Phaser 3 webgl cache

Demkamen

Hello.
I am using new spine runtimes for phaser 3. I've added more spine characters in my game, and fount out, if player select each character one by one in game preview, he can easily go out of memory on mobile, just during character selection in main menu (I do destroy unused character). So, I really need to somehow clear the cache to free some ram. I already implement stream loading for spine files, backgrounds (jpg) and other .png source. I've able to free memory of unused png/jpg source (remove from cache), but not for spine objects, I just can't find the right way to do this
For removing cache for textures I use this. scene.textures.remove("my_key"). It works smooth for non-spine textures. Though, I saw keys for spine files in this cache, but removing texture same way doesn't actually remove them. I tried to remove from this:
scene.cache.custom["esotericsoftware.spine.atlas.cache"].remove("my_key")
it doesn't work as well.
Does spine keep the atlases/png another way?
I think since you have this custom variable:

  var SPINE_SKELETON_FILE_CACHE_KEY = "esotericsoftware.spine.skeletonFile.cache";
  var SPINE_ATLAS_CACHE_KEY = "esotericsoftware.spine.atlas.cache";

you could provide the way to clear the cache right in the spine plugin, it would be very cool =)
Anyway, is there any chance I can clear the cache somehow? I implemented only 30 characters and faced out of ram issue (they are pretty big) Meanwhile, I got lots of effect which also made in spine, and the moment I can only load spine source make my lot's of headache.

Mario

Could you please post the exact error you get? Are you running of CPU or GPU side memory?

SpinePlugin.atlasCache and SpinePlugin.skeletonDataCache both hold on to CPU (images) and GPU side memory (the textures). In addition to that, SpinePlugin.gameWebGLRenderer, an instance of our SceneRenderer class, holds on to a ManagedWebGLRenderingContext, which in turn holds on to meshes and textures. The reason for this: the WebGL context may be lost, in which case meshes and textures need to be resubmitted to the GPU. You can access that context via SpinePlugin.webGLRenderer().context and clear the restorables array. This is a general mechanism we had to implement, so users of the WebGL runtime are not burdened with restoring resources in case of context loss.

However, if you want to selectively "dispose" of only a subset of resources, just removing all restorables from the context will not work. You will have to only remove the textures of the atlas pages of the atlas you want to remove.

A general "clear caches" mechanism is thus not straight forward to implement. We can provide a mechanism that really kills everything. But that is generally not what you want. Providing a mechanism that selectively lets you remove specific subsets of resources is heavily application dependend and it's hard to provide functions for that.

SilverStraw

Is this something like the WebGLTextures found in the Spine.AssetManager.assets in Spine WebGL runtime?

Mario

Something like that, yes. Except the restorables are used to recreate GPU side resources when the WebGL context is restored, while the AssetManager merely holds on to previously loaded assets.

Demkamen

Are you running of CPU or GPU side memory?

I maybe wrong, but my test device (iphone 6s) share ram between cpu and gpu (2gb total). I uses this to test low preset of quality with 0.25x scale of spine objects.

Could you please post the exact error you get?

No, I don't have any error. Firstly I thought, nothing happen at all, but with more deeply digging I make it work (not 100% sure

However, if you want to selectively "dispose" of only a subset of resources, just removing all restorables from the context will not work. You will have to only remove the textures of the atlas pages of the atlas you want to remove.

Currently I clearing cache looping through all Phaser cache, looking for source I load with the keys.
this.load.spineBinary("all_chars_binary", 'assets/sprites/spine/allchars_spine4/all_chars_3chapters.skel');
this.load.spineAtlas("all_chars_atlas", 'assets/sprites/spine/allchars_spine4/all_chars_3chapters' + CurrentScale + 'x' + '.atlas', true);
As I see, on spine plugin end, you use different Phaser's cache, and use phases's cache. The files can be accessed here:
custom cache ["esotericsoftware.spine.atlas.cache"]
custom cache ["esotericsoftware.spine.skeletonFile.cache"]
textures cache
Strange moment is, if I removed those source with phaser's methods, I can easily recreate spine objects without loading it again (I guess it stay somewhere on memory, on spine side) until I remove the rest cache (below)
binary ("all_chars_binary")
text ("all_chars_atlas")
Though, after I've found cache here and removed it, I see, files need to load again to add spine object. But, that removing by hand is not what I expected honestly. I Think since you use Phaser's cache, and use custom cache key, you could provide method to clear cache by key (dispose it completely, the very right way). I spent some hours to realised how I should remove it completely, but still not sure I remove all of cache plugin creates and which he potentially could create. And to remove this, I need to loop through all the caches files (which isn't effective anyway) Would be nice to have one function instead. Something like spine.disposeBinary("all_chars_binary") and spine.disposeAtlas("all_chars_atlas)