fix: make nightdrive signage reliable and legible

docs/reviews/visual-qa.md

@@ -108,6 +108,33 @@ Fresh verification produced these results:
 
 The unchanged 20-second interaction harness still does not yield a valid long trace on this host, so no interaction latency or frame-cadence result is claimed. Its independent mobile-low run loaded content under the prescribed throttle but stayed in `data-scene-state="loading"` beyond the fixed five-second scene-ready window. Its independent desktop-high run again reached the Toolkit CDP action but exceeded the fixed 75-second test timeout, matching the previously documented host behavior. Neither assertion or budget was weakened. The authenticated allocation trace, deterministic live-uniform trace, responsive screenshots, and browser assertions are the measured evidence for this pass; physical-browser, cross-engine, and audience checks remain outstanding below.
 
+## Nightdrive sign reliability and legibility pass
+
+The 2026-09-03 sign-only continuation is retained under `docs/reviews/evidence/nightdrive-iteration/sign-reliability-pass/`. Its [`README.md`](evidence/nightdrive-iteration/sign-reliability-pass/README.md) records the exact per-route candidacy/corridor mapping, lifecycle contract, responsive pose families, texture contract, measured face sizes, and evidence index. The supplied Profile-overlap scenario remains in `before/`; corrected left/right content relationships, five viewport families, DPR 1/2/3 states, Low/High tiers, lifecycle/adverse-input states, Static, reduced motion, and empty console evidence are separate and do not overwrite earlier review sets.
+
+The investigation identified shared controller, projection, and texture causes. Large deltas and multi-boundary samples were previously discarded before reconciliation; dwell was timed from the original latch instead of the first actual readable frame; every desktop sign inherited one right-side pose; a resize/quality rebuild omitted the latched responsive profile; the former departure could cross the camera plane; and the 1024×288 source did not match the face ratio and could be cached before the intended font was ready. These were fixed within the Three.js sign boundary. No content, CSS, navigation, HUD, control, car, road, terrain, sun, atmosphere, camera, or forward-motion redesign was introduced.
+
+The final controller accepts only forward passive-scroll candidates with motion enabled. A normal next route becomes eligible within 0.55vh; a boundary crossing resolves to the eligible route actually reached. Concealed labels may retarget, visible labels never mutate, jumps retain only the latest relevant pending target, and completed transitions cannot spam on small oscillations. The clock-driven phases are 300ms anticipate, 650–900ms approach, at least 1,400ms dwell measured from the first actual dwell frame, 700ms lateral/receding departure, and 350ms cooldown. A visible approach now completes approach plus the entire dwell even after reversal or passing its target; the refreshed trace observed 1,483.4ms between its first sampled dwell frame and departure after reverse input. Initialization, explicit/skip/direct navigation, history restoration, Static, reduced motion, and hidden-document transitions remain intentionally suppressed or reset.
+
+Route metadata places Profile, Additional work, and Toolkit in left/outer-left corridors; Experience and Contact in right corridors; and Infrastructure and Selected builds in outer-right corridors. The `wide`, `tall`, and `short` pose families are latched per lifecycle and survive scene-quality rebuilds. Browser projection assertions require the complete readable face to remain inside viewport edges and clear of the active panel, adjacent opening panel, navigation, controls, and HUD. Final measured face widths were 150.64px at 390×844/DPR 3, 134.49px at 844×390, 182.76px at 768×1024, 195.05px at 1440×900, and 312.09px at 2560×1440. The Profile and Experience desktop frames were measured on opposite sides of their corresponding content panels.
+
+The sign face is now an exact 4:1 plane with a 2048×512 sRGB canvas texture, trilinear mipmaps, linear magnification, and up to 8× available anisotropy. The bundled Geist Mono faces are awaited before the first draw, and the face bypasses tone mapping to avoid post-process color distortion. Every recorded dwell reported `fontReadyWhenDrawn: true`; source sampling headroom ranged from 6.56 to 15.23 texture pixels per rendered face pixel across the recorded viewport/DPR matrix. Label redraw and texture upload occur only when a concealed target changes. Geometry, materials, texture, projection vectors, and mounting remain stable render-owned objects; test-only projection inspection runs only in the authenticated test build.
+
+Fresh verification produced these final results:
+
+- The production build gate passed type checking, all 43 unit files / 538 tests, client and SSR builds, prerender verification, and the transfer check.
+- The focused controller test passed 30/30. The final focused controller/world/lifecycle/drive/resource group passed 179 tests in 5 files, including the strengthened visible-approach dwell assertions.
+- The final complete four-worker browser matrix passed 178 checks with 44 deliberate project skips and no failures. An earlier pre-final run produced one known desktop heading-focus timeout under load; the exact unchanged test passed with one worker in 2.1 seconds, and it also passed in the final four-worker matrix.
+- The focused desktop/mobile sign-and-journey run passed 13 checks with the one intentional duplicate responsive-matrix skip. Its responsive loop exercised the automatic Low cap at 390px, Medium cap at 768/844px, and High cap at 1440/2560px. The final complete matrix independently passed the same sign, passive-scroll, explicit-navigation/restoration, keyboard/accessibility, responsive, Static/reduced-motion, fallback, and flash-safety paths.
+- Deployment verification passed 9 tests in 3 files. Its sandboxed attempt could not bind the local HTTP fixture (`listen EPERM`); the unchanged suite passed with local-network permission.
+- The final authenticated 1440×900 High-tier allocation gate passed with device DPR 2 and renderer ratio 1.5. It measured 5,608,790 texture bytes, 748,476 geometry bytes, 161,344,784 render-target bytes, a 33,554,432-byte allowance, and 201,256,482 total accounted bytes. Peak scene-image concurrency was 1 and video concurrency was 0.
+- Transfer verification passed with a 222,897-byte Brotli-accounted first-live-scene payload. The environment chunk measured 701,690 raw / 146,308 transfer bytes, application JavaScript 80,343 transfer bytes, and the unchanged car GLB 410,408 raw / 76,589 transfer bytes.
+- `browser-console.json` contains an empty error array, and `git diff --check` passed before final review.
+
+The independent long interaction harness remains invalid on this host and no frame-cadence or input-latency number is claimed. Its desktop High/DPR run again reached the Toolkit target lookup but exceeded the fixed 75-second timeout; its mobile Low/DPR run remained in scene loading until the fixed five-second deadline and entered the tested static failure path. Neither timeout, assertion, scene-ready deadline, nor budget was changed. Three.js DevTools also reported no connected app for the final preview, so the earlier DevTools draw-call profile remains baseline evidence rather than being relabeled as a new result.
+
+No new Blender asset was justified. The finite authored car remains Blender-owned and unchanged. Dynamic sign text, route candidacy, lifecycle, responsive placement, road, terrain, atmosphere, sun, camera, and motion remain Three.js-owned. Physical-device, Firefox, Safari/WebKit, Edge, assistive-technology, and audience review remain the honest manual limitations below.
+
 ## Direction review checklist
 
 - [x] Information uses near-black opaque panels rather than neon glass.