🧬 Viral Infection Cycle in 3D — Target Validation

This 3D companion runs the exact same infection model as the 2D viral infection cycle simulator — a virion drifts toward the cell, attaches to a membrane receptor (or bounces off if the Entry Inhibitor is deployed), uncoats and travels to the nucleus, replicates its genome at the same fixed rate, and buds back off the membrane as a new intact virion once assembled. The only difference is that the cell is now a real, orbitable 3D sphere: receptors are physical stalks placed evenly across its surface, ribosomes are instanced spheres that visibly shrink when the Protease Inhibitor blocks assembly, and each virion switches between a full spiked-capsid mesh and a bare RNA-strand line depending on its stage — exactly as the 2D canvas swapped between drawing a hexagon-with-spikes and a wiggly line.

Toggling the three therapeutics still produces the identical downstream effects: blocking entry keeps virions bouncing off the membrane and never reaching the nucleus; blocking the polymerase traps replicating virions until their progress counter degrades them past the threshold and they are removed; blocking assembly stalls virions near the membrane instead of letting them bud. Cell stress still accumulates +5 per successful replication and +2 per successful budding event and decays slowly over time, and viral titre still only increments when a virion completes a full budding cycle — the same numbers the 2D readout reports, now driving a live 3D scene you can rotate and zoom around.