"Preload Sound" in a Gesture. :)

Sometimes folks like me have gestures that combine an animation and a sound, like a wave and a "Hi there!" ... but the problem is that very often, you hit the gesture and you immediately wave, but the 'Hi there!' doesn't happen until three seconds later.

As you currently CAN preload sound content in scripts, why can't we preload a sound in a gesture, which will 'pause' the gesture at the preload step until the content is loaded, and then proceed? So that the wave and sound are ready to go when the time comes for them to trigger?

Vote for Proposition 1598 - Preload Sound in Gestures!

In case you aren't aware, Psyra, the llPreloadSound function has no event handler (nor could it) to let the script know *when* the sound has finished preloading.

This is because assets are streamed to users at different rates and at different times based on their individual interest lists. For example, if you preload a 10 second sound clip I may have it cached before you do because I wasn't also downloading a 1024x1024 texture that is in your field of view and not mine.

LL could add a "Preload Sound" option to the gesture's window but as with the script version, you still have to make the gesture "wait" the necessary seconds before triggering the sound again and playing the animation. Since there is no way to know exactly how long to wait, you could only make conservative guesses.

Gestures iirc are handled client-side already, since they're an asset (or collection of assets) rather than something the server cares about. So a preload sound/animation/all 'action' would be nice

It just means that clients will start the gesture (or parts of it) at slightly different times to each other, but at least the animations and sounds could then be kept in sync.

Stamped - would love too see this implemented one way or another.

llPreloadSound just tells the server to start streaming the sound to the client because it's going to be used soon. It doesn't restrict where that sound's going to be played from... once it's downloaded it'd downloaded.

There's no reason I can think of you can't preload the sound used in the gesture (from a HUD, say) using llPreloadSound.

Argent, if you are in a no-script zone you can't use a script attached to a HUD to preload gesture sounds. So being able to do so in the gesture interface is still useful.

I have another suggestion, instead of adding a new preload capability, why not simply allow us to set the volume level of sounds played as gestures? Not only would this allow us to fine tune our gestures, we could play the sound with a "null" volume level (silently), thus preloading it.

I recently updated some of my HUDs to work in no-script zones by attaching it to a control, but apparently that was broken in a recent update...

So now if I'm in a no-script zone I go somewhere else.

However, I'd love to have a way to preload stuff in general. Like, preloading textures before changing outfits, so people don't see me all fuzzy for two minutes. You can't just apply the textures to a high-alpha prim because (a) you usually don't own the clothes textures, and (b) the client has to bake them... that's the step you can't force ahead of time.