Big amount of var files problem! Lags, freezes!

[CrazyVirt]

Hi. I have high end PC and virt-a-mate installed on SSD.
And i have thousands of var files.

WHY!!!??? Vam does not chache list of var files in scene list viewer or in look preset list viewer! This is obious thing, evere time i press "open scene" button vam scaning all folder and var files again! Without cache? this is ridicoulus!!!

Or maybe i missing some settings for that?

it is very frustrating for me to experience constant glitches and lags when opening various lists of scenes, looks, morphs, etc.

 

[HolySchmidt]

So, what you gonna do?
Only solution is to delete files.

 

[CrazyVirt]

That is question i dont know what to do.

 

[atani]

That is question i dont know what to do.

Only solution is to delete files.

There's your answer.

 

[CrazyVirt]

How to cure a headache?
Cut off your head!

There's your answer.

 

[atani]

If you're experiencing issues and crashes because you have too many files, then you need to delete files.
You can leave the dramatics outside of this, they won't help with the crashes.

 

[CrazyVirt]

You can leave the dramatics outside of this, they won't help with the crashes.

There is another way: may be virt-a-mate author will release new patch with lists caching?

 

[atani]

Caching exists for other things, and that still would be impacted by numbers. I don't know how much RAM you have, but less than 32 GB you're more likely to experience crashes, and more it just reduces the frequency.
If you have less things you'll not only experience fewer crashes but also increased performance.
There won't be any new version of 1.X unless a major security flaw calls for a emergency patch.

 

[827]

Caching exists for other things, and that still would be impacted by numbers. I don't know how much RAM you have, but less than 32 GB you're more likely to experience crashes, and more it just reduces the frequency.
If you have less things you'll not only experience fewer crashes but also increased performance.
There won't be any new version of 1.X unless a major security flaw calls for a emergency patch.

so how do you know which files to delete? is there kind of a systematic way to go about it that wouldn't take forever? i'm always afraid if i delete something i'm gonna screw something else up as a result.

 

[atani]

i'm always afraid if i delete something i'm gonna screw something else up as a result

This is likely to happen, but it's not the end of the world. First off, make a backup. If you mess it up in a really destructive way you have the backup to fall back on.

The problem here lies in dependencies. Some VARs have no dependencies or just enough needed, others have a huge amount of them. The latter is usually because of bad packaging practices, and this makes the job of decluttering harder to do.
A future advice for new VARs you find on the hub is that if they have more than 50 dependencies you should avoid them, as likely the packaging is a mess, requesting things you don't need which in turn those dependencies ask for more dependencies.
There's also other topics like different versions of a VAR that is also a matter of compromises, but that's more intensive with file managing, will skip it.

So, maybe a first point to cleaning up is to remove VARs of scenes you don't want anymore. These will probably be fine to remove as they're not normally dependencies. There are VARs that have scenes in them but they are made to showcase Looks for example, so if you see the main reason for it is a look and not a scene, keep it for now.
Hopefully this didn't create any big issues.

After this it gets more complicated and requires more work to get things cleaner. It's worthwhile mentioning that you can have multiple VaM folders, you can start a fresh one alongside your messy one where you copy over only the things you know you want, and this should keep it performant and cleaner for quite a while depending on your usage.

 

[827]

This is likely to happen, but it's not the end of the world. First off, make a backup. If you mess it up in a really destructive way you have the backup to fall back on.

The problem here lies in dependencies. Some VARs have no dependencies or just enough needed, others have a huge amount of them. The latter is usually because of bad packaging practices, and this makes the job of decluttering harder to do.
A future advice for new VARs you find on the hub is that if they have more than 50 dependencies you should avoid them, as likely the packaging is a mess, requesting things you don't need which in turn those dependencies ask for more dependencies.
There's also other topics like different versions of a VAR that is also a matter of compromises, but that's more intensive with file managing, will skip it.

So, maybe a first point to cleaning up is to remove VARs of scenes you don't want anymore. These will probably be fine to remove as they're not normally dependencies. There are VARs that have scenes in them but they are made to showcase Looks for example, so if you see the main reason for it is a look and not a scene, keep it for now.
Hopefully this didn't create any big issues.

After this it gets more complicated and requires more work to get things cleaner. It's worthwhile mentioning that you can have multiple VaM folders, you can start a fresh one alongside your messy one where you copy over only the things you know you want, and this should keep it performant and cleaner for quite a while depending on your usage.

thank u for the detailed reply!

are u saying to create a new, clean addons folder and direct vam to this new folder instead of the current addons folder that has a ton of vars?

this will sound extremely basic, but i have to ask. how do u recommend actually going through the vars? have file explorer and vam open at the same time so u can see the image of the actual scene in vam and then look for it in file explorer? since the names of the vars don’t sync up with the scene names this gets difficult to tell what is what. is there a certain screen in vam that is best to work from to determine what the vars actually are? or maybe you have to unzip each var in file explorer to see what it’s contents are? i get tripped up on the actual mechanics of how to go about the clean up process.

 

[CrazyVirt]

Ehhh, i decided to make freash clean install of VAM and start to create new collection of var files.
Also i started using BrowserAssist and other UI plugins of JayJayWon, they pretty good.

 

[atani]

Regardless of what method you use, make a backup, don't forget that.

I used a file explorer and knew more or less what scenes VARs I had. You can have VAM open in the Scene Browser at the same time to confirm these too. If you're not sure where that scene comes from you can hover the cog to see the VAR name.
There's other ways besides the Scene Browser, from plugins (BrowserAssist) to 3rd party tools (VAR Manager, etc), use whatever your prefer. If something terrible happens, remember, you have a backup.

If you have a lot of VARs you can also take some out of AddonsPackages to somewhere else, while you work on the remainder. You know, divide the load.
Or you can make subfolders like Looks, Scenes, etc., and move them there before deleting stuff. To VAM being in AddonsPackages or in a subfolder within is the same thing, but for you it becomes easier to know what is what from a files perspective. This has some caveats, but it's a tactic I use to keep my AddonsPackages folder tidy.

 

[827]

Regardless of what method you use, make a backup, don't forget that.

I used a file explorer and knew more or less what scenes VARs I had. You can have VAM open in the Scene Browser at the same time to confirm these too. If you're not sure where that scene comes from you can hover the cog to see the VAR name.
There's other ways besides the Scene Browser, from plugins (BrowserAssist) to 3rd party tools (VAR Manager, etc), use whatever your prefer. If something terrible happens, remember, you have a backup.

If you have a lot of VARs you can also take some out of AddonsPackages to somewhere else, while you work on the remainder. You know, divide the load.
Or you can make subfolders like Looks, Scenes, etc., and move them there before deleting stuff. To VAM being in AddonsPackages or in a subfolder within is the same thing, but for you it becomes easier to know what is what from a files perspective. This has some caveats, but it's a tactic I use to keep my AddonsPackages folder tidy.

thanks for the input! it's such a daunting task as i have almost 4,500 vars/200GB of addons and complex scenes, especially with multiple models, are really starting to bog down. i have to do something about this now.

 

[Fferrett]

feelfar/varManager: varManager (github.com)

VarManager helps with the lack of such tooling inside of VAM. It's still imperfect. Start a new instance. Set up varmanager to it, then start porting your old vars and curating your collection. There's likely a bunch of trash scenes you can weed out.

 

[CrazyVirt]

feelfar/varManager: varManager (github.com)

VarManager helps with the lack of such tooling inside of VAM. It's still imperfect. Start a new instance. Set up varmanager to it, then start porting your old vars and curating your collection. There's likely a bunch of trash scenes you can weed out.

Unusable, i've tried it.

Spoiler: spoiler

It must be like ModOrganiser 2 for skyrim.

 

[827]

i have TONS of saved scenes in the scene browser. many of these saves are existing scenes someone else created that i have edited with my models and other changes. so if i have a sapuzex scene for example, i could have several (or more) scene saves of just one scene. does having this many saved scenes contribute to VAM lagging during gameplay? or should i just really be focusing on cleaning up my vars? my load times aren't all that bad and i can deal with them currently, it's VAM is getting laggy, menu are slower, etc. during gameplay in complex scenes. that's my main issue.