Perma-cache Welcome Area, good idea?

I've wondered if we would see any improvement to the WA performance if the area could be stored in a special cache (downloaded with the client.) The base WA doesn't change very often at all, so it seems possible. But, I'm not sure if ther'd be a performance gain. It seems like the area is slow almost all the time - possiblly due to the many people TP'ing in, and the server sending data out to those folks. I'm not exactly sure how the SL cache works and how it knows whether or not to d/l new prim info. So maybe someone can tell me if this would be a good or bad idea.

Not a good idea for those of us that no longer visit the WA.

Opt-in would be a better idea for something like this.

At some point someone suggested that we have the ability to choose parcels that we'd like to keep in cache at all times. I think that would be great. I rarely go to the WA so I wouldn't want to waste disk space on it.

Yes, the lack of better caching strategies is something which deeply puzzles me about SL.

Also, why is my cache limited to 1000mb? I have an 80G hard drive. I could at least put 10Gb towards SL no problem. I have 50GB doing absolutely nothing.

Just so it's common knowledge, the reason the SL download is so big is because most of the Orientation Island textures are in the static cache.

Honestly we don't need to make the download any larger. If anything we need the static cache in multiple little files so we can delete them as we don't need them. (i can't go back to the Orientation Island so why the heck do i need them still?)

Really?

What percentage?

Can't they have a release for new users versus old users who are just getting the upgrade / re-installing?

Good point. I'd still like the ability to make certain locations more permanent in cache, like my properties where I spend most of my time.

Perhaps sometime in the future, there could be an option to toggle a parcel's current cache between static and dynamic. In theory, it seems like a good way to cut bandwidth for static builds that rarely change, such as the Welcome Area or the "Towers of Prims."

But, I'm still curious as to how much benefit this would bring, speed-wise. How does the client know to use the cache versus downloading new data? I assume it compares timestamps, but I could be wrong.

The cache i talk about only hold animations, textures and sounds.

Okay thanks, that's what I wondered about. I didn't know if it also held prim-data or not. My suggestion seems much less useful now.

No, the cache holds object data as well. Log in, and look around. Most of the objects are already rezzed. Then, delete your cache and try it again. See the difference?

But I agree, we don't need the download to be any bigger. We're already going to have a Firefox ( ahem, "powered by Mozilla" ) that's going to add quite a bit to the download.

I agree! I have over 1.5 Tb of disk space to play in... Mwahahah!

Why are we limited to 1 Gb and why can we NOT put the cache anywhere we want?

I HATE having it stuck on my root partition (both fragmentation AND an extra Gb+ of junk I REALLY don't want to waste resources making regular backups of...).

I'm getting ready to reinstall XP so I'll make an extra partition just for SL cache somewhere and mount it to the correct subdirectory, but that seems like overkill to fix something that should really be an option at installation time.

-Racer P.

Wow, people are sure coming up with some elaborate solutions!

What about having a "first login" type of thing, where when SL installs, the WA is cached, but after the first session (login+logout), that portion of the cache is deleted?

Just a thought...

I'd like to see a perma cache along the lines of the client has been given a key list of textures to place in this cache, this list can be updated in the background with keys added or removed, but basically on download of the client it wouldnt contain any actual textures/sounds, only on actually encountering these textures/sounds would it be added to this permacache

Things i would like to see in this would be like the collision textures and any other avatar related textures, along with any menu sounds. I would like to see the ground textures stored here as well as any textures used on linden trees and plants

Join a volunteer group, then you can go back. You could teach the n00bs how to torture prims.

I hadn't consciously noticed that... but you're right.

So why do I have to wait for everything to rez every time I teleport, even when I'm teleporting between sims I've visited recently? Shouldn't the stuff still be there in the cache from when I was in that area earlier?

Even if they have problems with the cache that keep it from being bigger than 1GB, they could at least let you have a "per sim" cache, so you could (say) cache 30 sims worth of objects. This would be a cache based on the sim you were in rather than the on ethe object was in, and only change when you went a certain distance from the sim border, so you wouldn't have to check multiple sims when you looked across a border or moved around it (think about what that would do to the Welcome Area).

potential simple solution :
original install comes with the WA in cache.

then cache works as normal.