Budget the jump-link layer in pixels of line, nearest the view's centre first

With the drawn set following the view, the layer at 8 pc cost the integrated Radeon 503 ms a frame
at 30 pc from the Sun. Measured, the cost follows the length of line on screen (about 10 ms per
million pixels near the Sun), not the number of links: 100 000 links were 12 ms at the opening
view, 25 000 were 61 ms at 30 pc. So the budget is a length: a million pixels, turned into parsecs
at the depth the view is centred on, spent on the links nearest that centre by their nearer end.
Orbiting with links at 8 pc on the iGPU: 12-18 ms p50 at every pose measured, no long tasks.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016jxMkwA2rbicdGxHosecYi

src/app/shared/astro/jump-links.spec.ts

@@ -191,6 +191,27 @@ describe('jumpLinkSegments', () => {
     expect(jumpLinkSegments(chain(4), 0)).toHaveLength(0);
   });
 
+  it('keeps the links nearest the centre first, for as much length as the budget holds', () => {
+    // A parsec apart from 0 to 20, the centre at 10.3. By nearer end: 9-10 and 10-11 (0.3 away),
+    // then 11-12 (0.7), then 8-9 (1.3). Three parsecs of them fit in 3.5; a fourth would not.
+    const budget = { centre: { x: 10.3, y: 0, z: 0 }, lengthPc: 3.5 };
+
+    const segments = jumpLinkSegments(chain(21), 1.5, budget);
+
+    expect(linksDrawn(segments, chainPoints(21)).sort()).toEqual(['10-11', '11-12', '9-10']);
+    expect(segments.buffer.byteLength).toBe(segments.byteLength);
+  });
+
+  it('counts the budget in parsecs of link, not in links', () => {
+    // Stars at 0, 1 and 3: a 2 pc link nearest the centre, then a 1 pc one. Two and a half parsecs
+    // hold the first and not both, though two links would fit a count of two and a half.
+    const points: StarPoint[] = [{ id: 0, x: 0, y: 0, z: 0 }, { id: 1, x: 1, y: 0, z: 0 }, { id: 2, x: 3, y: 0, z: 0 }];
+
+    const segments = jumpLinkSegments(index(points), 2.5, { centre: { x: 3, y: 0, z: 0 }, lengthPc: 2.5 });
+
+    expect(linksDrawn(segments, points)).toEqual(['1-2']);
+  });
+
   it('grows past its first buffer without losing a link', () => {
     // 5 000 stars a tenth of a parsec apart, ten neighbours each way in range: some 50 000 links, far past
     // the 4 096 the buffer starts with, so it has to grow several times.

src/app/shared/astro/jump-links.ts

@@ -213,16 +213,32 @@ export function minimumRangeBetween(index: StarNeighbourhood, fromId: number, to
   return reachable;
 }
 
+/** How much of a graph to keep: the links nearest a point, up to a total length. */
+export interface LinkBudget {
+  /** Links are kept in order of how near their nearer end is to this point. */
+  readonly centre: { readonly x: number; readonly y: number; readonly z: number };
+  /** The most the kept links may add up to, end to end, in parsecs. */
+  readonly lengthPc: number;
+}
+
+/**
+ * Keys pack a link's nearer-end distance, in thousandths of a parsec, above its index, so one
+ * numeric sort of plain doubles orders the links nearest first: room for four million links and
+ * two thousand kiloparsecs, inside a double's exact integers.
+ */
+const LINK_INDEX_SPAN = 2 ** 22;
+
 /**
  * Every link within `rangePc` between two of the stars `index` holds, each pair once, as vertex
- * pairs ready to draw: six floats a link, one end then the other.
+ * pairs ready to draw: six floats a link, one end then the other. With a `budget`, only the links
+ * nearest its centre, as many as fit its length.
  *
  * For drawing the graph, which is the only thing that wants all of it: routing asks for a star's
  * neighbours as it reaches that star and never builds this. Written straight into floats rather
  * than collected as link objects first, since at 8 pc the drawn stars alone have hundreds of
  * thousands of links, and the whole catalogue 3.7 million.
  */
-export function jumpLinkSegments(index: StarNeighbourhood, rangePc: number): Float32Array {
+export function jumpLinkSegments(index: StarNeighbourhood, rangePc: number, budget?: LinkBudget): Float32Array {
   let vertices = new Float32Array(6 * 4096);
   let length = 0;
   index.forEachPairWithin(rangePc, (a, b) => {
@@ -238,7 +254,37 @@ export function jumpLinkSegments(index: StarNeighbourhood, rangePc: number): Flo
     vertices[length++] = b.y;
     vertices[length++] = b.z;
   });
-  // Exact length rather than a view on the grown buffer: the answer is transferred whole, and a
-  // view would carry up to as much again in unused capacity with it.
-  return vertices.slice(0, length);
+  if (!budget) {
+    // Exact length rather than a view on the grown buffer: the answer is transferred whole, and a
+    // view would carry up to as much again in unused capacity with it.
+    return vertices.slice(0, length);
+  }
+
+  const { centre } = budget;
+  const count = length / 6;
+  const keys = new Float64Array(count);
+  for (let link = 0; link < count; link++) {
+    const at = link * 6;
+    const nearer = Math.min(
+      Math.hypot(vertices[at] - centre.x, vertices[at + 1] - centre.y, vertices[at + 2] - centre.z),
+      Math.hypot(vertices[at + 3] - centre.x, vertices[at + 4] - centre.y, vertices[at + 5] - centre.z)
+    );
+    keys[link] = Math.floor(nearer * 1000) * LINK_INDEX_SPAN + link;
+  }
+  keys.sort();
+
+  const kept = new Float32Array(length);
+  let keptLength = 0;
+  let totalPc = 0;
+  for (const key of keys) {
+    const at = (key % LINK_INDEX_SPAN) * 6;
+    const linkPc = Math.hypot(vertices[at + 3] - vertices[at], vertices[at + 4] - vertices[at + 1], vertices[at + 5] - vertices[at + 2]);
+    if (totalPc + linkPc > budget.lengthPc) {
+      break;
+    }
+    totalPc += linkPc;
+    kept.set(vertices.subarray(at, at + 6), keptLength);
+    keptLength += 6;
+  }
+  return kept.slice(0, keptLength);
 }

src/app/shared/astro/routing.ts

@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
  * answers them in place where one does not.
  */
 
-import { jumpLinkSegments, minimumRangeBetween, Route, routeBetween } from './jump-links';
+import { jumpLinkSegments, LinkBudget, minimumRangeBetween, Route, routeBetween } from './jump-links';
 import { StarNeighbourhood } from './star-neighbourhood';
 
 /** The catalogue, sent once: ids, and positions packed three to a star in the same order. */
@@ -19,8 +19,11 @@ export interface RoutingCatalogue {
 
 export type RoutingRequest =
   | { readonly kind: 'route'; readonly requestId: number; readonly fromId: number; readonly toId: number; readonly rangePc: number; readonly ceilingPc: number }
-  /** `drawn` is the stars the map is drawing, as positions in the catalogue that was sent: only they are linked. */
-  | { readonly kind: 'links'; readonly requestId: number; readonly rangePc: number; readonly drawn: Uint32Array };
+  /**
+   * `drawn` is the stars the map is drawing, as positions in the catalogue that was sent: only they
+   * are linked. `budget`, where given, keeps only the links nearest the view that fit its length.
+   */
+  | { readonly kind: 'links'; readonly requestId: number; readonly rangePc: number; readonly drawn: Uint32Array; readonly budget?: LinkBudget };
 
 export type RoutingResponse =
   | { readonly kind: 'route'; readonly requestId: number; readonly route: Route | null; readonly neededRangePc: number | null }
@@ -42,7 +45,7 @@ export function answerRouting(index: StarNeighbourhood, request: RoutingRequest)
     // An index of its own over the drawn stars, in cells as wide as the range, so each cell is
     // paired with its immediate neighbours only: 14 cells a cell at 8 pc rather than 63.
     const drawn = new StarNeighbourhood(Array.from(request.drawn, (at) => index.pointAt(at)), request.rangePc);
-    return { kind: 'links', requestId: request.requestId, segments: jumpLinkSegments(drawn, request.rangePc) };
+    return { kind: 'links', requestId: request.requestId, segments: jumpLinkSegments(drawn, request.rangePc, request.budget) };
   }
   const route = routeBetween(index, request.fromId, request.toId, request.rangePc);
   return {