Notices by Ignacio Castaño🍉 (castano@mastodon.gamedev.place)

OK, Spark 1.4 is finally out!

The highlight is HDR: new BC6H and ASTC HDR codecs, offline quality at real-time speeds.

Also: BC1 Ultra, a BC7 codec for packed material maps, ASTC 5×5, and broader device support.

https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/09/spark-1-4/

@gianni Impressive!

I've published a repository with my ssimulacra2 implementation at:

https://github.com/Ludicon/ic-metrics

I use this to tune all my codecs and generate the distortion maps in https://ludicon.com/sparkjs/#Examples

I shared this a while ago through a gist, but early versions had some bugs, so I wanted to validate it and compare it against other implementations before publishing more widely.

The funny thing is that once you remove all the C++ crap and the jxl/hwy dependencies, the code is almost twice as fast.

@killyourfm Careful, the minerals in the hot springs often interact with the sealant of most watches! I destroyed my last watch that way.

Another blog post!

This one is about various mipmap generation topics:

https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/02/runtime-mipmap-generation/

While still focused on spark.js, I hope it's also of general interest.

I've put together an updated version of the Sponza scene with uncompressed PNG and compressed AVIF textures. I wrote about the process and compared the results against KTX.

https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/02/an-updated-sponza-gltf/

#webgpu #sparkjs

While working on spark.js, I realized that normal map compression formats weren’t supported in popular frameworks like three.js. I addressed that gap by adding the necessary support to three.js and wrote an article to shed some light on the topic, drawing from my experience in real-time 3D graphics.

https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/02/normal-map-compression-revisited/

#webgpu #webgl #threejs #sparkjs

@killyourfm Beautiful! I wanna get up there during peak fall colors. Maybe next couple of weeks?

Enjoy your road trip!

@killyourfm Is there any snow in Laurel peak? How does the gully look like? What about the Fall colors? Are the Aspens turning yellow already?

@killyourfm Nice! Is the water from the river mixing with the water from the hot spring? Does it stay warm enough?

@killyourfm It must be nice to have it all to yourself before the road opens.

Did you hike the 4 mile trail? panorama trail or both?

@WillRobinson and to make things even more outrageous they can only deduct $300 of job-related expenses.