From mark's post at the top:
i.e. if you load an image in a separate thread, it may exist in a separate graphics mode, and hence not be accessible.
I suspect the threadsafe way to load an image or sound in a background thread would be to actually load it into a bank, pass that bank back to the main thread, and the main thread can then create the image / sound.
But I'm no expert on threading, and haven't played with the goodies yet myself!
* Lots of OS specific stuff has its own rules when it comes to threading: GL contexts are 'per-thread'; dx devices are 'main thread only' (I think - perhaps just in fullscreen?); Mac's Cocoa is 'mostly' threadsafe etc. So don't expect to be able to 'load images in the background' suddenly/magically - all this stuff will take time to learn about and find the right approach for.
i.e. if you load an image in a separate thread, it may exist in a separate graphics mode, and hence not be accessible.
I suspect the threadsafe way to load an image or sound in a background thread would be to actually load it into a bank, pass that bank back to the main thread, and the main thread can then create the image / sound.
But I'm no expert on threading, and haven't played with the goodies yet myself!