Newbie Q: Bring order in the loading of textures?

As a RL Interaction Designer I can tell you guy's that the choises off which texture size to use is very important. I'm still a noob in SL but all I see is the troubles of loading lot's and lot's of textures. Most of the times you see wall's or little details quicker then the supposed or importend objects. This is why I think noobs like me have some trouble finding there way in SL or even disrubt a lot of business. It's hard to know what to do in some buildings if the important texture's are loading but the wall's and floors are shown. In my opion is this the other way around.

My question: Is there a way to manage textures to be loaded in the order I want? So the designer of a building or a store (or whatever) can dilever importand information through textures as quick as avatars enter buildings and less importend textures later on when avatars stay and enjoy.

For example: I'm building a multi-levels building. My idea is to create some sort of reception hall where visiting avatars can see (fast loaded) the things to do on the other floors. When the reception is loaded fast the rest of the building is loaded later. Even the floors not visted will not load till the avatar teleport him/herself to it. Mabey even the textures will load in order off the best market stratagy. Populair things can be loaded first etc etc. (This building is a very open struture with a lot of glass wall's so you can normaly see a lot of textured objects.)


Do I tell something new or do I have to look deeper so I could learn that the question I asked is allready answerd and even used in SL? For me this texture loading is the one problem/challenge in SL.

There's no way to guarantee the order in which things will appear. SL is a dynamic, streaming environment, which is constantly changing. The rate at which all the various assets are delivered from server to client is dependent on many chaotic factors, well beyond our control as users.

That having been said, there are a few things you can do to ensure your visitors have the smoothest possible experience. For starters, make sure ALL your textures are as small as they can possibly be. See the sticky at the top of the forum on texture sizes for more on this.

The technique of texture sheeting also helps. If you want all the textures on a certain object (or group of objects) to appear at the same time, arrange them all on one large canvas, and then use the repeat & offset settings to dictate which section of the canvas displays on each surface. You still won't be able to control how quickly the texture appears, but at least the whole thing will appear at once.

It's also worth knowing that SL does give priority to loading whatever texture is directly under your mouse. So, if you want a certain wall or sign or whatever to load for you before other things, hover your mouse over it.

Sheeting,

I dont think I am familiar with this term, ok just to check you said "make sure all your textures are all on one canvass"?

Now what I think of is all on one canvass in terms of while it is still in PS or other paint program, is this how you mean it?

thanks,

You got it. The idea is to make one large texture that contains several smaller images. This makes it more efficient for the server and for the network as a whole since you only have to request one asset instead of several, and it adds at least a small level of control ober when things will appear.

For example, a cube has six sides. If you use six separate textures, they'll all appear at different times. It can be really annoying seeing five of them, and then having to wait for that last stubborn one to load. If they're all one image though, then they'll all appear at once. It might be quick, it might take a while, but at least it will be uniform.

Just put all the small images onto one large canvas in Photoshop, upload the whole thing, and then use the repeat & offset settings in SL to show just 1/6 of the image on each side of the cube.

Thanks for your anwser it's clear now. But you and I know there is now way to have controle over the mouse from visitors. So usability is a senseer problem/challenge in SL.

I think this issue will be a problem because SL is growing rapitly and the used technique by members is staying behind on users differences and demands. I see it like this: I'm not the all-know'n guy (probly far from it), but I know a few this on how internet and other computer applications work. People how know less will even have a bigger problem to get around in SL then I have. In a few situations is language a problem (My english also s*cks) but usability is a fact. I think growth will eventualy solve their own problem but I prefer to be infront of a problem then working behind it...

What is your anwser on usability in SL? If textures in order is not a option?

Is it so that textures out of the box (the standard one's) are loaded faster? Or only color objects with no paticular texture? I'm now creating a building wich will be almost without textures. Almost all the wall's going to be black and even the buisness logo will be created in SL as a object. To bad their is no way to create fonts to objects.

Thanks Chosen,

Il try this out, I have'nt done this much.

Sadly there's no sure fire way to determine load order.

To make your shop or whatever load as fast as possible use as few different textures as possible, once it's loaded one, it will paint all the objects with that texture, and quickly. But, if SL has a bad day and decides to load your shop wall and floor texture last, apart from putting the mouse over it, there's nothing to make it load faster.

Library textures aren't faster automatically that I've ever seen. The thing that slows down the drawing if almost always your graphics card sorting out the textures to draw, finding the textures in world has never (that I think anyone's ever reliably reported) been different in time whether a library texture or one you've uploaded. In fact there's often a good case for avoiding library textures, many are larger than they need to be.