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+---
+title: "Investigation: Viewport Culling & Camera Caching"
+status: rejected
+date: 2026-03-22
+---
+
+# Investigation: Viewport Culling & Camera Caching
+
+## Hypothesis
+
+During view-only camera transforms (pan/zoom), skip drawing layers whose bounds fall outside the visible viewport. Cache Camera2D derived values (view matrix, inverse, zoom, world rect) to avoid redundant per-frame math.
+
+## What Was Tried
+
+1. **Camera2D caching** — `warm_cache()` precomputes view matrix, inverse, zoom, and world rect once per mutation. Read accessors (`view_matrix()`, `rect()`, `get_zoom()`, `screen_to_canvas_point()`) return cached fields in O(1).
+
+2. **Viewport culling** — Before each `draw_layer` call, check if the layer's render bounds (from `GeometryCache`) intersect the camera's world rect. Skip layers that are entirely off-screen.
+
+## Results
+
+### Synthetic scenes (Criterion, CPU raster, 1920x1080)
+
+Sparse grids where most nodes are off-screen:
+
+| Metric | 100 nodes | 1K nodes | 10K nodes |
+| ------ | --------- | -------- | --------- |
+| Pan    | ~same     | **−46%** | **−85%**  |
+| Zoom   | ~same     | **−32%** | **−81%**  |
+
+### Real-world SVGs (headless, CPU raster, 1920x1080)
+
+Dense content where most nodes overlap the viewport:
+
+| Scene                            | Nodes | Pan Δ      | Zoom Δ     |
+| -------------------------------- | ----- | ---------- | ---------- |
+| Koppen-Geiger climate map (96MB) | 235K  | **+8.7%**  | **+13.3%** |
+| San Francisco Bay map (40MB)     | 85K   | **+11.0%** | −7.3%      |
+| Lorenz 3D attractor (20MB)       | 300K  | +3.5%      | ~same      |
+| Lyon fortification map (30MB)    | 34    | −2.0%      | −3.0%      |
+| Propane flame contours (30MB)    | 1.8K  | −6.5%      | −3.3%      |
+
+## Why It Failed on Real Content
+
+Linear viewport culling is **O(n) per frame** — every node's bounds are checked against the viewport. For dense scenes (maps, scientific visualizations), nearly all nodes pass the intersection test, so the check is pure overhead.
+
+The synthetic benchmarks were misleading: a sparse grid at 10K nodes has ~90% off-screen at any given viewport, so culling skips most work. Real documents are the opposite — content is concentrated in the viewport.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+- **Camera caching**: safe but negligible (~30ns/frame savings vs 200ms+ frame times)
+- **Linear viewport culling**: net negative on real content. Do not adopt without a spatial index.
+- **Actual bottleneck**: Skia path rasterization dominates frame time on large scenes (235K paths = 800ms). CPU-side culling cannot fix this.
+
+## What Would Actually Help
+
+Per items 6, 12, and 36 in `optimization.md`:
+
+- **Spatial index** (R-tree/quadtree, item 36) would make culling O(log n) instead of O(n)
+- **Tile-based raster cache** (item 6) would avoid re-rasterizing static content on camera change
+- **SkPicture caching** (item 5) with dirty-region invalidation would let Skia replay recorded ops instead of re-drawing paths
+
+The draw stage (Skia path rasterization) is where 95%+ of frame time goes on large scenes. Optimizations must target that.
diff --git a/docs/wg/feat-2d/optimization.md b/docs/wg/feat-2d/optimization.md
index c8511dadc1..ce47c2be61 100644
--- a/docs/wg/feat-2d/optimization.md
+++ b/docs/wg/feat-2d/optimization.md
@@ -379,6 +379,11 @@ Related:
       blur, and liquid glass.
     - Nodes whose entire effect-expanded bounds are outside the viewport
       are skipped.
+    - **Note:** Linear O(n) culling (without spatial index) was benchmarked
+      and causes 8–13% regression on dense real-world scenes (235K nodes)
+      because the per-node bounds check adds overhead when most nodes are
+      visible. The R-tree is required, not optional. See
+      `investigation-viewport-culling.md` for full data.
 
 11. **Minimize Canvas State Changes**
     - Reuse transforms and paints.