Roadmap

V13 — Production Gaussian Engine

Turn the V12/V15/V16 Gaussian path into a production observation pipeline: streaming rasterization plus optional local and global frame enhancers — without ever letting AI become the world authority.

Goals

• LOD & frustum streaming — serve only visible / near chunks; screen-space error drives splat density.
• VRAM / resource manager — adaptive budgets for splat counts, atlas sizes, and compile queues.
• Progressive initial compile — background progressive chunk build + live partial views.
• Gaussian rasterizer as a V16 renderer — consumes only gaussian_scene artifacts; produces frame + G-buffers (RGB, depth, normals, motion, semantics, materials).
• Layer 1 — Local Frame Enhancer — AI conditioned on per-object / per-voxel metadata (semantic, material, moisture, season, confidence…); improves surface detail, reflections, edges, AA — never invents occupancy. V18: pipeline + classical-CV shipped; AI weights pending
• Background Gaussian evolution / cache — async splat-data optimization with versioned cache. V19 classical + V22 RealESRGAN CUDA
• Layer 2 — Global Frame Enhancer — AI conditioned on scene metadata (weather, fog, sun elevation, exposure, time of day…); HDR, grading, atmosphere, bloom, DOF, temporal, upscaling, stylization.
• Independent toggles — local_ai / global_ai on|off: pure Gaussian, photoreal surfaces only, fast cinematic, or maximum realism.
• Optional WebGPU path — GPU splat sort / raster when available; WebGL elliptical quads remain the fallback.

Definition of done

• Viewer streams Gaussians under a declared VRAM budget without dropping the authoritative world.
• Local and global enhancers are optional plugins over the same raster output; disabling both yields pure deterministic Gaussian display.
• Enhancers never write voxels, Components, or evidence — observation only.
• Benchmarks separate raster cost from local AI cost from global AI cost.

Depends on

V12 Gaussian scene · V15 compiler artifacts · V16 visualization engine · homepage / paper enhancement path. See also Frame Enhancement on the homepage.

V14 — Complete Registration & Mapping ✓

Delivered. Maintained SE(3) pose graph with Gauss-Newton optimization, loop closure, landmarks, anchors, uncertainty, multi-capture fusion, and incremental voxel corrections through the V11 runtime. Measured: 12-node loop drift 8.99 m → 0.0 m in 70 ms. Full report: updates.html#v14.

Remaining follow-ups (honest): analytic Jacobians + sparse Cholesky for large graphs; higher confidence gate for tiny-overlap ICP; in-viewport 3D pose-graph / covariance modes and interactive constraint editor; live GPS/IMU/ROS/LiDAR adapters when hardware is present.

V15 — World Compiler Framework ✓ Part 1

Part 1 delivered. Single World Compiler Runtime owns all derived-artifact compilation; five built-in plugins wrap real Gaussian / SVO / mesh / semantic / lighting logic; incremental, transactional, cached, deterministic-where-applicable, and extensible without touching the runtime class. Full report: updates.html#v15.

Part 2 remaining: route the viewer’s live Gaussian/SVO rendering through world.compiler artifacts (today dual-path with V11 runtime.compilers); parallel multi-worker execution; richer queue / dependency-graph / timeline panels; stock compilers for navmesh / physics hulls / neural packs as they land.

V16 — Universal Visualization Engine ✓

Delivered. One Visualization Engine; 17 renderers consume V15 compiler artifacts only; hot-switch never recompiles; multi-viewport; cameras / layers / selection / screenshots / recording through one API. Caps the major subsystem stack. Full report: updates.html#v16.

Remaining polish: route Three.js live pixel drawing fully through /api/viz/render for every mode; ship stylized renderers (photoreal / LEGO / anime / thermal) as plugins over the same artifacts.

V17 — World Simulation ✓

Delivered. Simulation evolves the authoritative world through time with no new foundational layer. Behaviors / triggers / tick / time control; changes flow Runtime → Evidence → World → Compiler (auto) → Visualization. Proven: door open auto-recompiles gaussian 768→764. Full report: updates.html#v17.

Follow-ups: richer physics on the same Behavior interface; browser play/pause/step strip; bump runtime revision on all world edits (same as sim).

V18 — Gaussian Enhancement Pipeline

Delivered. Enhances the Gaussian render itself (not full-frame display post). Flow: compiler Gaussian artifact → CPU splat rasterizer → GaussianImagePacket → visible-region metadata → 32-D embedding → chainable enhancers → enhanced image. Voxel world untouched; disabled = deterministic passthrough. Full report: updates.html#v18.

Honest limits: classical-CV path is what runs without GPU weights; AI enhancers are guarded stubs; CPU reference rasterizer ≠ browser WebGL; display-mode wiring for the enhanced frame is a follow-up.

Note: Digital Twin / Spatial Database proceeds under platform tracks (Perception · Simulation · FRAME), not further kernel milestones.

V19 — Gaussian Evolution Engine

Delivered. Continuously improves Gaussian scene data (not pixels) asynchronously: compiler scene → optimizer passes → cached revisions → best version served transparently via best_arrays(). Complements V18. Hallway quality 0.65→1.0. Voxel world untouched; render never blocked. Full report: updates.html#v19.

Honest limits: classical splat processing is what runs without GPU weights; quality is a splat-data heuristic; predictive camera-motion prefetch is scaffolded only.

V20 — Reality Capture Pipeline

Delivered. Unified doorway for all reality intake: sources emit ObservationPacket → Registration + Evidence → voxels. Never writes voxels directly. Synthetic live run; record→identical-replay; guarded hardware stubs. Full report: updates.html#v20.

V21 — Reactive World Pipeline

Delivered. Runtime event bus + reactors: one world edit cascades VoxelModified → … → GaussianFrameEnhanced with zero orchestration code. Deterministic record/replay; backpressure 0. Full report: updates.html#v21.

Honest limits: V11 mark_dirty still schedules compile internally; reactors stay lightweight; LoopbackChannel is in-process.

V22 — Neural Enhancement Backends

Delivered. Interchangeable neural optimization backends (never the renderer). Real-ESRGAN RRDBNet x4 runs on the RTX 2060 SUPER (device=cuda); evolution drives them via registry only. VRAM tiling + CPU fallback; FLUX/SwinIR/HiDream guarded until weights land. Full report: updates.html#v22.

Honest limits: scene update is neural-gated colour-detail transfer (detail_gain), not full splat inverse-rendering.

V23 — Semantic World Engine

Delivered. Meaning decoupled from geometry: entities own hypotheses, attributes, and relationships; only reference authoritative voxels. One evidence path; competing hypotheses with confidence; directional relationships with auto-inverse; independent persistence. Full report: updates.html#v23.

Honest limits: HeuristicProposer is shape-based not deep recognition; search() is lexical; no bundled perception model — real detectors attach via propose(source="ai").

V24 — Persistent World Identity

Delivered. Objects keep persistent UUIDs across observations: multi-signal probabilistic matcher, accumulated confidence, immutable history/versions/lifecycle, change detection, and state_at/replay/compare without mutating the present. Full report: updates.html#v24.

Honest limits: matcher is a transparent weighted heuristic (not learned embeddings); auto merge/split is explicit API; capture→identity auto-wiring is next integration.

V25 — World Reasoning Engine

Delivered. Fourth layer of the stack: evidence-backed inference, classical rules, causal graphs, competing hypotheses, explanations, and hypothetical predictions — never mutates the authoritative world. Caps reality → meaning → continuity → inference. Full report: updates.html#v25.

Honest limits: classical rules only (no bundled AI); disappearance priors labelled as such; prediction is persistence projection; AI reasoner is a plugin interface.

V26 — Integrated World Kernel

Delivered. V20–V25 compose automatically: atomic transactions, event-driven kernel reactors, whole-world snapshot save/restore with identical authoritative checksum, 7 executable invariants. One observation → whole stack; no manual downstream calls. Full report: updates.html#v26.

Honest limits: no incremental snapshots; learned perception not added; product e2e now fixed (was shadowed reconstruction import). Cross-layer query delivered in V27.

V27 — World Services & Query Engine

Delivered. The world is a service: world.query is the single app interface — spatial/temporal/semantic/identity/reasoning/graph families plus cross-layer explain (one WorldExplanation). Full report: updates.html#v27.

Honest limits: ask() is a keyword parser not NLP; planner is index-vs-scan; large-world path planning out of scope.

V28 — Distributed World Replication & Synchronization

Delivered. Many replicas, one logical world — converge through validated transactions, vector clocks, explicit conflicts, checkpoints, offline workflow, and abstract transport (mem + file). Full report: updates.html#v28.

Honest limits: HTTP/WebSocket not built (Transport contract only); state merge by uuid; discovery abstract; hallway snapshot is not in the replication log (live demo uses fresh transactional replicas).

V29 — Distributed Kernel Hardening & Trust

Delivered. Replicate operations, not conclusions — local recompute, HMAC signatures, trust roles, provenance, versioned policies, compaction / partial sync / anti-entropy. Full report: updates.html#v29.

Honest limits: HMAC default (Ed25519 arrived in V30); policy migration was detect-only until V30 registry; anti-entropy was on-demand until V30 scheduled tick.

V30 — Kernel Finalization & Long-Term Stability

Delivered — last kernel milestone. Observation-driven identity, Ed25519 public-key + federation, policy evolution, scheduled anti-entropy, health score, canonical regression (5 worlds ALL OK), governance + KERNEL_API + KERNEL_V1.0 declaration. Full report: updates.html#v30.

Honest limits: pure-Python Ed25519 is slow (HMAC remains fast default); anti-entropy is a throttled tick; concrete policy migrations are app-registered.

Platform tracks — version above the kernel

No more V31, V32… kernel milestones. The kernel stays at v1.0 while these tracks version independently (see docs/KERNEL_V1.0.md):

Themes still on the horizon

• Digital twins / spatial DB — real CaptureDevice drivers; disk persistence; indexes.
• Public SDK / plugins — providers, compilers, renderers; versioned compatibility.
• Heavier generative backends — FLUX/HiDream weights on the V22 registry (no engine rewrite).
• Network transports + native Ed25519 — HTTP/WebSocket/QUIC; fast public-key default.
• Prediction layers — always labeled predicted, never smuggled into authority.

Non-goals (still)

• The renderer never becomes the simulator.
• Generated imagery never silently becomes occupancy or Components.
• Autonomy never skips provenance.
• Kernel Stable APIs do not break without a major-version bump + ADR + invariants + replay + distributed verification.