The aircraft's ground shadow is drawn with the Xenos CONSTANT_ALPHA blend factors, which dfd8b92a routed to D3D12's ALPHA_FACTOR family, an OPTIONAL feature that must be checked via OPTIONS13::AlphaBlendFactorSupported first. We never checked, so on a device reporting false the shadow's pipeline is rejected and, being indistinguishable from one still compiling, its draw is dropped from every frame in silence. Now the capability is queried, and where it is absent the pixel shader carries the blend constant's alpha in its alpha output so INV_SRC_ALPHA reproduces the same blend exactly.
ac6_widescreen = true (default false), renders missions at the window's aspect ratio (hor+) by patching the game's per-camera aspect data, so FOV, culling and every camera follow. Menus, hangar, briefing and FMV revert to 16:9 and letterbox. The HUD is pre-squeezed at draw time to stay crisp, and marker art is squared without moving the aim points. ac6_widescreen_cinematics enables it in in-game cutscenes(default true, gated).
Dipshet