02. Connecting two Viewers to your Region

Now that you have your standalone sim up and running, and after the initial euphoria has worn off, you may have noticed how lonesome it is in there. But before you invite someone to join you in your sim (which is a little involved, but hopefully explained clearly in the next tutorial), you might want to check that you can connect two viewers to your sim locally, both from one computer, and then from two computers (if you are using a home router). This is how to do it:

Step 1: Set the External Host Name
In your Bin/Regions folder you will find the default.xml file, right-click it and select Open With, and choose Notepad. The value you are looking for is external_host_name="127.0.0.1". The value in the quotes is the IP address of the computer running the OpenSim server software. An IP address of 127.0.0.1 is a special reserved address, and basically means THIS computer. We now need to be a bit more specific and refer to the server computer by its actual IP address. To find this out, go to Start, Run, and type 'cmd' (without the quotes) in the Open: box. A DOS window will open. Now, type the command IPCONFIG/ALL and hit Enter. This will reveal your machine's IP address. Make a careful note of this. A typical IP for a PC on a home LAN will have an address similar to 198.168.0.2 (the router normally has a LAN-side IP address of 198.162.0.1). But, whatever the IP address has been reported, enter it within the quotes following the entry external_host_name=, so it looks something like this: external_host_name="198.162.0.2"

Step 2: Have two Viewers Installed
I hope you have a copy of the Second Life viewer and the Hippo viewer as I recommended in Tutorial 1 of the series (the link is there too).

Step 3: Create a Second User
Start the OpenSim server software, and when it has completed its startup and is ready you can then add another user. To do this, type the following command at the bottom of the server (DOS-like) window:

create user John Doe test 1000 1000

This command will create a new user, called John Doe (but this name can be anything you like), the password is 'test', but again, choose whatever you like. The X and Y coordinates should be the default 1000 1000, as you did when setting up the first user.

Step 4: Login Both Users
Start your first viewer, and use the login details of your first user, and Connect. You should be in. Start your second viewer, and use the login details of your second user. With any luck and a fair wind, you should now have two avatars in your region (but both occupying the same space, so move one of them).

Step 5: Login Both Users from two PCs
If you are using a home router, and have more than one PC on your home LAN, then you can try logging in two users from two different PCs. Simply install a viewer on the second PC If you are using the Hippo viewer, Add a new grid as explained in Tutorial 1, and change the loginuri to the same IP address as the external_host_name entry above, and of course follow it with the :9000 port number, so it looks something like this http://192.168.0.2:9000/.

If you are using the SL viewer change the target in the shortcut icon to look something like this:

"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -loginuri http://192.168.0.2:9000/

Now login with the two viewers on the two PCs, using the two user accounts created. I would wait until one of the users is successfully logged in before attempting to log in with the other user on the other PC.

In the next in the series, I will explain how to log in to your standalone sim remotely.