Thrayce Lanley

This has probably been covered before, but 'SEARCH' isn't being a help. Does anyone know if there's a way to view SL in black and white, to the effect of taking snaps without having to photoshop afterwards? Thanks, and cheers!

Just so I'm clear, let me see if I understand: You're doing a dissertation, and can't even format a proper paragraph? ETA: Please understand, I'm not trying to be rude or anything like that. Your Q just strikes me as a little...off-the-wall- for someone doing thier dissertation.

I buy L$ from Gamerzfix regularly, and I've never had any problem with delivery. That being said, as far as how long delivery takes, it's usually a few days' wait after payment confirmation. Sometimes I've waited a day, other times it took three or four days before I recieved my L$. Cheers!

"SL uses index files to know what file(s) it has already cached." This is what I figured, just wasn't sure if all of the necessary files for 'transplanting' an existing cache were in the 'Cache' folder. From what you've said here, I assume that TEXTURE.CACHE and TEXTURE.ENTRIES are the checksum files for an existing cache. Thanx for the enlightenment. I learned a bit here.

Well, I suppose that settles it then. It's not so much a matter of the cache being 'precious' to me or anything. My current setup has things tweaked for maximum R/W performance to/from the SL cache, such as the dedicated-cache partition being the first partition on a second drive (closest to the heads), on a second SATA channel (simultaneous R/W), and is defragged every day. When the question was put to me, it occurred to me that with all the iterations of Niran's lately (sometimes two per week), it may save me a little bandwidth by recycling the cache. Believe me, I know it's overkill; just the way I manage my system. I suppose I spent too long tweaking other people's systems and unwittingly became **bleep** about my own...lol. Anyhow, thanx for the answers. Happy SL'ing!

Fair enough; I suspected as much. However, there's still another angle to this question and it has more to do with the way the viewer checks the cache to see whether the texture in question is already on the local computer or needs to be downloaded. That is, does the viewer check all of the files in the '\cache' folder for the texture in question, or is there a list of already-downloaded textures that is kept on the local system, and updated on the fly? If there were a 'checsum' file, I can only imagine that it would also be necessary. Thanx.

Alright, I've been asked this question twice in the last week, and as much as I've looked, I can't figure it out, so for better or worse, here goes. Is the Texture Cache portable from one installation to the next? For example, I personally have a 15GB partition on my 2nd hard drive which is dedicated to the SL cache. After a while, it gets as high as 5GB. Now, suppose I make a backup of that cache (the whole partition with the file-structure intact), and then I reinstall the viewer. I point the setup to the partition (which of course clears it), and re-plant the 5GB of cache from the backup into the partition. Will the reinstalled viewer use the cache, or will it simply re-download the necessary textures, overwriting what's there? I can go into more detail if this didn't make much sense. Thanx.

Whoa there... First of all, as I read your response I realized that I made it sound differently than I meant to say. For that, I apologize; no malice intended. That being said, I was not implying that everyone else was doing something wrong, neither did I mean to imply that I'm "one of the miraculous few..." In another thread along similar lines, I went into a little detail about the effect of Background-Processes, and this was more the point I was getting at. Understand, I'm not shooting in the dark here. I'm drawing off of fourteen years experience making a living upgrading, building, and (pertinently for this thread and others like it) tweaking systems for private businesses. More often than nought, the end-user has umpteen-thousand things going on in the background, and this has a tendency (major understatement) to impinge on the performance of, among other things games, apps, and of course Second Life. Niran's Viewer running 'miraculously' on my GPU on the ULTRA setting with everything enabled is not the result of a standalone-factor, nor the result of up-to-date hardware, but rather the combination of proper drivers for ALL hardware (not necessarily the latest up-to-date, in Nvidia's case), making sure that ALL unnecessary services are STOPPED, having NOTHING running in the background, my drives constantly defragged (I use a separate drive for the cache--on another SATA channel the readtimes improve), etc... Now, I of course realize that not everyone is a certified tech, and neither should anyone have to be to enjoy SL. That being said, not every user knows how to shut-down EVERYTHING in the background or to set thier system up for maximum gaming performance without spending 1K on new hardware. As I've said in other threads, there is always the case of Joe User with his WalMart e-machine, who wants to run SL with all the eyecandy while he has WoW, Messenger, Roxio, Word, and VLC all working hard at the same time; this is Joe's prerogative. If he wants to run his system this way, he's welcome to do so. What bothers me is when Joe decides that instead of shutting-down some background stuff, he'd rather BLAME LL and thier coders for the viewer being so laggy and slow. That was more my point, rather than trying to sound snotty or bashing anyone. Sorry for any misunderstanding; I was merely trying to contribute to the thread.

"I'd be reluctant to recommend the GTS250 right now. That is what I have and my performance with V3 code is horrendous. I have tried every optimization I have read about, changing settings for VBO, HTTP, Anti-aliasing, etc with virtually no effect." Hmmm...may be time to re-evaluate your OS setup. I've been running the Zotac GTS250 ECO 1GB for a year now, and running Niran's viewer on ULTRA; shadows, 2x AA, DoF, SSAO, and NO avatar imposters. This is full-time settings. I'm getting 18-25FPS on the average, whether in a SafeHub or in an RP sim. I've said this before, I read these "Viewer 3 slows my comp to a crawl..." threads written by people who have twice to three-times better hardware than I'm using, and I just don't understand it. Oh well... On a sidenote, I'll add that for it's age, and iteration of GPU, Nvidia really pulled-off a miracle with the GTS 250. The card just WORKS. With everything, and quite well.

"All 2/3 viewers above 2.7.4 perform terribly bad no matter what is what i understand inworld. Some seem to be lucky." "At this moment V2/3 viewers perform much worse than V1 iterations. Only top machines seem to be able to have a reasonable performance is what i see and hear confirmed inworld." "...since a major part in SL is still on an older viewer because 2/3 based viewers kills their performance." ???? Did you even read the above posts???

CPU: Intel E5300 2.6GHz Dual-Core RAM: 4GB DDR2 667 HDD: 320GB WD 7200RPM GRAPHICS: Zotac Nvidia GTS-250 Eco 1GB OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (streamlined, no unnecessary services, nothing running in background when in SL) CONNECTION: High-Speed Cable (not sure about speed, but no waiting usually, so no complaints) VIEWER: Niran's Viewer 5b (latest iteration) running full-time in ULTRA. Shadows, SSAO, 2xAA, DoF. FPS: 18-25 on a good day in a sparsely-populated sim. 12-18 in a populated SafeHub. Cheers!

There's a psychology to this, and it's common to everyone. Let me put an analogy: "Joe has been driving the same car for ten years. After all that time, the panels are rusted, the windshield wipers are long broken, the engine makes horrible black smoke, the mileage is pathetic, the muffler is dragging on the ground, the interior smells like a kennel, the radio is long since inoperable, and the air-conditioning is provided via a hole in the floor. Irregardless of the heap he is driving, Joe loves his old-faithful car (ol' Betsy) that (barely) gets him from A to B. Finally, after those ten years, Joe's friends convince him to buy a new car. He purchases a 2011-whatever. The body panels are sleek and shiny, the mileage is amazing, it has that new-car smell, the engine is all but silent, the stereo is state-of-the-art, and it comes with all the neat features (GPS, security, MP3 player, DVD player, automatic seatbelts, etc...). Yet, with all this, as Joe gets in and turns the key...the first thing he does is start to whine and complain that "it's just not the same as ol' Betsy" and promptly begins to point out everything thats "wrong" with the new car." Folks, this is exactly what we saw when V2 appeared, it's what we're seeing now with V3, and we'll continue to see it with V4, V5, V6...

Thanx for the correction, Leliel. As I said, I had read that post a while back, referred there by the Kirsten forum, and I had a feeling that I had the numbers reversed. :matte-motes-confused: Cheers!

"But if LL wants a virtual world where just a few can enjoy a more technically beautiful world, then they have most definitely been going in the right direction for the past two years." Again, define "just a few". I can't remember where I saw it, but not so long ago LL posted their classification list, which classified end-user hardware according to the degree which it could run SL on a scale from 0 to 3. According to the report that was attached, it was estimated that 65% of SL users were running thier viewers on class-3 hardware; that means that approximately 65% of users have hardware that is just barely capable of running well enough to stand in-place and chat. (a slight exaggeration, but the point is made). This leaves 35% of users with systems capable of running the viewer with the eyecandy to some degree. Please tell me the end-users of SL aren't falling into the haves/havenots thing like the 1%/99% thing. As Rolig put it, there are far too many users blaming LL for bad coding, when it's the system on the user's end where the problem resides. Don't get me wrong here; the real-world economy sucks right now, and a new system/upgrade is not within the reach of everyone. But honestly, should LL (as well as TPV devs) dumb-down the viewer code, removing SSE-extensions so that Joe User with the ten-year-old Dell can at least be on an even playing field? ETA: I don't have a citation for the LL system of classification that I mentioned above, and I think I may have the order mixed-up. Could anyone point me to this? Cheers!

We've had Derendering in Kirsten's Viewer and Niran's for as long as I can remember.