Remove texture from memory.

[viktov]

Hi again!

 

What would be the best way to remove unused textures from memory?

 

I put all textures in the array and when I dont need them anymore I call dispose() on each.
But this doesnt seem to work as expected and soon I get:

Not enough storage is available to complete this operation

on IE console while creating next textures I need.

 

Thanks for any help with that.

 

V.

 

[Kilombo]

Hi viktov. Has far has i know. Dispose(), so something similar has the delete() (javascript). This function cut's the objects reference to the memory (so you cannot access it anymore since it just lost it's pointer). This doesn't mean that memory will get free imediatly. Although it does something. When garbage collector comes to clean up the memory it will take all this to trash (since there's no way to reference it).

 

By saying this. I have to tell you.... I personally don't like very much the garbage collector. I prefer the good old times of ansi C, you could clean the memory directly .

 

Is your specific case, the best way to solve your problem is by assigning to that array a value of null, by that your saying that the information contained in the array is illegible to the garbage collector. Something like:

var newArray = new Array();

 

for (bla bla bla){

      newArray[bla];

}

 

then when you don't needed it no more, you do:

newArray = null;

 

Hope I've been helpfull.

[HappyEnd]

Hmm depend from where the texture is from (cached in a filesystem/database or not).

I see a part of the code creating blob url but never releasing it (not sure it's related to your problem).

 

Anyway, dispose() method seems the way to go.

 

@Kilombo

Never change the type of a variable

An array is released at the end of a function, if it's on a closure or global namespace and required to be free, I'ld use arr.length = 0 and re-use the array letter.

But I have to agree about the garbage collector, a pain to the ass (did you know that it freeze the main thread when cleaning up another thread ? One of the weirdest things of WebWorker).