Preloading textures

Hi,

I have a few rather large textures that I would like to load in the background while visitors are busy getting started on my sim. These are mostly large signs that have to be pretty high resolution so they are readable. I know I could place them on a small surface, make them 90% transparent (so as to be nearly invisible). I have also been told that I could hollow out a box and place the textures on the inner surfaces.

Will this latter trick work if the inner surfaces are not visible to the avatar? That is, I hollow out the box (or make my initial sign hollow), do a path cut (or some other way to access the inner surfaces) place the textures on these inner surfaces, and reverse the path cut. Do the visible surfaces of this box need to be at all transparent?

Thanks,

Doug

I believe the trick will work, even at 100% transparency, or on the inner surfaces of of a hollow object.

but be aware that this will probably slow down the sim rez for people tping in (as they'll be loading extra textures that may not be in view normally with their settings).

I don't know how LL calculates which textures to load first, but display size, number or uses within draw distance, and transparency may all have some effect. focuse (what the mouse is hovvering over) definitely does.

It works. I use something similar on my vending machine - all the little solid black prim sides have my product pic textures on them. When someone hits a button, the picture appears immediately instead of making them wait.