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How Big is your Virt-a-Mate Folder?
Mine is 82.3 GB
Mine is 82.3 GB
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How Big is your Virt-a-Mate Folder?
- Thread starter Vanredravend
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Definitely much too big.
It takes a good amount of my precious M.2 SSD space.
If you would also take into account that VaM will get slower with every GB,
I have stopped mindlessly downloading too many stuff,
but I create many stuff with multiple sub-versions for my own.
With all those Var dependencies and the dependencies you will create by yourselfe with your own scenes,
it is a extremely boring work to see through all the stuff and do a spring-cleaning from time to time...
even if you are able to decide what to keep or throwing away
While looking through my stuff I have discovered, that roughly 1/3 of the space is unnecessarily taken by unoptimized stuff, mainly speaking about laughable big and poorly compressed textures (as absolute no1 reason), plus too many versions of one and the same item, or bad Var files including stuff again and again instead of referencing to them.
Edit:
The only good thing is, that I spend so many time with VaM, so that I therefore was able to remove most of my other Steam games from disk.
It takes a good amount of my precious M.2 SSD space.
If you would also take into account that VaM will get slower with every GB,
I have stopped mindlessly downloading too many stuff,
but I create many stuff with multiple sub-versions for my own.
With all those Var dependencies and the dependencies you will create by yourselfe with your own scenes,
it is a extremely boring work to see through all the stuff and do a spring-cleaning from time to time...
even if you are able to decide what to keep or throwing away
While looking through my stuff I have discovered, that roughly 1/3 of the space is unnecessarily taken by unoptimized stuff, mainly speaking about laughable big and poorly compressed textures (as absolute no1 reason), plus too many versions of one and the same item, or bad Var files including stuff again and again instead of referencing to them.
Edit:
The only good thing is, that I spend so many time with VaM, so that I therefore was able to remove most of my other Steam games from disk.
Last edited:
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Edit2:
166GB
Edit3:
A bit more detailed ...
AddonPackages - 10,6 GB (less than I thought cause I stopped mindlessly downloading plus shrinked many textures)
Custom - 71,7 GB (mainly my (own) textures, old and self imported clothes, appearance/pose/clothes/skin presets (>900), many (!) morphs, many (+own) environments and assets)
Saves - 16,7 GB (1700 scenes, 3600 appearances, 1600 poses, still some old VAC stuff and sounds/music)
Cache - 50GB (!)
Guess I should do a spring-clean soon.
166GB
Edit3:
A bit more detailed ...
AddonPackages - 10,6 GB (less than I thought cause I stopped mindlessly downloading plus shrinked many textures)
Custom - 71,7 GB (mainly my (own) textures, old and self imported clothes, appearance/pose/clothes/skin presets (>900), many (!) morphs, many (+own) environments and assets)
Saves - 16,7 GB (1700 scenes, 3600 appearances, 1600 poses, still some old VAC stuff and sounds/music)
Cache - 50GB (!)
Guess I should do a spring-clean soon.
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My Folder is also increasing so much and it is a pain since even with a Beast PC it is not performing accurate anymore to have a enjoyable Time in VR with VAM having so many Looks & Scene VARS in the VAM App.
My Dream would be a third party VAM Organizer App which is entire placed outside of VAM where the Organizer scans for the VAR Scene or Look "Jpgs" inside the VAR etc and that the App offers a "copy to VAM Addons" or copy to Scenes or Presets Folders then.
But that is near impossible with that annoying Dependencies Situation VAM has.
Some of the current Scenes contain like 30 external Dependencies which is really unbelievable and a killer situation for anyone who just wants to have a great time. So many times here and there Hair or Cloths or Assets or Morphs are missing and you end up investing more time with reproducing a Look or Scene someone Uploads ( same with Pay Content ) instead of actually enjoying it.
Currently i am ending in creating my own Things and using that even more than any Vam HUB or Patreon released Content because i am sick and tired about people releasing VAM COntent where such, who want to enjoy it have a pain time to invest additional Payments and Hair / CLothing blabla searching Mess to even see that look as it should look. Withouth having hundreds or thousands files inside VAM , how can you ever enjoy a Scene where a creator uses tons sources?
Something is entire overall wrong here.
I do not even want to bash the Situation of pay Content.
It is the Situation that if you do not collect all and everything inside VAM you end up having incomplete Scenes or Looks while VAM is so extreme affecting its performance with every VAR you copy over.
The entire Content Policy Sheme should be reworked and for such, who release and want to have credit for the Pay Content, only "complete Scenes" should be released, where the Creator has a licence to use any pay content of other creators and they all work together to be funded from the sales.
So that would mean the current "Patreon Pay Content" Behavior will be dumped and a DAZ like Store will be opened where we can buy Looks or Scenes and each part of dependency is refunded by the Store in micro transactions.
Just a idea of course to get rid of the horrible Performance VAM offers with having the need of hundred or thousands files alltime.
That does not mean VAM should turn to DRM , its just that i see that there are "Hair or Cloths or Asset Content Creators" who are pi**ed if another uses his pay Hair or pay Cloth and doesn't wants it inside a VAR of a Look or Scene Creator.
That Situation does not at all help the Users who want to enjoy the VAM Content and harms VAM from growing.
Sure VAM should be open to create private content of course or use free content.
But if i buy a LOOK everything should be included without me having to care about thousands things.
Perhaps there should be two Content worlds
- Premium VAR where all is included
- Free VAR where you have to live with that to have a worse performance collecting all and everything together.
But both, as it is now, is a NOGO for me that even for Paid Looks that i myself as a consumer, have to again collect Dependencies to view the Content i paid for.
If VAM wouldnt care technical about having thousands files in its library sure whatever but it is not.
And so with each Look or Scene we download another wave of dependency rolls over us we have to copy over to Addons or Custom or Textures etc etc
and they stay since if they do not stay your look or scene will be incomplete.
How will that end ? ;D
My Dream would be a third party VAM Organizer App which is entire placed outside of VAM where the Organizer scans for the VAR Scene or Look "Jpgs" inside the VAR etc and that the App offers a "copy to VAM Addons" or copy to Scenes or Presets Folders then.
But that is near impossible with that annoying Dependencies Situation VAM has.
Some of the current Scenes contain like 30 external Dependencies which is really unbelievable and a killer situation for anyone who just wants to have a great time. So many times here and there Hair or Cloths or Assets or Morphs are missing and you end up investing more time with reproducing a Look or Scene someone Uploads ( same with Pay Content ) instead of actually enjoying it.
Currently i am ending in creating my own Things and using that even more than any Vam HUB or Patreon released Content because i am sick and tired about people releasing VAM COntent where such, who want to enjoy it have a pain time to invest additional Payments and Hair / CLothing blabla searching Mess to even see that look as it should look. Withouth having hundreds or thousands files inside VAM , how can you ever enjoy a Scene where a creator uses tons sources?
Something is entire overall wrong here.
I do not even want to bash the Situation of pay Content.
It is the Situation that if you do not collect all and everything inside VAM you end up having incomplete Scenes or Looks while VAM is so extreme affecting its performance with every VAR you copy over.
The entire Content Policy Sheme should be reworked and for such, who release and want to have credit for the Pay Content, only "complete Scenes" should be released, where the Creator has a licence to use any pay content of other creators and they all work together to be funded from the sales.
So that would mean the current "Patreon Pay Content" Behavior will be dumped and a DAZ like Store will be opened where we can buy Looks or Scenes and each part of dependency is refunded by the Store in micro transactions.
Just a idea of course to get rid of the horrible Performance VAM offers with having the need of hundred or thousands files alltime.
That does not mean VAM should turn to DRM , its just that i see that there are "Hair or Cloths or Asset Content Creators" who are pi**ed if another uses his pay Hair or pay Cloth and doesn't wants it inside a VAR of a Look or Scene Creator.
That Situation does not at all help the Users who want to enjoy the VAM Content and harms VAM from growing.
Sure VAM should be open to create private content of course or use free content.
But if i buy a LOOK everything should be included without me having to care about thousands things.
Perhaps there should be two Content worlds
- Premium VAR where all is included
- Free VAR where you have to live with that to have a worse performance collecting all and everything together.
But both, as it is now, is a NOGO for me that even for Paid Looks that i myself as a consumer, have to again collect Dependencies to view the Content i paid for.
If VAM wouldnt care technical about having thousands files in its library sure whatever but it is not.
And so with each Look or Scene we download another wave of dependency rolls over us we have to copy over to Addons or Custom or Textures etc etc
and they stay since if they do not stay your look or scene will be incomplete.
How will that end ? ;D
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Hi Lione!
This would be a bit like the situation with the old VAC files for sharing.
With those, people were complaining about having too many duplicates of the same things again and again.
Morphs, for instance, or plugins.
That was one of the reasons why the VAR system was introduced.
In theory, every creator should only refer to a popular content, not include it over and over.
IMHO this was a very good idea, but was leading to the situation we have now.
The best of two worlds would be ideal.
For instance, a single file, which includes all dependencies, installs the stuff but can recognize which content is allready installed and deletes the install file afterwards.
But that would not solve the problem with stuff we don't want, coming with a scene or look...
If I don't want those ugly clothes or the unoptimized skin, for instance, because I will use my own stuff instead.
Maybe the installer could ask the user what to install and where, a bit like the (old?) DAZ file installer.
Thx TToby.
I know you are having a so much wider background experiencing the Journey of VAM in all that time.
Currently i am ending having a HIgh End PC and if i open VAM it takes like a minute to even load the App and another minute to load the Scence Gallery
and another 1 to load a look or scene. And even the Editing Browsing is a pain since i realize even having 64 GB RAM and a High End SSD is not curing that
organizing mess the Database cannot handle anymore.
And so often VAM just crashes with having like 1000 Plugins or whatver VARS in the Library.
Sure HArd Reset sometimes helps , sometimes VAM crashes even using a Hard Reset.
I only have my ideas how this could end as a consumer experiencing VAM in half a year.
The Main reason i wonder is that each LOOK / Scene / Asset Clothing VAR you copy over affects the Performance although you do not even need them here and now.
As if each VAR which you copied over would be Indexed and reserved / kept in RAM as a buffer for a "perhaps" usage instead of flushing unneeded dependencies.
And sure i want to have my freedom to not use this or that clothing too.
Sametime if all would be in a VAR of a Scene you wouldn't need to Download 30 Dependencies and need to copy them here and there where they fill up your App.
If one Scene uses 30, the next uses 20 others and the next 15 and the next 25 and at the End for 20 sxy Looks or sxy Scenes you want to enjoy, your VAM Library has grown of 300 or 400 Dependencies spreaded allover in chaos organization and you only produced that chaos for that 20 Looks or Scenes without having any plan what is where if you want to remove this and that look.
So your idea to have a VAR Content installer / uninstaller where you can also remove things you do not like is really good.
Actually it would be the ideal Situation to have a clean Environment with even having a chance to sort things and not ending in such a mess as it is now
even suffering the Performance of High End Machines only from its Database behavior.
I know you are having a so much wider background experiencing the Journey of VAM in all that time.
Currently i am ending having a HIgh End PC and if i open VAM it takes like a minute to even load the App and another minute to load the Scence Gallery
and another 1 to load a look or scene. And even the Editing Browsing is a pain since i realize even having 64 GB RAM and a High End SSD is not curing that
organizing mess the Database cannot handle anymore.
And so often VAM just crashes with having like 1000 Plugins or whatver VARS in the Library.
Sure HArd Reset sometimes helps , sometimes VAM crashes even using a Hard Reset.
I only have my ideas how this could end as a consumer experiencing VAM in half a year.
The Main reason i wonder is that each LOOK / Scene / Asset Clothing VAR you copy over affects the Performance although you do not even need them here and now.
As if each VAR which you copied over would be Indexed and reserved / kept in RAM as a buffer for a "perhaps" usage instead of flushing unneeded dependencies.
And sure i want to have my freedom to not use this or that clothing too.
Sametime if all would be in a VAR of a Scene you wouldn't need to Download 30 Dependencies and need to copy them here and there where they fill up your App.
If one Scene uses 30, the next uses 20 others and the next 15 and the next 25 and at the End for 20 sxy Looks or sxy Scenes you want to enjoy, your VAM Library has grown of 300 or 400 Dependencies spreaded allover in chaos organization and you only produced that chaos for that 20 Looks or Scenes without having any plan what is where if you want to remove this and that look.
So your idea to have a VAR Content installer / uninstaller where you can also remove things you do not like is really good.
Actually it would be the ideal Situation to have a clean Environment with even having a chance to sort things and not ending in such a mess as it is now
even suffering the Performance of High End Machines only from its Database behavior.
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SomePerson
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375 GB... though I haven't done any optimization yet. I've got it all on a 2TB SSD(NOT my M.2 NVMe) and just haven't felt the pressure to clean it up yet. Yes; it takes ~28 seconds to start up, but I'm honestly quite impressed it's not far worse.
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477GB here, running on my 1TB m.2 NVMe drive. Yeah... I should really start clean again at some point but... I really don't want to start over...
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I guess, for many of us the VaM cache is inflating the folder for quite a good amount.
I have got the information, that directing that cache to a (much slower) HDD would not make VaM visibly slower,
as one could think.
Though, I have tried this and got many error messages saying the path was incorrect, untill I switched it back to the M.2 drive where my VaM installation is located...
Has someone experienced the same issue? Nevertheless, I should get my ass up and do a second try on this to save some of my precious SSD space.
Getting the ass up, is the main issue for our big VaM folders, I guess. It is such an unpleasant work to hunt after all the dependencies you have in your favourite and your own (!) created scenes to safely delete stuff.
Thinking of your own looks made with morphs "magically" popped up with one of the thousand Var files, for instance.
I wish there would be an automatic tool doing this for me in a sort of uninstaller or content manager.
I have got the information, that directing that cache to a (much slower) HDD would not make VaM visibly slower,
as one could think.
Though, I have tried this and got many error messages saying the path was incorrect, untill I switched it back to the M.2 drive where my VaM installation is located...
Has someone experienced the same issue? Nevertheless, I should get my ass up and do a second try on this to save some of my precious SSD space.
Getting the ass up, is the main issue for our big VaM folders, I guess. It is such an unpleasant work to hunt after all the dependencies you have in your favourite and your own (!) created scenes to safely delete stuff.
Thinking of your own looks made with morphs "magically" popped up with one of the thousand Var files, for instance.
I wish there would be an automatic tool doing this for me in a sort of uninstaller or content manager.
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Hopefully this is something that 2.0 will take into account.
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103GB. A lot of it redundant stuff.
My AddonPackages folder is 40GB, and my Saves folder is 2.2GB (mostly from a few GIMP files when I tried doing texturing, that accounts for almost 1GB, and otherwise the rest is mostly very large mocaps I use for testing Timeline).
I try to keep my packages organized, my "core" packages (the ones I actually use and keep), my "downloads" (stuff I want to check out), and dependencies (stuff I keep because my core packages need them). I pretty much started from scratch, brought back things I really knew I used, and I just bring back stuff as needed, while keeping errors to zero, and moving downloads to either core if I want to keep them, or in a "backup" folder outside of vam otherwise. This means I can launch VaM quickly (which is important since I crash it or need to test things from a fresh start often).
That also means whenever nice content has missing dependencies or broken dependencies (such as a scene that depends on a look that depends on another look that uses a texture from yet another look etc) won't make it in my core, and I'll never use them as dependencies in my own scenes. But I guess I'm a little bit OCD about that
I _love_ var packages, and to be honest I don't get why some people don't like them. Sure it's easier if you can just copy everything in a folder and call it a day, but then you have 4GB scenes over and over again, and you'll _never_ know when you miss stuff until you open the scene. And otherwise, it would be nice to have more features for automatic dependencies cleanup and stuff like that but hey, remember this whole thing, the hub, vam, it's all just a few people working their ass off so I'm celebrating every improvements I see It's already much more than I would have expected from a software like this.
I try to keep my packages organized, my "core" packages (the ones I actually use and keep), my "downloads" (stuff I want to check out), and dependencies (stuff I keep because my core packages need them). I pretty much started from scratch, brought back things I really knew I used, and I just bring back stuff as needed, while keeping errors to zero, and moving downloads to either core if I want to keep them, or in a "backup" folder outside of vam otherwise. This means I can launch VaM quickly (which is important since I crash it or need to test things from a fresh start often).
That also means whenever nice content has missing dependencies or broken dependencies (such as a scene that depends on a look that depends on another look that uses a texture from yet another look etc) won't make it in my core, and I'll never use them as dependencies in my own scenes. But I guess I'm a little bit OCD about that
I _love_ var packages, and to be honest I don't get why some people don't like them. Sure it's easier if you can just copy everything in a folder and call it a day, but then you have 4GB scenes over and over again, and you'll _never_ know when you miss stuff until you open the scene. And otherwise, it would be nice to have more features for automatic dependencies cleanup and stuff like that but hey, remember this whole thing, the hub, vam, it's all just a few people working their ass off so I'm celebrating every improvements I see
It's already much more than I would have expected from a software like this.- Messages
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As of right now 122GB, that includes 52GB cache (so around 70GB core stuff).
I usually reset cache every 50GB or so (no point having old/unused clothing and images cached).
Since it's originally v1.18 client i still have some tweaking left todo, trying to keep it clean and organized under 100GB with no errors/bs.
Granted i still have around 40GB custom folder (pre-var) and only 12GB addons (few .vac's still lurking inside saves, 3GB total there). ?
It loads about the same speed as my 2nd clean client (i keep them both on desktop & nvme).
I usually reset cache every 50GB or so (no point having old/unused clothing and images cached).
Since it's originally v1.18 client i still have some tweaking left todo, trying to keep it clean and organized under 100GB with no errors/bs.
Granted i still have around 40GB custom folder (pre-var) and only 12GB addons (few .vac's still lurking inside saves, 3GB total there). ?
It loads about the same speed as my 2nd clean client (i keep them both on desktop & nvme).
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@Acid Bubbles
That sounds ingenious! Having stuff sorted that way, sounds great.
I wish I would be so much organized. I once have started a similar structure, but dropped it soon.
If I see an intersting scene I want to try out, I download it together with other stuff and drop it in the root of my AddonPackages folder with the strong intention to try out and maybe delete it afterwards. Most of the time I completely forget about that scene, found it again some days/weeks later and then I am too lazy to search after it and all dependencies for deletion... Because till that time I often have used stuff that was hidden in those VARs for my own scenes, like morphs, clothes or normal maps. Or I simply think about trying those scenes again later because of some few interesting aspects.
I don't know if it's only me, or if I am a somewhat normal user.
As you know, I am a big VaM fan, too. I celebrate most of the new stuff, too, but not everything the same.
I know all the roads that have lead to the VAR system, and I wouldn't have known a better way.
I am thinking of the good old simple times, where we had to put our stuff to the diferent custom folders manually and got an "this file is allready there" Windows message... But to be honest, the most old and forgotten rubbish stuff in my VaM installation came from this time.
As I would be as organized as you, I would be most likely happy with the VAR system, too... instead of this, I am drowning in my own chaos, drawn deeper by all those dependencies and poorly made VAR packages.
That sounds ingenious! Having stuff sorted that way, sounds great.
I wish I would be so much organized. I once have started a similar structure, but dropped it soon.
If I see an intersting scene I want to try out, I download it together with other stuff and drop it in the root of my AddonPackages folder with the strong intention to try out and maybe delete it afterwards. Most of the time I completely forget about that scene, found it again some days/weeks later and then I am too lazy to search after it and all dependencies for deletion... Because till that time I often have used stuff that was hidden in those VARs for my own scenes, like morphs, clothes or normal maps. Or I simply think about trying those scenes again later because of some few interesting aspects.
I don't know if it's only me, or if I am a somewhat normal user.
As you know, I am a big VaM fan, too. I celebrate most of the new stuff, too, but not everything the same.
I know all the roads that have lead to the VAR system, and I wouldn't have known a better way.
I am thinking of the good old simple times, where we had to put our stuff to the diferent custom folders manually and got an "this file is allready there" Windows message... But to be honest, the most old and forgotten rubbish stuff in my VaM installation came from this time.
As I would be as organized as you, I would be most likely happy with the VAR system, too... instead of this, I am drowning in my own chaos, drawn deeper by all those dependencies and poorly made VAR packages.
I actually started a project like this (vam-party) but there was low adoption due to the lack of native integration and then the var system killed it for good
KameronFox
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I bought SAMSUNG 870 QVO SATA III 2.5" SSD just for vam only and my current game size is 1.3TB lol
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you win!
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omg, Someone needs to make some compression code for the DEVS soon!!!!
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160gb, not so much compared to many other people in this thread, but it is very poorly organised. I would love to organise and clean it but I don't even know how to start. I would have to do some extra research. Each week I acquire more and more stuff, it's addicting and ridiculous. How do you guys even organise this, I have to think of some system that would work for me. At this point it would take me like 40 hours of work to get it in order.
88 gigs right now, but I have had it like a week and half, lol. I am scared and already pricing out used hard drives, but it loads so fast on my SSD!
Most of that is the cache. About 50 gigs is cache. Thinking I am going to move it all to a separate hard drive and just keep the cache on the SSD maybe. That way if I clear the cache periodically it will hopefully stay at a (nearly) fixed size as I bloat things? That would let me make more custom .json files for minor variations on a scene that I don't want to setup manually every time I want to view them. With animations in the .json file they can get really big with multiple mocap characters.
I have seen some of the early optitrack stuff coming and the animations are going to get much bigger pretty soon from those creators.
Most of that is the cache. About 50 gigs is cache. Thinking I am going to move it all to a separate hard drive and just keep the cache on the SSD maybe. That way if I clear the cache periodically it will hopefully stay at a (nearly) fixed size as I bloat things? That would let me make more custom .json files for minor variations on a scene that I don't want to setup manually every time I want to view them. With animations in the .json file they can get really big with multiple mocap characters.
I have seen some of the early optitrack stuff coming and the animations are going to get much bigger pretty soon from those creators.
I disabled the caching feature all together after VaM started constantly crashing. Takes a few more seconds to load scenes but still loads surprisingly fast without it. Fixed the crashing issue as well.
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This is what one might think, but in an older thread, DJ (one of the moderators) told me, that this will only bring some few miliseconds for the cached files, but slow down the entire load and handling-time in VaM. His advice was to do it viceversa: Cache to a HDD and VaM on the SSD. Even without doing real tests, I think he is right. When I moved VaM from an HDD to a new SSD, the overall speed gain was enormous, whereas moving the cache to a HDD had no noticeable effect for me.
