Third Party Viewers

--== What Is a Viewer? ==--

Viewers (aka Clients) are your means to accessing Second Life. It's very similar to how a browser accesses the internet. Each viewer has its own unique features, advantages and disadvantages that make some more favorable than others, depending on the user. This is a short list of 3rd party Viewers that are recommended over the Default Viewer provided by Linden Lab for various reasons.

--== Why Not the Default Viewer? ==--

The default viewer has no glaring issues that make it outright unusable. But it does lack a number of features or performance enhancements that cause it to be less preferred than 3rd party Viewers. It does, however, have the distinct advantage of receiving new feature updates before 3rd party devs can incorporate them. So if you're curious about "the new thing" SL can do, the default Viewer is for you.

--== Viewers ==--

** Alchemy **

https://www.alchemyviewer.org/downloads
https://discordapp.com/invite/KugCgs6

Alchemy is a Second Life and OpenMetaverse compatible viewer striving to be at the forefront of stability, performance, and technological advancement in the open-source metaverse viewer field. They are always based on the latest release code from Linden Lab, and are currently in active development with new features, bug fixes, and performance optimizations landing in their source code repository nearly every day

What Alchemy lacks in features, it makes up for in performance. The main goal with this Viewer is to provide the most optimized experience for a non-text based Viewer. If you have a lower-end PC and want to multi-task without shortening the lifespan of your CPU, or just want to have better framerates, Alchemy has several features to aid in a smoother experience.

"Stable" builds can be found on their downloads page, and nightly builds are available via their discord server.

** Firestorm **

Download Link: https://www.firestormviewer.org/choose-your-platform/

The popular choice, and the go-to for many users on Second Life. Many people use Firestorm, so it's also among the easiest to get info on if you have questions regarding settings or features. Firestorm's main advantage is the amount of 'features' it has. There are features that allow you to search for objects based on criteria like who made it, who owns it, what's in the description or name field, etc.. Firestorm also has numerous Advanced and Debug tools that can change up or make many experiences in Second Life easier. In short, while other Viewers may have the same or similar features, Firestorm has the most, all in one package.

The only cons are the dev team is infamously slow to incorporate Linden Lab made updates into their Viewer. Past updates such as the Bento avatar skeleton, Animesh and the Environmental Enhancement Project have all taken months to incorporate into Firestorm after Linden Lab has had it stabilized in the default Viewer. There also tends to be issues with some optimization, which can result in performance issues for mid to low-tier PCs. Memory leaks are common, and crowded areas can slow the Viewer down to a halt even with lowered graphics settings.

** Black Dragon (Niran) **

Download Link: https://niranv-sl.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Black Dragon (FKA Niran's Viewer) is primarily designed to make SL look good. Unique to this Viewer are visual enhancements that effect lighting, shadows, and environmental presets. Additional features such as a built-in Avatar poser make this the quintessential Viewer for users looking to take photographs. If you plan on showing off the visual capabilities of SL through pictures or video, this is the Viewer to go for.

Despite its graphical focus, Black Dragon is fairly well optimized and not expected to run your PC into the ground. It is also backed by a patreon community and receives regular updates. The only drawback is the dev specifically makes a point to take out any "bells and whistles" he deems unnecessary, so it lacks a number of key features that might seem basic for other Viewers, in comparison.

** SpeedLight **

Description Link: https://speedlight.io


    Currently one of the few supported mobile clients with a free service option. With SpeedLight, you can log in via browser and switch between mobile and desktop without needing to log out. The biggest drawback is you will be logged out after 6 consecutive hours, without first paying for their subscription fee. However, this would typically only affect someone that was looking to keep a 24/7 running bot account, as you can immediately log back in after the six hour limit.