You know the scene. You’re walking down the street in a town, maybe your hometown, on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. The sun is shining, people are sitting outside a coffee shop chatting and browsing, and you can hear birds chirping and the drone of distant traffic. You turn the cornerRead More →

As a person of color and a woman, I’ve become aware with the lack of representation expressed outside of the entertainment or sports world. That is even more prevalent within the Virtual Reality community. Even though African Americans are strong consuming anything tech related us making up less than 20Read More →

Virtual reality is a hot topic in the field of science and technology. It is assumed that the cost of hardware and the complexity of production are the obstructions for the massive adoption of virtual reality. However, experts from the VR industry have different opinions. Virtual reality is an underestimated field thatRead More →

One of the more novel shows of this summer has been NBC’s “Reverie,” which grapples with the potentials and risks of realistic virtual reality. The show stars Sarah Sashi (Person of Interest) as Mara Kint, a former negotiator for the police who left after she failed to prevent her brother-in-lawRead More →

In the comments section on one of the several InWorldz-related articles these past few days, I saw some people talking about whether OpenSim is safe for content. The idea being that InWorldz was somehow safer because it’s not OpenSim. First, InWorldz IS OpenSim. It’s just another fork off the OpenSimRead More →

Editor: This is a contributed comment from hypergrid entrepreneur Frank Corsi. The Atek Grid has been a long running open to connect grid, supporting many residents who enjoy the abilty to connect land regions from home PC or rented servers. As the sole owner of the grid, I have been busyRead More →

Editor: InWorldz cofounder and former CTO David Daeschler just asked us to publish this statement about the current situation with the grid’s crowdfunding campaign. For all those that have been asking me what is going on with InWorldz, I’d like to make a public statement. I have not been involved inRead More →

My new Oculus Go headset arrived today ($199 on Amazon) and I wasn’t originally planning to get it because I’m not a big fan of standalone headsets. That’s a headset that has the computer and screen built right in, so you don’t need to plug in a phone, computer orRead More →

Earlier today, I posted an article about what we here at Hypergrid Business are doing to comply with GDPR. Fines are up to 20 million Euros or 4 percent of total annual global revenues — whichever is higher, and GDPR applies to every company that has European users or customers —Read More →

You might have noticed a flood of emails lately and website popups asking you to consent to new privacy policies. That’s because a major new European privacy regulation, GDPR, goes into effect today. Fines are up to 20 million Euros or 4 percent of total annual global revenues — whicheverRead More →

[Editor’s note: Timothy Rogers has been a valued member of the OpenSim community since he launched SoftPaw Estates back in 2012. That evolved into the Zetamex OpenSim hosting company, which has been ranked as one of the top hosting providers since 2013 in our annual reader surveys and is the companyRead More →

If you are a 360-degree photographer, or want to become one, then working with Google Street View and becoming one of their Trusted Photographers will definitely help establish credibility in the industry. In fact, Google actually helps their contributors get hired to create virtual tours. According to Google, market research conductedRead More →

As anyone with an innovative idea has probably discovered, a great idea can only go so far without support, and when it comes to creating music content in the virtual reality space two key questions often arise: How to convince the music industry to support productions and how to keepRead More →

[Editor’s note: In this opinion column, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner is responding to High Fidelity’s content protection plan, which uses the same blockchain technology as that which powers Bitcoin. Tochner previously managed an identity rights protection company, IDChoice, and worked in Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the NSA.] First, I’d likeRead More →

Educators are using virtual worlds, but not in the way they had used them in the past, and not in the same numbers. What you see now is a more selective and targeted use by a smaller subset of the educational community, primarily higher education. Those groups that still useRead More →

The first set of Daydream View clones have hit the market, and I just got one of them in the mail – the BoboVR Z5. Disclosure: I received the BoboVR Z5 free from GeekBuying, where it currently sells for $60. Bottom line: The big pluses are that the field of viewRead More →

On Tuesday, David Kariuki’s article about a freebie store that distributed content that was “found and collected” on other grids — without any checks that the content was legal — drew some comments from people who defended the practice. Let’s put aside the main issue, that infringing content opens theRead More →

It’s taken me a while to write this review, because I’ve been out of town and caught up with various other issues. So, my apologies to HelloPro, who sent me this headset more than two months ago. Sorry, guys! Now, I personally don’t like viewers with built-in headphones, and wasRead More →

Low-cost virtual reality viewers — some made out of cardboard — are a minimal investment from consumer standpoint or from a company who would like to distribute their virtual reality experiences themselves. A user already has the hardware in the pocket, because the only other thing you need to doRead More →

Google Cardboard-compatible viewers are a great choice for people who want to experience VR but don’t want to shell out the hundreds of dollars that the big-name headsets cost. In fact, these viewers can start at just $5, and are pretty good for watching VR videos and playing casual games.Read More →

I am passionate about OpenSim and making OpenSim more accessible to people unfamiliar with the OpenSim platform. New people, like myself a few years back, need places to get things for their avatar and their region and this is my contribution. I visited a variety of places on the hypergridRead More →

Dear OpenSim Viewer Developer: A new trend in learning management systems  could be a vehicle for expanding educator use of the OpenSimulator platform. More specifically, one of the newer learning management systems – Canvas – includes an external app integration feature that allows faculty and institutions to easily integrate bothRead More →

It has often been the so-called vice industries that have driven forward new technologies. This will also be the case with virtual reality, where we are already seeing it shaking up the gambling sector. Sectors such as gambling were among the first business use cases for the internet, and tendRead More →

One of the devices that generates the greatest interest among the tech community at the moment is Microsoft HoloLens. By revolutionizing the way we perceive reality-altering solutions, the technology that stands behind HoloLens is as fascinating as it is complex. In simple terms, it can be described as the mergingRead More →

My role in my school district, involves working directly with classroom teachers in kindergarten through 12th grade to help them create effective learning experiences with technology. Recently, I’ve become a fan of what virtual reality brings to the classroom. I came across CoSpaces through Twitter at the start of this school yearRead More →

At a time when grid outages and scandals are in the news (okay, just the one grid, but they do create a lot of news) it’s nice to see a grid do something positive. On Tuesday, I saw this post from DigiWorldz show up in my social media, which leadsRead More →

I’ve been doing the stats report every month — without a break — since mid-2009. With nearly 300 active grids, many of which don’t have standard stats pages, the amount of work going into this has become unmanageable. It eats up parts of several days of my time, contacting everyone,Read More →

I recently tested the latest version of DreamWorld, a new OpenSim installer that lets you run your own mini-grid on a home computer. If everything goes right, installing the software, setting up a new mini grid, and loading up a pre-built region takes less than ten minutes. At first, being aRead More →

Search marketers can now use Google’s VR View, Street View and Cardboard Camera apps to capture, upload and optimize 360 degree videos, virtual reality videos and images for better and easier visibility on search engines with Street View and hence without the need for a native mobile application or virtual realityRead More →

There’s a battle raging now for who will be the dominant platform of the coming virtual reality metaverse. Facebook, which has been getting a big chunk of the media attention with the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and its $2 billion acquisition, has suffered a few blows lately, even as rival GoogleRead More →

Headsets Don’t Make or Break a VR Experience (or Why Content is Still King) In 1992 Indie filmmaker Robert Rodriguez made a movie with a budget of just $7,000. In Hollywood terms that’s the equivalent of a cappuccino. El Mariachi went on to gross $2 million at the box office. WhatRead More →

Editor: The U.S. Army’s MOSES grid has long been making cutting-edge contributors to OpenSim, building a grid management system, running scalability tests, and donating content to the OpenSim community. Now they are in the process of moving to a branch of OpenSim called Halcyon, open-sourced last year by InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, and areRead More →

Update: The folks at GeekBuying sent me a $5-off coupon to share with readers: XIAOMIVR5 So I just received a Xiaomi VR in the mail. The headset has been getting some attention in the media recently because Xiaomi is a giant brand, but the headset itself left me underwhelmed. It hasRead More →

The car industry has long been at the forefront in introducing new technology and has often developed new technologies from within, putting them quickly into production mostly with huge safety and ecology benefits. Sceptics might argue that much of this progress has been at the hard-fought insistence of regulators, toRead More →

In getting ready for my monthly stats report, I’m checking to see whether the grids I’m listing in my directory are up and running, and collecting their terms of service pages and other links. And I just came across the land sales page of Genesis Global Journey, a small commercial gridRead More →

So your grid has been hit by a denial-of-service attack, or a server has crashed, or a hacker got in, or things just mysteriously stopped working. Or maybe you’ve had a customer service disaster, or your owner said something horrible on social media, or you’ve got management or partner problemsRead More →

Editor’s note: This article was updated on 1/27/2023 to remove dead links and links to malicious sites. Editor: The team behind U.S. Army’s MOSES grid have long been cutting-edge contributors to OpenSim, building a grid management system, running scalability tests, and donating content to the OpenSim community. Now they are inRead More →

I spent the last two weeks traveling in China visiting virtual reality companies and attending the annual China Joy conference. China has a very active VR ecosystem with a lot to learn but I came away with a clear key thesis: China will be a major first market for VR. High-end VRRead More →

If you want to share your OpenSim build online so that people can explore it with a virtual reality headset, consider Sketchfab. The platform, which has half a million registered users and nearly a million VR models, claims to be the largest 3D content sharing site on the web. For example, theRead More →

While CtrlAltStudio viewer 1.2.6.43412 has provided 3D/VR access for the Oculus Rift in Second Life and OpenSim, there is another way to explore virtual worlds in VR – through VorpX. VorpX allows some applications and games not specifically designed for virtual reality headsets to work in 3D virtual reality mode. With virtual world viewersRead More →

There are many reasons why virtual reality is starting to be used at trade shows, including the fact that VR experiences are both memorable and impactful. At the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration annual conference, in Arizona this past February, we showcased heavy equipment in virtual reality. The attendees got to lookRead More →

When you have a product that weighs several tons, you’re going to think twice before bringing it with you to a conference or trade show. And you’re certainly not going to bring more than one. Traditionally, heavy equipment manufacturers relied on photographs and 3D models to demonstrate their equipment toRead More →

No one can deny the global popularity of sports. Whatever nation you find yourself in is guaranteed to have teams competing in some sport and fans who will consistently tune in to watch them. Virtual reality has been making a lot of waves with all the recent developments it’s seen,Read More →

Virtual reality is now a global phenomena and devices are slowly becoming available to more retail shops — including here, in Nairobi, Kenya, where I am based. This Saturday, I walked over to my local mall, the Thika Road Mall on the Thika Super Highway, where I got to try out theRead More →