![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
Kitely members, if you haven't yet downloaded and installed Firestorm 6.4.13 (63251)... da dwagon strongly suggests doing so. It contains one of the most grid-changing updates to hit Firestorm and Opensim... ever.
This change got a tiny little line on their Change Log page. If I were Firestorm, I'd have this on front page and shouting from the rooftops and throwing themselves a pat-on-the-back party.
The change: ON-DEMAND TEXTURES NOW LOAD VERY QUICKLY (according to initial tests I conducted this evening.)
Definition: An "on demand" texture is one the user wants right now. This takes several forms:
1. Double clicking a texture already in your inventory so that it appears on your screen
2. Dragging a texture from your inventory to a prim face
3. Clicking on a "slideshow" texture changer
4. Clicking on a vendor to see the next product
... or any other texture with which the user has direct interaction.
For the past eighteen years these textures have loaded ungodly slow. In tests we took some time ago on Kitely, texture loading on a texture-rich world took an average of 15 to 24 seconds. The advent of MegaWorlds increased that to 30 seconds and sometimes more because they tended to increase their world object and texture count.
The reason this happened was basic coding logic: from the very beginning of Second Life, texture loading was not optimized. Most texture loads were given the same priority, so if a user wanted to see a texture now, they had to wait until that texture cued in line with all the other textures and load oh. so. slowly. This problem was brought to the attention of a rather large corporate grid in 2005 (by myself), and ignored... and has continued on into virtual worlds down until well... today. Precisely today.
A while ago, hoping against hope, I brought this to Ilan's attention on these very forums. Alexina Proctor and I spent three hours conducting dual-trial tests and posted the detailed results. They were not good. Ilan took that data seriously and consulted Oren about this issue. Oren examined code, identified the core problem, wrote the fix, forwarded that to Firestorm via JIRA, and Dev Beq Janus of Firestorm tackled it (see https://jira.firestormviewer.org/browse/FIRE-30559 for the full JIRA discussion).
Today Firestorm released update 6.4.13 (63251)... and among some of the fixes listed in the Change Log was basically texture prioritization.
I do not exaggerate when I state that this one change alone could significantly alter new visitor perception of virtual worlds. To put it simply: user-demanded textures now load like greased lightning. No more wait. No more perceived "lag". User-triggered textures simply work.
So that noted...
TO ILAN TOCHNER and OREN HURVITZ of Kitely and BEQ JANUS of Firestorm
I issue the Dwagon Award of Extraordinary Merit, and my personal, sincere thanks for solving a years-old logic bug... and making one of the most significant Viewer changes that I can imagine. What is gratifying is that these three people solved a problem that has been plaguing virtual worlds for almost two decades. And they did it in very acceptable time, once it was brought to their attention.
Oren, Beq... wow. Ilan... thank you for taking this seriously enough to get the ball rolling.
You've just made a major change to the face of all of Opensim and Second Life. Major KUDOS to you all.