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Attendees of the New York Comic Con 2014 got a chance to fly virtual dragons, thanks to the folks from DreamWorks Animation. The movie studio created a virtual experiences using Oculus Rift headsets, fans, and vibrating seats to put users on the back of flying dragons, part of the studio’sRead More →

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3rd Rock Grid, a mid-sized closed, commercial grid won’t be closed for too much longer. The next grid upgrade will bring hypergrid functionality in the next two or three weeks, grid founder Terry Ford, also known as Butch Arnold in-world, told Hypergrid Business. “We will have some safeguards in place to notRead More →

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It looks like a little gray box. But when you move it through the air, it sounds more as though you’re moving a whole orchestra around the room in the palm of your hand. Technology developed at the university makes it seem as though the music is coming from thisRead More →

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Zetamex will not be accepting any new customers for the rest of the month, incoming president Richard Lehman said in an announcement posted today on the company’s website. Lehman became the owner of the company in mid-September, but previous CEO Timothy Rogers was slated to continue to serve as actingRead More →

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OSgrid residents who rent their regions from Dreamland Metaverse and who can no longer wait for OSgrid to come back up can have them moved to a private mini-grid, the company announced yesterday. The offer includes a free month of hosting, plus custom asset retrieval. OSgrid has been down forRead More →

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  Robert Bosch, the world’s largest supplier of automotive parts and equipment, is training between 8,000 and 10,000 mechanics on direct-injection and breaking technology — using virtual reality. The company has launched a 750-stop tour with Oculus Rift headsets that allow the technicians to get virtual tours of the insidesRead More →

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SkyLifeGrid founder Josh Boam agreed to provide hosting for the much-troubled AviWorlds grid last month. Now, the two grids are merging — and a third grid, QuickLifeGrid, is joining up as well. As of last month, SkyLife had a little over 100 regions and 36 active users. I have no data onRead More →

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The hypergrid turns six years old on October 26. On that day in 2008, Crista Lopes, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, sent an email to the OpenSim developers mailing list. “I started working on an extension to OpenSim that makes it work in peer-to-peer mode… I’mRead More →

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I just spent an hour Googling around for this because half the tutorials out there are for older versions of GIMP, so they no longer work! But I needed some quick gold and silver textures — and this technique works for silks, as well. Here’s how to do it. CreateRead More →

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Exo-Life, a small social world, has completed its move from Zetamex to Dreamland Metaverse hosting this week. Zetamex and Dreamland Metaverse are the two leading hosting companies for companies, organizations and individuals running private OpenSim grids. How they switched The migration process was very straightforward, Dreamland CEO Dierk Brunner told HypergridRead More →

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Carl Zeiss, a company known for high-end lenses, is now in the virtual reality business. Their headset, the VR One, is currently available for pre-order, with shipping scheduled to begin before Christmas. The first version of the device will support iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones, trays for otherRead More →

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Anyone who has worked on the production side of virtual environments can attest that content creation and scene development is a costly and time consuming endeavor. Depending on the complexity and fidelity of the scene, production can easily become the highest expense of the project. In more traditional virtual environmentsRead More →

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One of the most popular articles on this site is Log your visitors to Google spreadsheet, which I wrote in 2012, and which Zuza Ritt updated the following year. Here’s an easier way to do it, and the script to go with it. Step One: Create the form Sign in toRead More →

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If you live in Houston, Los Angeles, or Washington DC, check out the Oculus Rift experience for the upcoming movie “Interstellar” by director Christopher Nolan. The virtual tour, which began in New York City this week, takes you on a three-minute trip through the spaceship “Endurance” featured in the movie.Read More →

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Update: Craft was back up earlier than expected, on Monday, October 6. See this post for details. OSgrid went down with RAID problems in late August and still hasn’t recovered. The Next Reality Grid was hit a week later. Now Craft, an open, non-profit European grid popular with artists, hasRead More →

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I’ve been feeling left out because so many cool virtual reality accessories coming out are for Android phones. And I have an iPhone. So I was really excited about the $49 AirVR, which just pulled in $25,000 Canadian — of a goal of $20,000 — with 11 days still left to go inRead More →

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Okay, so the field for motion control is wide open. Nobody knows what technology and user interface paradigm will actually take us into mainstream virtual reality. But this probably isn’t it. Watch the video below, where users wear thimbles on their fingers while pointing at computer screens. If you don’tRead More →

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A prototype virtual reality system from Sightline VR‘s Tomáš “Frooxius” Mariančík combines an Oculus Rift, a Leap Motion controller, and an innovative user interface to allow people to use their actual hands as controllers, no gloves required. I really like the in-world touch-screen interface but wonder whether your arms would get reallyRead More →

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The folks at Oculus VR have posted videos for all the keynotes and talks from their Oculus Connect conference two weeks ago, so if you weren’t able to get to San Francisco, here’s your change to catch up on what you missed. Watch the Oculus Connect introduction below. Then theRead More →

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One of the downsides of PC peripheral headsets like the Oculus Rift is that they require high resolution screens and motion sensors, which are expensive. Case-based virtual reality displays that are simply holders for smartphones solve trade that problem for a different one — cell phones don’t have enough powerRead More →

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Bassima Alansary came to virtual worlds in secret. Her family and culture forbid her from having an avatar, or from speaking to men even in virtual settings. She lived in Saudia Arabia, in fear of being punished for the simple desire of wanting to learn to speak English. “When IRead More →

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We all love OpenSim. That’s why we’re here. But some of us aren’t as good at communicating it as others. One reason could be that a large part of the human population, especially the technically savvy and the creative folks, hate the idea of marketing. They’ve been the victims ofRead More →

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Island Oasis pulled in the highest overall scores in the fifth annual OpenSim grid survey, narrowly edging out The Adult Grid for first place. Island Oasis is a top-ten grid by active users, making its high score even more surprising, since scores tend to diminish over time as grids get largerRead More →

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For my hypergate portals, I’ve been using a texture I made a few years back, before I really knew my way around GIMP. So it’s a little jerky. Tonight, I made a new texture and it’s much simpler and easier than the first time I did it. First, you makeRead More →

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The Fifth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey is closing tonight and many of the smaller but still worthwhile grids still haven’t received enough votes. So later on this year, I’m doing another survey — one of favorite hypergrid destinations. What is the best place to go shopping? To hang out withRead More →

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In the face of criticism from GLBT groups, Facebook has rebranded its real names policy as an “authentic name” policy and apologized to the community. “In the two weeks since the real-name policy issues surfaced, we’ve had the chance to hear from many of you in these communities and understand theRead More →

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Reddit, a major tech-oriented social network and news site, has revealed plans to launch its own cryptocurrency backed by shares in the company. Reddit recently raised $50 million in financing, which gives the company a valuation of $500 million. “Led by Sam [Altman, president of Y Combinator, which originally launched Reddit],Read More →

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Press release: The Immersive Technology Alliance Announces Metaverse Working Group AvaCon, Cloudhead Games, SiliconArts, Cubicle Ninjas and More Join Alliance October 2, 2014 – The Immersive Technology Alliance (The ITA) is pleased to announce that AvaCon will be leading a working group pertaining to the development and interoperability of the metaverseRead More →

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Marriott Hotels has found a use for Oculus Rift headsets — teleporting newlyweds to paradise destinations. The video below is set outside New York’s City Hall, but the teleporters will also be visiting DC, Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco.Read More →

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Luxury car maker Lexus may soon become one of the first companies in the UK to use Oculus Rift headsets to give customers test drives and the ability to see how their cars will look with their selected options, according to an article today in Automotive Management. “Things like the virtualRead More →

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It’s going to be a busy month, with Oktoberfest and Halloween parties across the grids. One of the biggest Halloween celebration this year is probably the InWorldz Frightfest, on the InWorldz Event sims which will run from October 17 through Oct 31. Island Oasis will hold its Halloween Party on October 31.Read More →

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OSgrid’s files could not be recovered by a simple cloning of the damaged drives as hoped, the grid announced today. Instead, the grid was forced to pay extra for a full recovery — $2,510 extra, to be exact, using up much of OSgrid’s current balance. According to grid administrator Dan Banner, thatRead More →

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One annoying problem I’ve had with hypergate teleport scripts is that some regions have the right threat level settings to run walk-through scripts, while others don’t, and require a different command to activate the teleport. Users had to know what their threat levels were — and who knows that? AndRead More →

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Las Vegas-based OpenSim hosting company Zetamex is recovering from a security breach that hit its servers late Sunday night. Hackers attempted to use the Zetamex servers to attack random websites. “All data is safe, and upon further investigation nothing was lost, no data was compromised,” acting CEO Timothy Rogers said inRead More →

PolyWorld Woodland Toolkit. (Image courtesy Xin Xin.)

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When I demoed my Oculus Rift game, “Black Hat,” recently, one man told me that he felt sick the previous time he tried a Rift. I convinced him to give it another go and he was surprised by how pleasant the experience was. Quite a few people become nauseous while in the Rift. PartRead More →

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Avatar Social Network has recently passed SL Universe in Alexa traffic rank, making it the leading dedicated platform for avatars to discuss virtual world topics. “Now of course at the moment it may not mean much,” Avatar Social Network founder Arkad Baxton told Hypergrid Business. “But if it’s maintained or getRead More →

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Update: The poll is now closed. See the results here. It’s time again for the OpenSim grid survey, where OpenSim residents can rank their grids and see how they compare to others. If your grid isn’t on the list, write it in and help the world discover new hidden gems.Read More →

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Press release: Second Annual Samsung Developer Conference to Focus on Global Developer Opportunities in Smart Health, Wearables, Virtual Reality and Smart Home SEOUL, South Korea–Samsung Electronics today announced the global Samsung Developer Conference will gather the growing community of developers and partners to explore software and services opportunities in smartRead More →

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The London-based Spellscape grid, a magic-themed role play world, has donated code for filtered inventory exports. This would enable grid owners to allow their users to save their inventories in the form of IAR files, while still protecting exclusive content that is not allowed to leave the grid. Previously, this was only possibleRead More →

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Samsung and Oculus VR are expected to release their collaborative project, the Gear VR, sometime before the end of the year. The headset uses the Galaxy Note 4 to power a completely untethered virtual reality experience and will be Oculus VR’s first actual step into the consumer market, since their own headset isn’t expected outRead More →

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The European Union is giving away more than 80 million Euro — US $103 million — as part of the FIWARE Accelerator Programme for tech startups using cutting-edge technologies such as realXtend, an early off-shoot of OpenSim. The funding is in the form of a direct grant — no equity or loan repayments required.Read More →

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OpenSim is a free, open-source platform for creating immersive, 3D virtual worlds. The user interface looks almost exactly like Second Life. The OpenSim software comes in two major parts. The viewers allow you to explore OpenSim worlds, while the server software allows you to create your own world. I wantRead More →

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Zetamex is no longer the low-cost hosting leader in OpenSim. As of today, if you are looking for the lowest-host regions in OpenSim, you have to go to Canada — specifically, to The Great Canadian Grid. Land prices start at just CAD $5 for a 15,000 prim region with noRead More →

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The AviWorlds grid is coming back up — this time with help from Josh Boam, founder of SkyLifeGrid. “I am going to offer him paid servers and unlimited help,” Boam told Hypergrid Business. According to AviWorlds owner Alex Pomposelli, the grid will be hypergrid-enabled, have its own virtual currency, and willRead More →

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As we wrote before, virtual reality is transforming education in many different ways. But one of the most powerful is that it helps students develop a motivation for learning through virtual rewards that provide real value to the learners, a sense of personal or group success, and personal autonomy. Virtual rewards can replace traditionalRead More →

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The Totem headset from Montreal-based Vrvana, Inc. has launched its Kickstarter this week with a very promising debut — more than $100,000 raised in the first 24 hours. The project is now more than a third of the way to its $350,000 goal with 26 days still left in theRead More →