To control two avatars at the same time (both at the same location; they can see each other)....

[Dorsai Osterham]

To control two avatars at the same time (both at the same location; they can see each other).... 

 

... other than loading two copies of the Linden Viewer, one must ???

 

I seem to recall there was a way.

 

UPDATE 120403.1538-4: Thanks to both; my memory from 2009 had a 'third' solution that clearly was of my mind's making.

[Rolig Loon]

“Out of the box” you should be able to run more than one copy of your viewer without doing anything. If you try and it doesn't work, then try this:

• go to Advanced → Debug Settings; a small window will open
• type: AllowMultipleViewers
• set the value to TRUE
• relog

Macs do have a problem running multiple instances sometimes, so see http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_multiple_firestorm  for clues about how to make a Mac behave.

You can also set a command line preference for multiple instances. On Windows, you can specify command line parameters as follows:

1. Create a shortcut to the SecondLife.exe executable.
2. Edit the shortcut properties
3. Add --multiple in the first editable text field, at the end of the line, after the closing quotation mark, if any.

To do the same thing on a Mac,

1. Right-click or Control+Click on the Second Life icon and select Show Package Contents.
2. Browse from there to Contents > Resources.
3. Look for a file called arguments.txt. If it does not exist, create it. The full path is Second Life.app/Contents/Resources/arguments.txt.
4. Inside arguments.txt, add any command line arguments you want (again, --multiple in this case), one per line. 

[Luc Starsider]

What Rolig says is probably the only way to control two avatars at the same time on the same computer. As far as I know, there is no way to do this without loading two instances of the viewer.

- Luc -