OpenSim grids continue to grow

SecondLife currently has around 23,000 user-owned regions, with another 5,000 regions owned by Linden Lab.

However, OpenSim-based grids seem to be catching up in total land area, with over 5,600 regions on the public social grids alone, up from around 5,000 from our last count earlier this summer. This number significantly undercounts the total number of OpenSim regions, however, since most private grids, standalones, and behind-the-firewall enterprise grids are not included.

Many of the grids below are connected to the hypergrid, meaning the avatars can teleport freely between them — making, in effect, one large interconnected universe of grids. There is also an uncountable number of private and corporate grids, since anyone can download the OpenSim software and create a grid or standalone mini-grid at home, behind a corporate firewall or on a hosted server.

There is currently no central registration system for grids, no directory or comprehensive search engine. There are some promising projects however attempting to catalog grids, including YoSimsGridHop and MetaverseInk. In addition, the OpenSim open source community maintains a list of grids.

Total: 5,613 regions

For information about hypergrid teleports to the main grids, please see our August Hypergrid List.

(Image courtesy Jamland.)

(Image courtesy Jamland.)

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Related posts:

  1. OpenSim grids grow 10% this month
  2. OpenSim grids grow 11% since last month
  3. OpenSim grid growth moving to private grids

About Maria Korolov

Maria Korolov (formerly Maria Trombly) is editor and publisher of Hypergrid Business. She also runs an editorial content company, Trombly International. She has been a journalist for more than twenty years and has worked for the Chicago Tribune, Reuters, and Computerworld. She has reported from over a dozen countries, including Russia, China, India, Afghanistan and Chechnya. Today, she writes about enterprises uses of virtual worlds and other enterprise technology topics.

2 Comments

  • September 8, 2009 | Permalink |

    wow maria! Impressive list, thank you for posting this. It is somewhat eye opening to me.

  • April 12, 2010 | Permalink |

    OSGRID may be the biggest player under the free region organizations, but there customer service is CRAP!! i’m trying for month to fix my user account, but no luck. and there server is always overheating :) )

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