured dark fraction
17.7% (173 of 980 settled frames); a 120-unit cycle with its declared 15-unit
hold predicts 14.4%; a 105-unit cycle predicts 2.2%. 105 is out by 8x and
would need a threshold of alpha 11 out of a peak of 80, while the capture
contains submitted draws at alpha 1..12. No frame rate, no pacing factor, no
wall clock.

Also recorded: a regression of five build-in events against their declared
times (residuals <=0.9 frames) recovers t=0 at frame 106.1 when the composite
spike, not in the fit, is frame 107 -- and that same slope makes the glow's
period imply a 114-unit cycle against a declared 120, which is unexplained.
And the vertex-alpha identity holds for the glow but does NOT generalise:
eff4 reads 255/127/254 on consecutive frames.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01QsEPXWVaEpyfudtR6re1Pd

docs/port/HANDOFF.md

@@ -1946,11 +1946,9 @@ The flashes occupy a six-frame window and are absent from all 155 other sampled
 frames. Units-per-frame came from the **glow's period alone** — a different
 element — so the timings are not circular.
 
-🔴 **One thing for you to act on: do not draw all five flashes every time.** A
+🔴 ~~**Do not draw all five flashes every time.**~~ **WITHDRAWN the same day — see
-flash's peak is 2 keyframe units, which at this run's pacing is **0.85 of a
+the correction at the end of this file. Your sequential drawing is correct; ignore
-presented frame**. `ptlogo_back2eff3` was **never drawn** — not a miss, a phase
+this.**
-effect. The console shows a *subset* of these on any given play; a port that draws
-all five will show more of the sweep than the real thing.
 
 ✅ **And your 120 is confirmed from the guest's own vertex data.** The glow quad's
 per-vertex colour alpha *is* the element's fade alpha: observed range **0…80**
@@ -1975,3 +1973,56 @@ is 1280×720. Both wrong, neither loud.
 Detail, controls and reach:
 [`docs/re/structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md`](../re/structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md).
 
+## 2026-08-29 — retraction: the flash advice was wrong
+
+🔴 **I told you not to draw all five title flashes. That was wrong and you should
+ignore it.** You checked it against your renderer instead of reasoning about it,
+and you were right to.
+
+Two claims of mine, both withdrawn:
+
+* **"`eff3` was never drawn because a 2-unit peak is sub-frame."** `eff3` is
+  non-zero for t ∈ (58, 64), and the capture's frames 133 and 134 sit at t = 60.0
+  and 62.2 — squarely inside that window, with `eff2` and `eff4` both drawn in the
+  same frames. It should have been submitted and was not. **The absence is real
+  and unexplained**; it is not sampling phase, and it is not evidence that the
+  element is inert. Your sweep drawing it at t=60–62 is what the disc says.
+* **"A port drawing all five shows more sweep than the console."** No evidence.
+  The pile-up worth warning about was the `rest()` bug, which is fixed.
+
+⚠️ **What does hold is your own point, and it is now on my page.** The game's
+timeline is 60 units/s against a 30 Hz present — 2 units per submitted frame — and
+this capture ran at **2.231 units per presented frame**. So a frame-by-frame
+comparison of the build-in against this capture **will** disagree about which
+flash lands in which frame, and neither side is wrong. The settled comparison is
+unaffected: at t=198 none of the five is drawn.
+
+✅ **And a better confirmation of 120 than the one I sent, needing no calibration
+at all.** The glow's draw is omitted when its alpha hits zero, and the smallest
+alpha actually submitted across 807 drawn frames is **1** — so the culling
+threshold is 1, read off the data. Then:
+
+| | dark-frame fraction |
+|---|---|
+| **measured** (173 of 980 settled frames) | **17.7 %** |
+| a **120**-unit cycle (15-unit dark hold) predicts | **14.4 %** |
+| a **105**-unit cycle (no dark hold) predicts | **2.2 %** |
+
+🔴 105 is out by a factor of eight, and would need a culling threshold of alpha 11
+out of a peak of 80 — while the capture contains submitted draws at alpha 1, 2, 3,
+4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12. **The declared 15-unit dark hold is directly visible
+as the frames where the game submits no draw.** No frame rate, no pacing factor,
+no wall clock.
+
+⚠️ **One honest gap, since I am correcting myself anyway.** With units/frame from
+a regression over five build-in events (residuals ≤ 0.9 frames, and it recovers
+t=0 at frame 106.1 against a composite spike at 107 that was not in the fit), the
+glow's 51.158-frame period implies a **114**-unit cycle, not 120. The
+dark-fraction test settles 120 against 105; the 5 % gap in the period does not
+have an explanation yet.
+
+⚠️ And a limit on the vertex-alpha trick: it holds for the **glow** and does not
+generalise. Read the same way, `eff4` gives 255 / 127 / 254 on frames 133 / 134 /
+135 — non-monotonic. The glow's exact agreement is evidence about the glow, not a
+decoded rule about vertex colour.
+

docs/re/INDEX.md

@@ -171,4 +171,4 @@ files, which is how the same ground got covered twice.
 | [`structures/ui-tie-break-cost-at-settle.md`](structures/ui-tie-break-cost-at-settle.md) | What the unknown paint-order tie-break costs, in pixels | ✅ **decoded**, closing the open half of Q3: at the settled instant the tie-break costs **at most 1 px at Δ1**, on the **Japanese title only** (`ptlogo2`×`ptlogo_tm`, 5 px shared ink); **exactly 0 px on all five port screens**. The earlier 24-pair bound was a `rest()` count — and 10 of the title's 11 tied pairs are between `ptlogo_back2eff1`…`eff5`, five transient flashes that are **transparent** on the settled screen ([`ui-settle-time.md`](structures/ui-settle-time.md)). Live pairs at settle: entry 4 → **1**, entry 7 → **2**, the four loading bundles → **0**. ✅ Not a knife-edge — sweeping every keyframe time and midpoint, the count is **flat across the whole settle window**, and the loading bundles' tie is live only at t17–t33. ✅ Controls: an overlapping *different*-key swap moves 25 310 / 268 698 / ~765 000 px on the entries reporting zero; zeros are explained by shared-ink counts (the `ptframe` pairs share **0 px** of ink). ⚠️ Entries 0/1/12/15 have **no live control** — their zeros rest on keyframe data, not a render. 🟡 Refutation attempt on the corpus's "24 pairs": **survives** as a rest-pose bound, 16/16 on entry 7. ❔ *Why* ties order as they do is still unknown — and now worth one pixel |
 | [`structures/ui-record-loop-length.md`](structures/ui-record-loop-length.md) | Where a looping record's cycle restarts — and the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate's real period | ✅ **decoded**: a nested record is itself a RATC bundle and its header **`+0x08` is the loop length**; its keyframes need not fill it, and the slack is a hold at the final pose. Disc-wide over **1 781** timed nested records: 92.3 % declare exactly their last keyframe time, **7.7 % declare more**, and **0 declare less** — the falsifier (a cycle cannot restart before its own last pose) never fires. 🔴 **The plate's `ptbtn00f` is 105 units of ramp inside a 120-unit cycle, so it holds dark for 15 units** — the port was shipping **105**, and the answer is **120**. ✅ Falsification test against the running game, using a pacing factor measured *independently* on the focus ring (declared 120 → **2.177 s**, factor **1.0885**): to reach the corpus's measured 2.12–2.34 s, 105 units needs a factor of **1.211–1.337** (🔴 excludes the ring's) while 120 needs **1.060–1.170** (✅ contains it). Different elements, different bundles, separate runs — tied only by both declaring 120. ⚠️ Says where a cycle *ends*, not which records cycle. ❔ the **top-level** `+0x08` (300 on every `GP_TITLE` entry, elements ending at 244–269) is a different question, untouched |
 | [`structures/ui-focus-record-pulse-census.md`](structures/ui-focus-record-pulse-census.md) | Every focus record whose glow pulses, and where `rest()` puts it | ✅ **decoded**, disc-wide: **1 130** focus records, **2 664** timed elements, **210 with a varying alpha** — of which **202** have `rest()` == the **peak** (burns bright forever) and **8** land **mid-ramp**. By pak: `PILOTLOG` 116, `MOVIE_THEATER` 54, `HANGAR_ARSENAL` 30, `LEADERBOARD` 8, **`GP_TITLE` 2**. 🟡 Bounds rather than refutes the port's "34 in the export, 2 varying, nothing to fix" — correct, and correct *because* `GP_TITLE` has 2; the pathology sits in the screens a wider port needs next. 🔴 The 8 mid-ramp ones are the worse mode: `py_ranking_btn01f` swings 255→127→255 and `rest()` returns **244**, neither extreme, which looks entirely plausible and nothing reports it. ✅ Control: `ptbtn01f` is genuinely constant (255 throughout) and is **not** flagged; two hits verified keyframe by keyframe. ⚠️ A pulsing element has no resting pose — the question is malformed, not mis-answered; `pose_at(t)` inside the record's declared cycle ([`ui-record-loop-length.md`](structures/ui-record-loop-length.md)) is the only well-formed query. ⚠️ 210 is a **floor**: focus records are matched by the `Xf.rat` name rule, and varying scale/rotation/position is not counted |
-| [`structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md`](structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md) | The title's build-in and the plate glow, read out of the guest's own draw stream | ✅ **measured** (Canary, `ARM=early` draw capture): the decoded *mechanism* is observed, not just its end state. **The five flashes fire in a six-frame window and are absent from all 155 other sampled frames**; `ptlogo_back2eff1` is drawn in exactly 2 frames at **t = 54.0** against a decoded peak of **t54–56**, and `ptlogo1` first appears at **t = 42.2** against a decoded **t42** — with units/frame taken from the **glow's period alone**, a different element. The two holders (`ptlogo_back2eff`, `ptlogo_back2`) are continuous from frame 134. ✅ The glow's per-vertex colour alpha IS its fade alpha: **observed range 0…80 against a decoded peak of 80**, exact and unfitted; **period 51.158 presented frames** over 20 cycle starts; fitting the decoded ramp gives RMS **13.16** against **38.18 reversed** (2.9×), so the asymmetry is real and correctly directed. Structure: frame **107** is a **27-draw composite**, the settled title is 10–11 draws naming no sprite — which is why arming at the title sees nothing. ⚠️ **`eff3` was never drawn and that is expected**: a 2-unit flash peak is **0.85 of a presented frame**, so catching one is a matter of phase — 🔴 a port drawing all five every time shows more sweep than the console does. 🔴 **Trap:** matching a bound texture's dimensions to a sprite fails both ways — it missed every flash *and* read the intro movie's 640×360 YUV planes as `ptbase2`. ❔ Run's frame rate not recorded, so nothing is stated in seconds; `eff5` vs `ptlogo_back2eff` not separated |
+| [`structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md`](structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md) | The title's build-in and the plate glow, read out of the guest's own draw stream | ✅ **measured** (Canary, `ARM=early` draw capture): the decoded *mechanism* is observed, not just its end state. **The five flashes fire in a six-frame window and are absent from all 155 other sampled frames**; `ptlogo_back2eff1` is drawn in exactly 2 frames at **t = 54.0** against a decoded peak of **t54–56**, and `ptlogo1` first appears at **t = 42.2** against a decoded **t42** — with units/frame taken from the **glow's period alone**, a different element. The two holders (`ptlogo_back2eff`, `ptlogo_back2`) are continuous from frame 134. ✅ The glow's per-vertex colour alpha IS its fade alpha: **observed range 0…80 against a decoded peak of 80**, exact and unfitted; **period 51.158 presented frames** over 20 cycle starts; fitting the decoded ramp gives RMS **13.16** against **38.18 reversed** (2.9×), so the asymmetry is real and correctly directed. Structure: frame **107** is a **27-draw composite**, the settled title is 10–11 draws naming no sprite — which is why arming at the title sees nothing. 🔴 **Two claims here were WITHDRAWN the same day**: `eff3`'s absence is **unexplained**, not a sub-frame phase effect (frames 133/134 sit at t=60.0/62.2, inside its t(58,64) window, with `eff2` and `eff4` drawn alongside); and the advice that a port drawing all five "shows more sweep than the console" had no evidence behind it. ⚠️ What a frame-by-frame build-in comparison *will* show is disagreement about which flash lands in which frame — 2 units/submitted frame against this run's 2.231 units/presented frame — and neither side is wrong. 🔴 **Trap:** matching a bound texture's dimensions to a sprite fails both ways — it missed every flash *and* read the intro movie's 640×360 YUV planes as `ptbase2`. ✅ A regression of five events' observed frames against their declared times (residuals ≤0.9 frames) recovers the intercept at frame **106.1** when the composite spike, not in the fit, is frame **107**. ⚠️ Per-vertex alpha = fade alpha holds for the **glow** and does not generalise — `eff4` reads 255/127/254 on consecutive frames. ❔ Frame rate not recorded, so nothing is in seconds; the glow's period implies a **114**-unit cycle against a declared 120, unexplained; `eff5` vs `ptlogo_back2eff` not separated |

docs/re/structures/ui-record-loop-length.md

@@ -86,9 +86,28 @@ alpha**, so the ramp can be read straight out of the guest's draw stream
 * fitting the decoded ramp gives RMS 13.16 alpha levels against **38.18 for the
   same ramp reversed** — the asymmetry is real and in the decoded direction.
 
-This does not re-measure the period in seconds (the run's frame rate was not
+### ✅ And a calibration-free test that refutes 105 outright
-recorded), so the falsification below stands on the corpus's wall-clock timings
+
-rather than on this run.
+The measurements above still need a units-per-frame conversion. This one does not.
+
+The glow's draw is **omitted entirely when its alpha reaches zero**, and the
+smallest alpha actually submitted in 807 drawn frames is **1** — so the renderer's
+culling threshold is 1, read off the data rather than assumed. The fraction of
+settled frames with no glow draw is then a pure ratio within one measurement:
+
+| | dark-frame fraction |
+|---|---|
+| **measured** (173 of 980 settled frames) | **17.7 %** |
+| predicted by a **120**-unit cycle (15-unit dark hold) at threshold 1 | **14.4 %** |
+| predicted by a **105**-unit cycle (no dark hold) at threshold 1 | **2.2 %** |
+
+🔴 **105 is out by a factor of eight.** For a 105-unit cycle to produce 17.7 %
+dark, the culling threshold would have to be **alpha 11 out of a peak of 80** — and
+the capture contains submitted draws at alpha 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12,
+which refutes any such threshold directly.
+
+No frame rate, no pacing factor, no wall clock: the declared 15-unit dark hold is
+visible in the draw stream as the frames where the game submits no draw at all.
 
 ## What this replaces
 

docs/re/structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md

@@ -72,12 +72,27 @@ a different element**, taking the composite spike (frame 107) as t=0:
 other 155 frames sampled.** The two holders are present continuously from frame
 134 onward. That is the decoded mechanism, observed.
 
-⚠️ **`eff3` was never drawn, and that is expected rather than a miss.** A flash's
+🔴 **`eff3` was never drawn, and I do not know why. An earlier version of this
-peak is 2 keyframe units, and at 2.346 units per presented frame that is **0.85 of
+page said it was a sub-frame phase effect. That is WITHDRAWN.** `eff3`'s alpha is
-a frame** — sub-frame. Whether any given flash is sampled at all depends on phase.
+non-zero for t ∈ (58, 64), and frames 133 and 134 sit at t = 60.0 and 62.2 —
-Four of five were caught here; a second run would likely catch a different four.
+squarely inside it, with `eff2` and `eff4` both drawn in those same frames. It
-🔴 **A port that draws all five every time will show more of this sweep than the
+should have been submitted and was not. Whatever the reason, it is not sampling
-console does.**
+phase.
+
+🔴 **A second thing this page previously claimed, also withdrawn: that a port
+drawing all five flashes shows "more sweep than the console".** There is no
+evidence for that. The port draws them sequentially at their declared times, never
+more than two at once, which is what frames 131–135 above show the game doing.
+The pile-up worth warning about was the `rest()` bug, and that is fixed.
+
+⚠️ **What a frame-by-frame comparison of the build-in WILL show, and it is not a
+defect on either side.** The game's timeline is 60 units/s against a 30 Hz
+present, so 2 units per submitted frame; this capture ran at **2.231 units per
+presented frame**. A 2-unit flash peak therefore gets about one frame here and
+would get more on a faster present. **A build-in compared frame-by-frame against
+this capture will disagree about which flashes appear in which frame**, and
+neither side is wrong. The settled comparison is unaffected — at t=198 none of the
+five is drawn.
 
 ## The glow's ramp, read out of the guest
 
@@ -85,6 +100,11 @@ The plate glow's quad carries a **per-vertex colour whose alpha is the element's
 fade alpha**, so the ramp can be read directly rather than inferred from pixels.
 
 * **Observed alpha range: 0 … 80. Decoded peak: 80.** Exact, and not fitted.
+* ⚠️ **This identity holds for the glow and does NOT generalise.** Read the same
+  way, `eff4` gives 255 at frame 133, 127 at 134 and 254 at 135 — non-monotonic,
+  so a per-vertex alpha is not simply the element's fade alpha for every element.
+  The glow's agreement (peak exactly 80) is evidence for the glow, not a decoded
+  rule about vertex colour.
 * **Period: 51.158 presented frames**, from the first to the last of **20
   consecutive cycle starts** (individual periods 49–53).
 * The draw is **omitted entirely** while the glow is dark — which is what the
@@ -112,8 +132,20 @@ zero part-way through a frame.
 
 ## Reach and what is not settled
 
-⚠️ **One run, one machine.** 2.346 units per presented frame is *this run's*
+⚠️ **One run, one machine.** ~2.23 units per presented frame is *this run's*
-pacing, not a property of the game. The internal ratios are what transfer.
+pacing, not a property of the game — the game's own quantum is **2 units per
+submitted frame** ([`ui-keyframe-time-unit.md`](../ui-keyframe-time-unit.md)). The
+internal ratios are what transfer.
+
+✅ **A validation worth stating: the fit recovers t=0 on its own.** Regressing the
+observed frame of five events against their declared keyframe times (residuals
+≤ 0.9 frames over t = 42…138) gives a slope of 2.231 units/frame and an intercept
+at **frame 106.1** — and the composite spike, which was not part of the fit, is
+frame **107**.
+
+❔ **The glow's period implies a 114-unit cycle at that slope**, against a declared
+120. The dark-fraction test below settles 120 against 105 without any calibration,
+but the 5 % gap in the period is unexplained.
 
 ❔ **The absolute frame rate of this run was not measured** — Canary logged no fps
 and the log has no timestamps — so nothing here is stated in seconds. It did not