Aurora Vale: Real Terrain, Native Soil Encoding and Release Gates

A more accountable Technologies development record

TW Farms Technologies Ltd is now in NVIDIA Inception, and this journal is moving towards a fuller engineering record: source data, dimensions, transformations, reproducible checks, observed failures and explicit acceptance limits. This entry covers the Aurora work recorded through the 5 October checkpoint and is published on 6 October.

The applied map work is a proving ground for terrain, scene-authoring and creator tooling. It provides specific evidence for the Technologies direction without treating these scripts and experiments as a finished standalone Farm Forge product.

From inspired geography to recorded source data

• Current playable extent: 4,096 × 4,096 m, 16.777216 km².
• DEM: 2,049 × 2,049 samples at 2 m; surface weights 4,096 square; density maps 8,192 square.
• Recorded revised terrain elevation: approximately 80.392–134.091 m.
• Geodata: EA 2022 DTM and OS Open Roads April 2026; licensed provenance retained.

The 3 October authored countryside was followed by an Environment Agency 2022 LIDAR Composite DTM and licensed OS Open Roads acquisition. The wider elevation reference covers British National Grid easting 335,460–345,188 and northing 253,718–263,446: a 9,728 metre square extent sampled into 4,864 × 4,864 cells at 2 metres.

The horizon raster’s recorded elevations range from 69.953 to 290.601 metres. Its SHA-256 is 83150d66c1a0568fc8926b2aadf75c667f7514f23b5d04c0de9ed0690542dcdd. The height source uses OD Newlyn, with vertical exaggeration recorded as 1 in the production earthworks report.

The OS Open Roads source is the April 2026 release. Its national archive was 1,016,021,285 bytes and the extracted GeoPackage 2,144,063,488 bytes; hashes, licence and attribution were retained. Accepted road geometry was clipped to the playable boundary, and degree-two joins across road-name changes were combined to retain crossing continuity.

The playable revised map contains 155 fields, 174 farmlands, 201 routes and three river crossings. Three river-isolated crop plots remained meadow rather than being assigned inaccessible field access. EA and OS source files stay outside the mod, with source attribution recorded in the project.

Earthworks, roads and connected water

Building pads were moved from whole-parcel levelling to local native footprints and authored structure floors. One geographic candidate preserved 95.278 percent of sampled terrain within 0.01 metres; the later integrated production earthworks report records 89.409 percent unchanged. They are different revisions, not competing measurements of the same state.

The production report records approximately 177.858 hectares changed, 391,259.595 cubic metres of cut, 233,049.666 cubic metres of fill, maximum cut 9.334 metres and maximum fill 3.589 metres. These are generated-earthworks audit values rather than a physical site survey. The largest cut was the authored hillside pond, which remained a visual review item.

Source road checks reported zero grades above 12 degrees and zero bridge steps above 0.10 metres. The three recorded crossing lengths are approximately 139.556, 52.000 and 70.375 metres, each with a minimum authored water clearance of 2.8 metres. Physical loaded driving on the revised crossings remains separate acceptance.

An oversized connected-water collision mesh failed native cooking. The candidate was split into six bounded collision meshes; the recorded native load then had zero Error entries. A conforming connected surface removed the reviewed main-river/tributary junction line. Later water audits checked exposed banks, unbridged submerged roads and authored tree roots.

Artificial ground dams beneath bridge decks were removed. Nine protected site margins gained 702 shrub patches, while native working aprons and machinery routes were kept clear.

Traffic and native rendering constraints

The A44 uses two connected cubic traffic splines with opposing left-hand lanes and shared endpoints outside the playable boundary. A single closed-loop approach failed the native traffic system and was replaced.

An attempted setting of 48 vehicles exceeded the native FS25 1.24 cap. It was corrected to 30 in source and mod configuration, and the subsequent fresh load had no traffic warning. Cars, vans and trucks were witnessed moving in both directions.

The wider horizon also exceeded native mesh limits before partitioning. Cottage-garden and churchyard geometry was compiled natively to remove non-binary warnings. A clean log belongs to the specific compiled revision; it does not replace ground-level geometry or gameplay review.

Precision Farming: the stale compiled-data failure

• Decoded/source equality: 1,048,576 of 1,048,576 soil pixels.
• Soil source SHA-256: de81b88ebb2d78b140ad0ef92a821bd467c6c82d190159c2dfb06e37f646dc85.
• Compiled GRLE SHA-256: 0cd78a30bb860dda3d21a2c8a63d8dc4a1e6421fd5c89002c0dd3493391ed042.

Precision Farming exposed a pipeline defect: GIANTS Editor selected a sibling GRLE ahead of an identically named PNG, silently reusing stale compiled soil data. Recompilation now uses a distinct source basename so the authored raster actually enters the compiler.

Soil types use bits 0–1, values 0–3; bit 2 stores sampled cover. The 1,024-square raster has three channels. GIANTS grleConverter 7.0.2 decoded the corrected GRLE, and all 1,048,576 pixels matched the authored PNG. The package validator checks this equality to prevent stale output passing the same sweep.

The soil zones are authored from relief/valley rules, not a surveyed soil dataset. Coverage is approximately 3.424 percent loamy sand, 8.592 percent sandy loam, 79.764 percent loam and 8.219 percent silty clay.

Fresh isolated save11 loaded the corrected overlay with Precision Farming and installed DLCs. Purchasing soil information for field 88 cost £2,012 and showed 100 percent loam with 125 percent potential. Saving retained all soil-type bits and 2,840 sampled-cover cells. Physical SCOUT sampling and fertilizer application remain separate checks.

Placement grids and native PDA generation

A reload exposed that the engine expects fixed 2,048-square placement-collision grids. Source and both compiled GRLE files were corrected to that size and checked pixel-for-pixel. Existing isolated-save occupancy was preserved with conservative 2 × 2 maximum pooling rather than being discarded.

The PDA is assembled from 256 native orthographic tiles into a 4,096-square overview. The icon is 512 square and preview 1,024 square; the checkpoint records BC3 DDS artwork with full mip chains. Hash checks connect the terrain, scene, layout and artwork so a stale overview can be identified.

Two earlier native marker checks aligned Home Farm at world coordinates (−770, 370), displayed (1,278, 2,418), and the southeast pond at (1,660, 1,840), displayed (3,708, 3,888). Service-building changes triggered another native tile/PDA generation, so those earlier checks are historical evidence; marker acceptance must be repeated on the latest artwork.

Local finishing repairs and restored service buildings

Local repairs addressed farmhouse and shelter facing, foundation floors, farmhouse access, independent gate-pier seating, a submerged bench, the church belfry, barn UVs and bus-stop/bench foliage. The recorded foundation phase changed 7,532 square metres, 0.04485 percent of the playable area, while retaining the user’s wider smoothing.

An intermediate checklist recorded a farmhouse deviation of 0.837242 metres and an entrance-pier overlap of 0.2916 square metres. Those failures remained visible in the audit trail before later local corrections; an earlier failing checklist is not overwritten by the final checkpoint.

The petrol station and machinery workshop initially had invisible triggers without their visible native scenery. Installed native mapEU pairings were used to restore the models while preserving the trigger configurations.

The workshop visual offset was (−9, −13) from its rotation-0 trigger, with visual rotation 180 degrees; the petrol visual offset was (−5, 0) from its rotation-90 trigger, with visual rotation 0. Final recorded workshop position is (−609, 118.116, 877) at 180 degrees; petrol is (−500, 114.054, 810) at 0 degrees. Final pose, access and interaction still require the current runtime review.

Exact checkpoint and the remaining acceptance

• Evidence: ledger.md; terrain-build.json; reference-horizon-source.json; reference-roads-source.json; real-production-earthworks.json.
• Compilation/acceptance evidence: precision-soil-source.json; soil-compilation-audit.json; beautification-validation-current.md; final-checklist-results.json; checkpoint-state.json; SESSION-CHECKPOINT.md.
• State at publication: Aurora work paused at the requested checkpoint; Outback paused; no map development resumed for writing this report.

The last checkpoint records development version 0.3.0.0, native scene saved at 23:26 Europe/London on 5 October and 74 of 74 source tests passing after the service scenery repair. Earlier 29 static/package checks and 30 schema checks predate that final change and must be repeated. Four installed schema gaps remain explicit.

The repaired test ZIP contains 269 files and 114,809,187 bytes. SHA-256 is 21440a0c5c17eccb667822c8bee533f8069c3c03ef3c2f72f96c42e6094fc8ba. CRC passed, source-file hashes matched and development files were excluded. It remains a test package.

The isolated profile reached the 100 percent START screen on the updated exact ZIP, but simulation had not started at the checkpoint. That is not a completed gameplay load or service-interaction proof. Prior revised save9 harvested 1,328 litres of soybeans; unloading and sale on the revised geography remain pending.

Remaining acceptance includes service frontages and refuel/repair triggers, final PDA markers, cultivation/seeding/fertilizer and physical Precision Farming sampling, road deformation, loaded crossing drives, harvested-grain unloading/sales, animal/bunker/production cycles, underwater and seasonal ambience, physical boundaries and final IDE diagnostics.

Raw desktop captures, private test profiles and reference photographs remain local. This publication records the engineering findings and hashes without distributing those materials or claiming release readiness.