Using multiple Second Life viewers simultaneously – part 1

It’s common for Second Life members to have multiple avatars, but many don’t know that they can easily have several of their avatars logged on simultaneously. When you try to log on with a second avatar, you get an error message that Second Life is already running.

Nonetheless, it is possible. There are at least four ways for you to log on more than one avatar simultaneously. The picture is proof. These are five avatars logged on simulaneously on a single computer.  The Second Life version of Mexico’s Chichen Itza pyramid is behind them.

The following applies to Windows PCs. I haven’t tested any of this on Linux or Mac systems. If you’re a Mac user, read Part 2 of this series; it contains a video showing how to do it on a Mac. The four ways on a PC to log on multiple avatars are:

Multiple Computers: The obvious way is to use multiple computers. If you have a laptop and a desktop computer, you can have two avatars logged on simultaneously, one on the desktop and one on the laptop.  The big advantage to this method is performance.  Running several avatars on a single computer will impact its performance a lot more than running each avatar on a separate computer.

USB external hard drive: A less obvious way is to start a separate instance of Windows as a subprocess. You can do this using an external USB drive with Mojopac installed. It’s not an ideal solution because of the performance penalty of using USB, but it works. You can have Second Life installed on both the computer and on the Mojopac hard drive and log on two avatars simultaneously. I’ve done it and it works. There may be others ways to do it other than with MojoPac; MojoPac is the one I’ve used.

Multiple Viewers: Use multiple Second Life viewers. For example, in addition to the standard Second Life viewer, I have the Greenlife Emerald, Imprudence, Meerkat, RealXtend, and Snowglobe viewers installed on my computer. I can run all of them simultaneously, each with a different avatar log on (although I can’t run the Second Life and Snowglobe viewers simultaneously without taking the step mentioned in the next paragraph).

Multiple Instances of One Viewer: The multiple viewers method works but is not officially supported by Second Life. The officially approved – and the easiest – way is to add "-multiple" to the target line in the shortcut. It works with the standard Second Life viewer and with the Greenlife Emerald, Imprudence, Meerkat, RealXtend, and Snowglobe viewers (I haven’t yet tested it with other viewers).   You’ll learn how to do it in Part 2 of this series, where you’ll also be able to watch a video showing how.

This is the first of a  four part series; the other parts are:

This is the first of a  four part series; the other parts are:
Part 2: Videos and more details about running multiple viewers and avatars on a single computer
Part 3: Running multiple viewers and avatars on multiple computers with a KVM switch.
Part 4: Why on earth (ok, virtual Earth!) would someone want to run multiple viewers and avatars simultaneously?