Research & notes · Cyrus SarkoshDeep research by Cyrus Sarkosh, done with Claude for his games, apps and films, and published free for anyone working on the same problems.https://csarko.sh/research2026-10-30T00:00:00ZCyrus Sarkoshhttps://csarko.sh/Unlimited email aliases that scale to zerohttps://csarko.sh/research/unlimited-email-aliases-that-scale-to-zero2026-10-30T00:00:00Z2026-10-30T00:00:00ZEvery address at a domain receives mail through SES and one Lambda, about $0.0003 a message and $0 idle. Why Google Cloud cannot, what Cloudflare costs.Cloud rigs for graphics work: fan out, not a cheaper cloudhttps://csarko.sh/research/cloud-rigs-for-graphics-work2026-10-29T00:00:00Z2026-10-29T00:00:00ZAWS, Azure and GCP price a T4 GPU within 3%. Fanning out shader recording and tests, not switching clouds, cuts a 4.5-hour graphics change to about 30 minutes.How Codex embeds its browser, and what a Rust IDE can copyhttps://csarko.sh/research/how-codex-embeds-its-browser2026-10-24T00:00:00Z2026-10-24T00:00:00ZCodex's browser pane is an Electron webview guest of its own Chromium, driven over CDP by a plugin; a Rust IDE gets there with WKWebView, not by docking Chrome.How Horror Directors Make Sound Carry the Fearhttps://csarko.sh/research/how-horror-directors-make-sound-carry-the-fear2026-10-24T00:00:00Z2026-10-24T00:00:00ZHow horror directors use score, noise, voice, silence and the needle drop to make you afraid. Startle and roughness are measured; dread is lore.Five Ways Horror Directors Steer the Eyehttps://csarko.sh/research/how-horror-directors-steer-the-eye2026-10-23T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZHorror inverts five framing rules: space behind the face, threat in the dark, focus on nothing, lines to nowhere. The eye is measured; the dread is lore.How Horror Directors Build Dread Shot by Shothttps://csarko.sh/research/horror-cinematography-shot-by-shot2026-10-22T00:00:00Z2026-10-22T00:00:00ZHow Hitchcock, Kubrick, Carpenter, Nakata, Aster and Eggers build dread: the three levers, a feeling-to-technique table, 30 director profiles, 168 sources.23 Horror Sequences Broken Down Shot by Shothttps://csarko.sh/research/horror-sequences-shot-by-shot2026-10-22T00:00:00Z2026-10-22T00:00:00ZShot-by-shot breakdowns of 23 horror sequences, from the Psycho shower to Weapons: sizes, moves, durations, cut points, and what each one teaches.Parallel GPU browser rigs: AWS, GCP and Modalhttps://csarko.sh/research/parallel-gpu-browser-rigs2026-10-22T00:00:00Z2026-10-24T00:00:00ZTen stopped AWS Windows GPU machines run a round of browser GPU benchmarks in under two hours; GCP allows one GPU, and Modal's Chrome falls back to software.A painted look over a photoreal render: WebGPU against WebGL2https://csarko.sh/research/a-painted-look-over-a-photoreal-render-webgpu-vs-webgl22026-10-17T00:00:00Z2026-10-24T00:00:00ZA painterly post chain on WebGPU and WebGL2: the same look on both, but a stroke filter written with sector arrays cost 12.5 ms on WebGPU against 2.1 ms.Scene depth for a post process: WebGPU against WebGL2https://csarko.sh/research/scene-depth-for-a-post-process-webgpu-vs-webgl22026-10-16T00:00:00Z2026-10-24T00:00:00ZScene depth for a post process on WebGPU and WebGL2: one prepass works on both, six API differences bite, and a 6 s frame, not the depth, lost the GPU.A full far field: how games fill the distancehttps://csarko.sh/research/full-far-field-for-browser-worlds2026-10-15T00:00:00Z2026-10-15T00:00:00ZHow shipped open-world games keep the distance looking full, from far terrain and vegetation to the camera-side tricks that hide the seams, for a browser frame.Privacy-first telemetry without user IDshttps://csarko.sh/research/telemetry-without-identifying-anyone2026-10-15T00:00:00Z2026-10-18T00:00:00ZA privacy-first telemetry design for a desktop IDE: counters and coarse dimensions, no IDs, opt-in consent, crash reports, and legal baselines.Visits without cookies, and the path they tookhttps://csarko.sh/research/visits-without-cookies2026-10-15T00:00:00Z2026-10-15T00:00:00ZWhat a cookieless counter can know, what more a page says without fingerprinting, where the journey hides, and a 3 KB client with a Rust collector.Bring the agents back after a reboothttps://csarko.sh/research/bring-the-agents-back-after-a-reboot2026-10-14T00:00:00Z2026-10-14T00:00:00ZAfter a restart nothing survives, but the layout, scrollback and each agent's conversation can come back on their own; how Claude Code and Codex differ.Update the IDE, keep the shellshttps://csarko.sh/research/update-the-ide-keep-the-shells2026-10-14T00:00:00Z2026-10-14T00:00:00ZWhy an IDE update kills the shells and Claude Code agents inside it, which tools keep them, what execve preserves, and how a daemon can swap itself in place.A zero-cost analytics dashboard without cookieshttps://csarko.sh/research/a-zero-cost-analytics-dashboard-without-cookies2026-10-13T00:00:00Z2026-10-13T00:00:00ZWhether a personal site is gaining traction, with no cookies and no monthly bill: the metrics, free sources, one API per app, a daily ledger, and the gotchas.Dark mode and headaches: check your eyes firsthttps://csarko.sh/research/check-your-eyes-before-your-theme2026-10-13T00:00:00Z2026-10-18T00:00:00ZWhat the evidence says about dark mode, contrast, line spacing, font size, blue light, flicker, breaks and the eye exam for a developer's screen headaches.Soft shade, bark and moss for browser forestshttps://csarko.sh/research/soft-shade-bark-and-moss-for-browser-forests2026-10-13T00:00:00Z2026-10-13T00:00:00ZHow AAA games soften and lighten forest shade, texture and shade bark so it stops looking shiny, and grow moss on trunks, sized for a browser frame.Rock on steep terrain: shape it, cover it, or skin ithttps://csarko.sh/research/rock-on-steep-terrain-shape-it-cover-it-or-skin-it2026-10-12T00:00:00Z2026-10-12T00:00:00ZThree ways to put rock on a height field's steep faces, measured in a browser game: paint and cliff kits, relief in the height field, or a finer displaced skin.A full far ground without drawing ithttps://csarko.sh/research/a-full-far-ground-without-drawing-it2026-10-09T00:00:00Z2026-10-09T00:00:00ZCheap GPU tricks that make a game's far ground read as full of grass and cover without drawing blades there: fitted colour, sun-shaded clumps, sparse cards.Rock formations of the Olympic Peninsula, and how games build themhttps://csarko.sh/research/rock-formations-of-the-olympic-peninsula2026-10-09T00:00:00Z2026-10-09T00:00:00ZHow the Olympic Peninsula's crags, talus, cirques and sea stacks formed and what they look like, and how AAA games build rock formations that convince.Olympic Peninsula lakes for game worldshttps://csarko.sh/research/olympic-lakes-for-game-worlds2026-10-08T00:00:00Z2026-10-08T00:00:00ZHow the lakes of Washington's Olympic Peninsula formed, their measured shapes and perched cirque basins, and numeric rules for generating them in a game world.Volumetric ground fog without the sprite wallhttps://csarko.sh/research/ground-fog-without-the-wall2026-10-07T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZHow AAA engines draw ground fog as a frustum-aligned volume instead of sprites, what it costs, where it ghosts, and which of it a browser game can run.How Alan Wake introduces its darknesshttps://csarko.sh/research/how-alan-wake-introduces-its-darkness2026-10-06T00:00:00Z2026-10-06T00:00:00ZHow Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2 introduce their evil, voice it in whispers and haunt the player with shadows, and what a game can borrow from each.Building dread toward a late reveal in horror gameshttps://csarko.sh/research/building-dread-toward-a-late-reveal2026-10-05T00:00:00Z2026-10-05T00:00:00ZHow horror games make a late monster reveal feel earned, with traces, sound and pacing, and what to do with a mechanic that punishes looking at the monster.Olympic Peninsula vegetation for game worldshttps://csarko.sh/research/olympic-vegetation-for-games2026-10-04T00:00:00Z2026-10-04T00:00:00ZWhat grows where on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, from drift logs to heather, and how to turn it into placement rules and models for a game world.Photorealistic rain for browser gameshttps://csarko.sh/research/photorealistic-rain-for-browser-games2026-09-30T00:00:00Z2026-09-30T00:00:00ZA survey of how AAA games render rain, from streaks to wet ground, splashes, canopy drip and lens drops, and how to build it on a browser frame budget.Opening a game like a film: sixty seconds of drive, radio and dreadhttps://csarko.sh/research/opening-a-game-like-a-film2026-09-29T00:00:00Z2026-09-29T00:00:00ZHow films open on a drive, a call and a wrong note; what makes sixty rendered seconds read as cinema; and what a game must load behind its first minute.Photorealistic water rendering: lakes and oceanshttps://csarko.sh/research/photorealistic-water-rendering2026-09-29T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZWater reads as real through light more than waves: a mirror past 20 m, FFT seas at 0.1 to 2 ms, baked breakers, and what WebGPU and WebGL2 can afford.Synthetic voices for a radio callhttps://csarko.sh/research/synthetic-voices-for-a-radio-call2026-09-29T00:00:00Z2026-09-29T00:00:00ZText-to-speech for a game's radio call in 2026: the models that take direction, what gives them away, the radio chain, licences, cost, cloning your own voice.WebGPU vs WebGL2: what changes and what does nothttps://csarko.sh/research/webgpu-vs-webgl22026-09-27T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZWebGPU vs WebGL2, measured in a Babylon.js game: 1.3 to 1.5 ms faster per frame at native resolution, 9.9 ms at 4x the pixels, for 2.7 MB of shader translators.Grass fullness without thinning the fieldhttps://csarko.sh/research/grass-fullness-without-thinning2026-09-26T00:00:00Z2026-09-26T00:00:00ZWhy near grass reads bare from a first-person eye, what fixing it cost in a Babylon.js game, and the GPU techniques that win the frame back without thinning.Reverse engineering an AI horror shorthttps://csarko.sh/research/reverse-engineering-an-ai-horror-short2026-09-26T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZA viral AI horror short, taken apart from its pixels: five image-to-video clips on one character reference, slowed and grained in an editor; a $14.10 recipe.Why a voice profile didn't get Claude past Substack's AI checkhttps://csarko.sh/research/voice-profile-vs-pangram2026-09-24T00:00:00Z2026-09-24T00:00:00ZA Claude draft written to its author's voice profile scored 100% AI on Substack's Pangram check. Why, and the workflow that replaced it.Git LFS on a cloud bucket, not GitHub's storagehttps://csarko.sh/research/large-files-out-of-git2026-09-17T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZGit LFS is not tied to GitHub. How its endpoint is discovered, three ways to put a cloud bucket behind it, and when to skip LFS entirely.AI short films: consistent characters and setshttps://csarko.sh/research/ai-short-film-generation2026-09-16T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00Z2026 AI video can make one convincing short, but no model locks an actor and a room across a series. Where each tool fails, and the 3D-first build that holds.Atmosphere and dread shaders for horror gameshttps://csarko.sh/research/atmosphere-and-dread-shaders2026-09-15T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZAtmospheric games stack height fog, a neutral tone map and grade, and a film finish on photoreal light; Babylon.js does nearly all of it at 60 fps.Grass, wind and trails in a browser meadowhttps://csarko.sh/research/grass-and-trail-realism2026-09-15T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZFlat game grass is a grounding failure, not a triangle count: ground tint, clumping, one wind field and a banded trail fix it in Babylon.js at 60 Hz.Stylized shader looks: how games build a visual identityhttps://csarko.sh/research/stylized-shader-looks2026-09-14T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZMemorable game looks come from one or two strong shader rules applied everywhere: ink outlines, cel bands, dithering, gradient fog or VHS.No visible pop-in: dissolving a streamed foresthttps://csarko.sh/research/no-visible-pop-in2026-09-01T00:00:00Z2026-10-10T00:00:00ZKeeping a streamed browser forest from visibly spawning: pixel-size arithmetic, screen-space dissolve bands, and what discard costs in opaque shaders.Why props float on procedural terrainhttps://csarko.sh/research/floating-props-on-procedural-terrain2026-08-29T00:00:00Z2026-10-10T00:00:00ZWhy trees float on slopes and distant ridges in a procedural world, measured, and the shader and clipmap fixes that grounded them in Babylon.js.Pointer lock fails after Esc: an 8-byte fixhttps://csarko.sh/research/pointer-lock-escape-cooldown2026-08-25T00:00:00Z2026-10-18T00:00:00ZChromium refuses pointer lock for 1.25 s after Esc. What failed in the browser, and how an 8-byte patch to prebuilt Electron removed the cooldown.Babylon.js material plugins: hooks and trapshttps://csarko.sh/research/babylon-material-plugin-traps2026-08-17T00:00:00Z2026-10-23T00:00:00ZBabylon.js 9.18 splices plugin GLSL in after #include expansion, before #if: what each PBR hook sees, and the silent preprocessor, comment and bake traps.An endless world as a pure functionhttps://csarko.sh/research/procedural-world-as-a-pure-function2026-07-29T00:00:00Z2026-10-10T00:00:00ZUnbounded mountains, a warped coastline, a highway and cliff bands built as pure C² functions with exact derivatives, so every peer builds one world.Hosting WebRTC signaling on Cloud Runhttps://csarko.sh/research/webrtc-signaling-on-cloud-run2026-07-29T00:00:00Z2026-10-10T00:00:00ZHosting a WebRTC signaling server on Google Cloud Run for a browser co-op game, the platform behaviours that broke it, and what a running match survives.Host-authoritative co-op netcode in the browserhttps://csarko.sh/research/browser-coop-netcode2026-07-25T00:00:00Z2026-07-25T00:00:00ZHow Day Hike's browser co-op stays responsive: a 60 Hz fixed step, redundant inputs, quantized snapshots, prediction, and host-created lobbies.