The objective on the ground

2026-11-01. The goal marked in the world, not only on the sheet; entering it completes it.

The survey map has carried a goal since the sheet was drawn, a red station mark at a fixed point, and nothing in the world answered to it. Today the same mark is on the ground: a disc of red ink twelve metres across laid on the sand where the goal is, a fan of triangles whose vertices sit on the ground query (so it follows a dune's flank and a river's bank as the prints and the props do), drawn by one material built by the pipeline (M_Objective). Whoever moves, the horse under her or her on foot, entering the disc completes the objective: the disc fades over a second, the mark leaves the map, and a line of the sheet's hand fades up above the middle of the frame, holds three seconds, and goes. The text is a property (NoticeText, "Objective reached" until a mission names it), as are the disc's place, radius, fade and glow.

the mark ahead	reached

Left: twenty-odd metres short of it, at the gallop. Right: a half second after she crossed its edge: the mark fading under her, the notice up.

The same mark with the sun down and the sky light at a tenth: it has to be found at night, so it is a glow.

What the frames taught: ink is darker than the paper it sits on, and red ink on red sand under a red sun has no contrast at all. The first material was lit, the ink's own colour under the light, and vanished into the sand from every angle, even straight down; a small emissive floor for the dark showed as a smudge. A mark that must be seen on this ground is a glow, so the disc is emissive, and the ink character is kept in the wash (the sand noise in world metres, so it is uneven like a brush), a heavier rim and a slow breath. At the fixed exposure (EV 12) a glow of 400 disappears, 1800 is neon, 1000 reads as a red wash by day and a clear disc by night; that is the default. The frame cost was not measured: one disc of a few hundred triangles.

The behaviour gate's four traces are unchanged: the objective lies off every scripted run. The opening's shots are unchanged too, since the goal at 330 m north is beyond the ride's frames.