Alchemy Viewer Second Life

 

Who it is developed by

Alchemy Viewer is a third party Second Life viewer created by a team of five people at Alchemy, other than there Second Life names not a lot of information is given about the creator’s real identity. The company originally released their first version of Alchemy in April 2014. However looking at their Second Life avatars account information, most of them have been using Second Life for at least five years, one avatars birthdate listed back to 2009.

What functionality it provides

At first use Alchemy Viewer’s layout is virtually the same as the Second Life Viewer, no additional icons on screen other that the default and list style drop down menus. It does however in my opinion look a bit more modern with things like the transparent chat and build menu which can be quite useful. From reading through Alchemy’s website, they tend to focus on stability and performance more than the interface design itself.

 

How easy is it to use?

If you are used to using the official Second Life Viewer, you will find Alchemy Viewer easy to use as it’s the same layout other than some visual differences. However if you have never been on Second Life before I would say the usability is okay, but it might take you longer to discover some of the other options in Second Life.

 

How it compares to others

Comparing this viewer with Second Life Viewer I would rate this a better viewer, this is just because I think it is useful having transparent menus such as the chat. It also claims to have better performance and stability and regular updates which is always a good thing.

However, I still prefer using the Firestorm Viewer, this is because I find the interface a lot more user-friendly.

 

What your impressions of it are

I think this is better than the official Second Life Viewer mainly because on the transparency and speed, other than that personally I did not see a lot of difference. I also took the time to talk to some random Avatars in Second Life to find out what they were using. Out of 5 people 4 were using Firestorm the other was using the official viewer, so overall I think Firestorm is still my pick of viewers.