Texture initialization freeze after using multiple avatars in multiple viewers

[Sorina Garrigus]

I have this issue for both the Second Life viewer AND Firestorm. I will sometimes have multiple alts in multiple viewers on at the same time. But if I do sometimes when running the viewer it will come up and have issues on initilizing textures seemingly. I tried advice such as logging in the next avatar after the first is fulling loaded, I tried manually clearing the Firestorm viewer at least. havent tried it in the LL viewer. But keep running into this issue and reinstalling is the only fix I can find. 
1: Is there a way to fix and avoid this issue?
2: Is there a viewer that might not have this issue I can install for running multiple alts. 

[Henri Beauchamp]

The problem with using multiple simultaneously running instances of the same viewer is that the texture cache gets shared between them, but care must be taken that the cache can be written only by one of the running instances (it is normally the first launched instance that gets cache write rights, the others only able to read it) to avoid conflicts; depending on the viewer, the detection of other running instances might be glitchy or plain bogus (it relies on marker files, their stamping and their locking).

This is why LL does not support multiple running instance in their viewer by default.

I worked a lot on this for the Cool VL Viewer, so you could try it and see if it solves yours issue.

Another solution is to use a different viewers for each of your different simultaneous logins, since each viewer ”brand” uses its own cache files/directories and each will therefore write to a different part of your disk without any risk of collision. Of course, it means you will eat up much more disk space for the caches...

[Odaks]

Firestorm, and maybe other viewers too, allow you to specify where the cache goes. If a separate location is specified in Preferences for the second instance of the viewer (assuming you have space for a separate cache), would this be helpful?

Maybe someone like @Beq Janus would know for sure, in FS's case.

[Henri Beauchamp]

19 minutes ago, Odaks said:

Firestorm, and maybe other viewers too, allow you to specify where the cache goes. If a separate location is specified in Preferences for the second instance of the viewer

The cache location is a global setting, so it won't work for keeping a different cache location for each running instance of the same viewer ”brand”.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Odaks]

54 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

it won't work for keeping a different cache location for each running instance

Thanks, Henri - that's a pity!

 

[Ardy Lay]

On Windows and Linux you can run a program as a different user on the desktop.  I don't know how Second Life Viewer reacts to this on Windows but last time I tried it on Linux the X server imploded violently at apparently random intervals, but, that was years ago.

A clue for Windows users:  That right-click to run as Administrator is NOT what you want here.  Try SHIFT + right-click and run as another user.  Do remember to set up that other Windows user account first.

Report back here with your results!

 

[Beq Janus]

9 hours ago, Odaks said:

Firestorm, and maybe other viewers too, allow you to specify where the cache goes. If a separate location is specified in Preferences for the second instance of the viewer (assuming you have space for a separate cache), would this be helpful?

Maybe someone like @Beq Janus would know for sure, in FS's case.

As @Henri Beauchampnotes this is not currently possible, the setting is global (meaning it applies to all accounts) and by design the second and subsequent instances have read-only cache access. 

@Ardy Layhas a good suggestion, though think carefully as you do this because the implications are that your accounts are now entirely different users, no shared settings. When you change a "global configuration" it will apply to that windows user and any firestorm instances that they run. I've not tested this, but it sounds entirely plausible and a reasonably decent solution if you want to get that separation

[Ardy Lay]

DANGER!  DANGER!  Hehe, now that Second Life Viewer is capable of using ALL of the GPU by itself, multiple running instances gets, let's say, uncomfortable.  Better buy up more GPUs!  😉

[Odaks]

Many thanks to @Henri Beauchamp, @Beq Janus and @Ardy Lay for explaining the realities here.

Maybe it's time to downgrade this from "a good idea" to "it seemed like a good idea at the time"!