The Viewer Cache

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Since almost all the third-party viewers use Linden Lab code for most things. this seems an appropriate place to ask.

Is the Viewer Cache system doing as good a job as it could?

I've a suspicion that the cache management overhead is significant for the TPVs which allow a large cache. Even with a short draw distance, TPing into a region I visit almost every day. there is a burst of texture downloading and scenery staying grey for what feels like a long time.

In the time I have been in SL, there have been a lot of changes, and things such as mesh and pathfinding may have affected the significance of the caching choices made by the Viewer's system. The shift to HTTP is another factor that changes things. Does SSA even use the cache: I sometimes see my AV take a long time to rez on login.

Is it time to review the caching system, maybe with a larger Viewer cache in mind? Should more be done to cache mesh data? It may not be closely related, but why do attachments vanish without apparent reason?

 

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

Since almost all the third-party viewers use Linden Lab code for most things. this seems an appropriate place to ask.

Is the Viewer Cache system doing as good a job as it could?

I've a suspicion that the cache management overhead is significant for the TPVs which allow a large cache. Even with a short draw distance, TPing into a region I visit almost every day. there is a burst of texture downloading and scenery staying grey for what feels like a long time.

In the time I have been in SL, there have been a lot of changes, and things such as mesh and pathfinding may have affected the significance of the caching choices made by the Viewer's system. The shift to HTTP is another factor that changes things. Does SSA even use the cache: I sometimes see my AV take a long time to rez on login.

Is it time to review the caching system, maybe with a larger Viewer cache in mind? Should more be done to cache mesh data? It may not be closely related, but why do attachments vanish without apparent reason?

 

 

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If I didn't know you better I'd think you were being a strawbear to publicise the "Project Interesting" viewer project. The whole point of it is to change how things are cached and loaded.

[Nalates Urriah]

The cache is not working as well as it could. If you attend Linden User Group meetings and talk to Lindens, they will say as much.

The Interest List Project and its Interesting RC Viewer contain a number of changes to the caching system. Each year parts of the caching system are improved. It is far better than it once was. Once upon a time the fix for every problem a user had was to clear cache and restart the viewer. Now nearly every problem a user has can be aggrevated by clearing the cache.

The caching system used to depend on the operating system to find, date, delete, retrive,and generally work with cache files. A couple of years ago and indexed filing system was added to the viewer's caching system to the viewer could find, date, and retrive or decide to download much faster. Rather than scan through thousnds of files, the viewer only needs to lok it up in the index. Much faster.

Using HTTP rather than the previously used UDP for texture downloads means few files arrive corrupted. With UDP we NEEDED to clear cache to get rid of corrupt files that failed to download properly. With HTTP error correction that problem is mostly gone

Caching is a system service that most tasks in the SL system touch. For that reason, Lindens prefer to avoid working on it. It is nearly impossible to make small tweeks without affecting large portions of the system's behavior. To change it is to take on moving mountains.

Numberious other projects are fixing parts of the system; HTTP Project, Sunshine Project and inventory API's... 

[Crim Mip]

I'm currently using Second Life HTTP Viewer version 3.7.1.286567 and so far it beats anything else I've ever used. Items rez faster. Memory use doesn't just increase until the inevitable crash. It appears cached items actually get discarded after a bit of time to lessen the amount of space used. I've gone to crashing or having to restart maybe twice a session rather than twice an hour. I can keep the graphics level higher and get better frame rates. Yes I miss having a few of the added features of say Firestorm or Singularity, but not as much as I don't miss wondering if I'll squeak through a flight or sail without having to stop someplace to restart to avoid a crash. I highly recommend giving this one a try.