Canvas View

Canvas view is the player's third view mode (alongside panel and page view): all placed panels of a chapter share one continuous world-space plane, and a camera glides between them along the story graph. It activates automatically when the chapter has a canvas layout and an output preset enables canvasView; otherwise the player falls back to panel view.

The camera

The camera is a persistent position + zoom over the plane, managed by CanvasCameraService:

• Arrivals frame the target panel (or its enterFraming sub-rect) using the chapter's fitMode.
• Camera moves between panels follow the traversed edge's cameraMove — direct, arc, or authored waypoints paths with hold, pull-back, or dive zoom profiles. Zoom interpolates logarithmically so scaling feels perceptually linear.
• Motion safety: travel speed is capped (a player constant, not authorable) — durations too short for the distance are stretched.
• Interrupts: reader input during a glide cancels it — the reader owns the camera, like a map app. Navigation state is already final; only the animation stops.
• Back-navigation retraces the original edge's path with waypoints reversed.

Input model

With freeRoam: "between-moves" (the default) panning is available while the camera is idle; "always" also allows grabbing the camera mid-glide.

Only the current panel's hotspots are interactive: a press that starts on one of them is left to the hotspot instead of becoming a pan or a panel tap, and its action and hotspot_click tracking run exactly as in panel view. Hotspots on the other visible panels are drawn but inert.

Reveal modes

• always — rendered whenever on screen.
• on-approach — revealed once the camera nears it, then stays revealed.
• on-visit — a dark veil replaces the artwork until the trail reaches the panel, so an overview zoom never spoils secret branches or gated content.

Whatever its reveal mode, a panel the paywall locks for the reader (or an x-locked stub) renders as the locked placeholder from the player release after 1.2.0, and turns into its artwork in place once the lock lifts. In 1.2.0, a revealed gated panel showed its content.

Performance

The plane is unbounded, but the working set is not:

• DOM virtualization — only panels intersecting the camera rect (inflated by one viewport in every direction) are mounted, nearest first, capped at 12 panels regardless of chapter size. The current panel is always mounted.
• Variant-by-zoom — each mounted panel selects the smallest image variant that covers its actual display width (placement width × zoom × devicePixelRatio, quantized to 256 px steps). Overview zoom mounts thumbnails; close-ups load the full-resolution encode. Re-resolution happens when the camera settles — never per frame — and is upgrade-only while a panel stays mounted, so loaded art never flickers back to a thumbnail.
• Neighbor preloading — on camera settle the player warms the current panel's out-edge targets (high priority) and the nearest placements (medium), each at the variant it would render at, honoring settings.preload (strategy, panelsAhead, maxConcurrent) plus network-awareness (connection type, data-saver).
• Compositing — the whole plane moves with a single transform; non-current panels use CSS containment.

Accessibility & reduced motion

• Under reduced motion — the OS prefers-reduced-motion setting, the reader's Settings switch, or the shell's reducedMotion input — the camera never glides: reframes are instant, softened by a short cross-fade; an authored reducedMotionFallback transition takes precedence.
• Keyboard-only traversal is complete (arrows, O, +/-).
• Non-current panels carry aria-hidden and inert — virtualized and ambient panels never trap focus. Screen readers follow the graph linearization; the canvas is presentation only.

Embedding API

Hosts embedding PlayerShellComponent get:

<pw-player-shell
  [manifest]="manifest"
  [viewModeOverride]="'auto'"
  (cameraChange)="onCamera($event)">
</pw-player-shell>

The toolbar's view toggle cycles panel → page → canvas for chapters where each mode is available.