Cool VL Viewer forum

Hello Henri =) Great work on the viewer !!

Is it possible, in a future release, you could implement an option to retain downloaded .dsf sound cache files, like what you see in the Firestorm viewer ? Keeping these files does indeed add up quickly, both in number and storage capacity, but storage is not a problem for me. Thank you for your time.

Varu

Hi Varu.

I think you're looking for that.

No, that is not what I am looking for.

During a viewer session, sound files are downloaded and decoded, and temporarily kept in the cache directory, for any and all sounds you hear. On each log out, Henri has it coded in his viewer to delete those files, and I would prefer that NOT happen.

Varu

There is little interest to keep the decoded sound files: the decoding delay is usually very short, and the non-decoded sound files are kept in the viewer VFS cache (data.db2.x.NNNNN files in the cache directory, loaded in RAM when the viewer starts, and saved back to the disk cache when the viewer is closed). What causes delays in sound playing is the downloading of never heard sounds.

There is however a big inconvenient when keeping the decoded sound files over sessions: they are not counted as part of the cache size by the viewer and their number will keep growing with time as you explore more sims and encounter more avatars, and in the end they will fill up your hard disk...

It is interesting to note, that keeping the decoded sound files around was a patch that I proposed back in 2007, to work around an issue with multiple viewer sessions and sounds (when one session was closed, it erased the decoded sound files and the remaining session could not play the corresponding sounds any more as a result). I have since changed the code so that only the instance that can write to the cache can also delete the decoded sound files, and the audio engine now also re-decodes any erased decoded sound file if needed.

Thank you for your response Henri =)

Although I could care less what the public interest is, as hard drive storage is not an issue for me, I am also not privy to what you would have to do to implement or backport this feature anyway. I just feel if I do not have to constantly download those files, or anyone else for that matter, it would help on sim bandwidth performance in that regard.. hence why some viewer aficionados tell you to avoid clearing cache as much as possible. Although, in that respect, that is really bad advice, as texture cache files become so easily corrupted, and not so the case with the sound cache ones.

Anyway, I will leave you with this: there was also little interest in developing communication beyond the telegram until Alexander Graham Bell came along. Yeah, be a rebel !! Do it anyway !!

Varu

Yah, go for it!