SL Cache

We have an SL cache setting. In the other games I played, this was used for holding the graphics that we came across while wandering the world. This helped load everything quickly. For me this doesn't seem to be doing that. When I log out, and come back later, its like I've never been there before, and this is my home.
I've cleaned out the cache a couple of times, and have it set to 1000Mb.
Any thoughts?

yeah what the heck is up with this? I mean a 1000mb cache? Thats huge! What is it exactly being used for? Because it sure doesnt seem to be used for my house or any other place Im at 90% of my in-world time....if I fly away 100m from my house and fly back it has to re-rez all over again....sometimes even if I just turn around!

Addendum: After installing 1.7.4 (5) I deleted my cache folder for the heck of it and re-logged in and...its remembering better! at least more textures and items seemed to be cached correctly, esp. for oft-visited places....stay tuned

I have a 40G disk that's only ever used for SL. I'd like to make my cache 20G or more.
Good tip! I'll do that too when I get home!

The Linden staff claims that 1 Gig is big enough and that we would actually find it slower to have a larger local cache. Personally I don't believe it. Seems to me we should at least get the chance to try a larger cache. They could always change the setting back to 1 gig if a larger setting didn't work better. They've made other errors in judgement about what works faster and what doesn't, maybe they are making another one.

Looks like the stuff is going in but not being used right. Heck I move more than 160 meters away from my house and then move right back the game is sitting there reloading the textures again. I have 512megs of bloody video memory and 1 gig cashe and I'm still reloading textures I looked at 10 seconds ago. SL could increase performance considerably if they could fix this as I'm sure it is about to melt the asset server resending textures again and again.

This reminds me of weighing sample RAM vs. hard disk playback when I was involved extensively working with synthesizers. Sure, YUGE sets of digital audio samples could be stored on a hard disk, but the loading times (streamed from disk) were relatively sluggish compared to having the sets stored in RAM. Eventually, technology progressed to a point where marvels like GigaStudio became possible.

There's a balance, I think; not sure if it applies here but supposedly, the larger a cache you have, the longer it could take for data to be retrieved, but then again, even retrieving at a rate of 1 MegaBytes/sec. is effectively faster than the rate most of us can download, which is usually sustained in the neighborhood of 650 kilobits (NOT Bytes)/sec., or kbps for short!

I haven't seen more detailed tests on the different settings for cache size, but this looks like an area that hasn't been updated in awhile. It feels a little stale and in addition to the caching mechanism, the presets might be better replaced with a numeric text entry field. Like Firefox, in which you can specify a cache of ______ KB (KiloBytes).

Hrmmm... one really noticeable particularity stands out to me with caching.

I'll load the map for the first time after logging in. Okeydoke, it appears as a big gray box with a white outline. Expected. Then, I'll explore around for awhile, load up some really texture-filled areas (sandboxes at peak hours are often a good choice). Then, I'll click the MAP button to view it again. Again, I see the big gray box and it takes awhile to load... I can repeat this in intervals of several minutes.

Anyone else experiencing this? My current SL cache is set to 500 MB.

I did some playing and discovered something. I dropped my SL cashe to 50megs and it really didn't affect anything. I dropped my texture cashe stored in memory to small and things refused to rez. 10 minutes later and the ground had yet to focus. I also find it is the same textures that take a while to load. Its like there is a list of textures that can fit into system memory and what ever is at the bottom of the list doesn't get stored and has to reload each time. Problem is I have 2 gigs on this machine, I should be able to handle every texture in the surrounding sims without any problem.

^ I'm feelin' the same way... that's peculiar. There's also that command line switch to always flush the cache at startup.

Attached is a picture of what my map looks like every time I call it up every few minutes. I'm not sure why this placeholder would have to be loaded, even for a moment, if it's already on the hard drive or whatever.

These types of probs really became noticeable to me whenever I relogged at the Welcome Area.

Hmmm, I'm wondering what is being delayed, the texture or the call request. I'm thinking the call is delayed because I don't see a big increase in bandwidth use when the texture pops up. Its acting like the texture may already be loaded but the call to use it is delayed. I dunno, this is beyond my pittiful knowlege. All I know it is kinda borked.

"Kinda borked" does it for me too... I just went to several texture-saturated areas. In particular, I was at Nomine, let things load for five minutes, and then relogged. I noticed less bandwidth consumption as you did, but that things that I had already downloaded were still slow to pop up and change from the default "gray box with a white outline". Something about the "call" really does appear to be getting delayed... it's kinda like:

Do we have any good cache statistics displays? Any way to verify that we are reloading the textures we already have other than what we seen happening in the inworld display, with objects we just looked at needing to be reloading just because we pivoted our view, or having to be reloaded on restart when they should have been in the cache from the last session?

hmmm... I think I may try something. Make a little 200 mb ram disk and focus the cache there. Maybe that will load things faster. I'll try this out later when I get out of work and post my results.

Sound files don't seem to be preserved from one session to the next, I think all the dsf files are deleted when the program closes.

This seems rather silly to me.

I have deleted my cache and tried again. Land, grass and such seems to load quickly, but nothing else does. I would swear that the cache doesn't get used for the images that we come across.

I've solved all SL Caching issues.

I tried out the RAMDisk idea of mine and well.. talk about leaps and bounds lol. Texture loading speed has doubled for me in areas I first rez and texture loading has become insanely quick as I'm walking around. This makes the game feel much faster. Look out for my HowTo in order to do this yourself.

And where can we find this "HowTo" ?

Eagerly awaiting this 'How to' as well...

OMG off topic for the thread and all, but tell me that doesn't look like Torley is playing Centipede!