Lite Client or Bot Software?

Sorry if this has been asked before, but it seems every other thread mentions bots in here so search is pretty useless.
A friend and I are thinking about getting all our alts online for some crazy "family" photos, like holiday cards and whatnot... problem is that none of the full clients will let me get more than one online at once. Soon as I start the second viewer, no matter if the first is minimized or not, the one that was running loses all its resources, goes unresponsive, and auto-disconnects after just a few minutes. Is there anything other than a full client I can use to do this? It doesn't have to be very advanced as I can probably bump them into position and use a stripped down Zhao to run a pose anim for the photo.
Any Ideas?
Thx

Go into preferences and for every client you add, half your network bandwidth. In other words, it you are running two clients and normally run at 500 kbps, set it to 250 kbps. It will of course take longer for everything to rez and settle down but it will be stable and there is no reason you can't run for hours like that.

You could try Ajaxlife, at ajaxlife.net, or MetaBolt, at www.metabolt.net.

Even the TestClient from libopenmetaverse might serve your purpose.

Also, reduce the video memory settings to 1/N of the original memory when you're running N clients.

No that didn't work at all.. in fact it was much worse then when the bandwidth slider was up where I normally run it. Even tried it at 25% of normal AND with half the video memory... same result. One of them goes unresponsive and disconnects It makes no sense for it to do this on a 3Ghz dual core with 4 gigs of memory.
PLan B I guess...

I've found that the "modern" viewers do that for me as well. If I run the old Nicholaz client, I can at least get two clients running well.

How many are you trying to do at once on the same PC?

Try opening the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and set each instance of the viewer to its own CPU core by right clicking on the process, then setting the CPU affinity.

You might also try lowering the priority of all but one of the viewers through Task Manager, too.

Two other things, bring up the advanced menu (CTRL-ALT-D) and under ""Rendering" check "Run Multiple Threads". If you haven't already done that, it should speed things up a bit. Lower the draw distance, too. The only one that should need more than the minimum draw distance is the one taking the picture. You can get it lower than 64 meters, too, using debug setting "RenderFarClip" (debug is under the Advanced menu, too).

Heh, I'm running two instances of CoolViewer on the other computer, and the keyboard focus was on the other machine, which I didn't notice, so when I started trying to write this post, my alt started typing to me.

Could this be a case of needing to use the -port argument? If memory serves, the default is 13000, and if you have a problem, you change one to 13001 or such.

This would mean using a separate shortcut for each port number you want to use. It's just adding

--port 13001

to the target field of the shortcut.

This may not apply at all to this case.

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Also, I tried metabolt, and while it did log in, the avatar appearance when viewed from Cool Viewer was grotesquely deformed.

I have a similar machine to you (quad core, 4GB ram) and I can run SL twice easily and three times barely. Not sure what your video card is like, mine's pretty middle of the road. I know this doesn't really help you though.

If you're technically inclined you may want to try the OpenMetaverse TestClient for free. Otherwise you can buy all sorts of bots from xstreet.

Thanks all for the suggestions. I've been trying min settings in SL, messing around with priority, affinity.. pretty much all of that. The Nicolaz BE-V worked lots better, but still succumbed to the same problem after a bit. Only thing I didn't try was the cool viewer so I might do that.


I just got off Metabolt as well. Using that I had 4 online (1 on reg SL client) and no performance issues at all. The killer for that though was that every AV ran on Metabolt never finished rezzing the baked skin/clothing texture fully. Always stopping 1 lod short of clear. Each inventory listed like 5 or more skins worn at the same time (?!?), the rebake function didn't do anything, and trying to change skin or clothes coughed up a "fail to create object, missing from database" error. If it wasn't for the fuzziness I could still use it for pictures as it's just what I was looking for.

I have 2 MSI 6800GT's (not GS's, I have the older ones with more memory bandwidth) in SLI. They're only 256Mb cards though so that might be a fair part of it. I'm very technically inclined, AND I'm stubborn lol, but I'm also pretty sure a few photos aren't worth all the screwing around I might have to do to get it to work

Photoshop.

Pep (Fake it - everybody else here does)

Use Winlauncher XP and assign an instance of your SL client to each core.

http://majorgeeks.com/WinLauncherXP_d870.html

I use it to run the band members for my live shows and for occasional RP silliness. My computers are all very ho-hum by the standards of other users here and as such I find it necessary to turn the graphics setting quite low for each client but it does work. Not sure if it will work with Vista though.

try omvviewer, works pretty well.
link available on google

Not sure if a Geforce 6800 has enough horsepower to push two viewers simultaneously. It may depend on the drivers, and on what OS you're running. Linux could likely do it. Windows XP probably could do it. Windows Vista, probably not.

There's no problem logging them all in with OpenMetaverse's TestClient, and running a normal viewer as well - the viewer performance won't noticeably degrade at all. The problem you'll have with it is that they will appear as white clouds. But even if they aren't clouds, they are Ruthed. The way around that that I've found, takes a bit of setting up. They each have an outfit folder which they are told to wear, including shape and skin. I don't know any other way to get them to look normal. That cures the white cloud effect too.

Have you tried adjusting the SLI settings? Like turning it off and just using one card?

What OS and drivers are you using? Is your dual core CPU a Pentium D? A 3Ghz Core 2 Duo has plenty of power to run four or five avatars on the same PC. A Pentium D, not so much. Although I'd think you should be able to get at least two running.

Is there anything else running that might be eating up a bunch of system resources?

How many computers can you bring into play? I'd try spreading the family photo out so that no more than 2 avis are trying to get in on each computer. testclient will get your avis in, but good luck getting all their clothing assets to load and getting them posed.

Oddly, I've also found that if you launch the viewers in quick succession, it goes much better.

Yeah they do. 2 of them puts the performance over the 7xxx series and into the low-mid 8xxx series for the most part, so they're not washed up just yet.

Not sure if the "TestClient" mentioned is the same as the Meerkat one linked to from OpenMetaverse's frontpage or not, but I did manage to get 3 of them online at once with minimal problems using the Meerkat one. Even let me set one of those to 384m draw and full windlight, so that's not too bad at all. No white clouds, only one small hair texture didn't fully rez. I wonder if setting up each AV for the photo, and then disabling rendering in the debug menu would free up enough resources to pull it off lol.

If you minimize the client after the avatar is set up, and leave it minimized, it will eventually get swapped out and it will apparently give up some resources in the GPU. You may not be able to successfully UNminimize it, but if you're just setting up for a photo that might be enough.

I did it!!! lol
I managed to get all 5 of my AV's plus 2 I borrowed from my friend online at once and all running from this machine on the Meerkat viewer. What I did is.. for each one I brought online, I set it up where I wanted it. Then went into Advanced->Rendering and unchecked all the types except character, then put it into wireframe mode leaving the window up. The last one I brought online I left with full details, effects, windlight, etc.. Worked like a charm. The resources used when crippled like that were so negligible that I couldn't tell that I had 6 other AV's on at all. Even Bitmeter had a hard time picking up on how little 1 of those crippled instances were uploading/downloading. I'm liking this viewer a lot so far.

Edit: Maybe I'll make one of those group beach babe calendars