What I learned about virtual worlds by helping found OpenSim
When we started OpenSim many years ago (back with MW, lbsa71 and many others who have since drifted on), we had grand ambitions. Yes, it started as a fun tinkering project that we spun...
Community leaders evaluating Google Plus alternatives
Since Google announced that they were shutting down their Google Plus social platform by end of next summer, organizers of OpenSim-related communities on that platform have begun searching for an alternative. Google Plus was...
Google Plus to shut down by next summer
Google has announced today that it is shutting down the Google Plus social network for consumers. The platform has been popular for OpenSim users to share news about the hypergrid. OpenSim Virtual has more than 2,000...
Virtual Library opens branches in OpenSim
The Second Life-based Community Virtual Library is opening two branches in OpenSim next summer, on the Kitely and Avacon grids. The two new library branches will be CVL Hypergrid Resource Libraries with content designed...
Memorial for OpenSim developer this Saturday
Kristopher Therrien, known as Quill Littlefeather to the OpenSim community, passed away this month. His family will be holding a memorial service on Saturday, September 29 at 11 a.m. at People’s United Methodist Church in...
You can now buy and sell High Fidelity currency
High Fidelity, the new virtual world platform started by Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale, now allows its users to convert its virtual currency to real-world cash. “This opens the possibility for people to...
Register by Sep. 30 for this fall’s Rockliffe conference
Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference to Return to San Francisco on November 9-10, 2018 SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Annual Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference ‘The Future Present’ is happening November 9-10, 2018 at the Fort Mason...
VR shows value in enterprises
Survey: Enterprise Companies Seeing Strong Return on Investment in VR & AR LONDON – Businesses working in areas such as automotive, construction, manufacturing and retail are seeing a good return on their investment in...
Breedable horses arrive on the Tag Grid
Breadables creator oYo, formerly based on the now-defunct InWorldz grid, has found a new home — the Tag Grid. The True to Life horses have concluded a successful beta test and will be officially...
Elf Clan finds new home on the hypergrid
Elf Clan, one of the largest themed communities in OpenSim, has found a new home after the collapse of InWorldz. It will now be headquartered on OSgrid, with hypergrid linked locations on DigiWorlds, Kitely,...
OSgrid fundraiser starts Sep. 21
OSgrid, the largest grid in the OpenSim metaverse, will hold a donation carnival this month, staring on Friday, Sep. 21 and running through Sep. 28. “We are hoping to raise enough this year...
Pornhub Awards Show is in VR this week
Pornhub Awards Show to bring Virtual Reality to the Masses Combining live VR streaming and a massively multiuser VR virtual world will deliver two breakthroughs for the premier of the Pornhub Awards Show on September...
InWorldz official successor will be Islandz
Beth Reischl, founder and owner of the now-defunct InWorldz grid, is starting a new grid, called Islandz, she told New World Notes yesterday. The new URL has been purchased, islandzvw.com, though there is nothing up...
Reverie Season 1 Review: Now I’m Scared of VR
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...
This fall’s AvatarFest to be the last
Citing changes in the social fabric of the hypergrid, Han Held announced in the official AvatarFest Google Plus group that 2018 would be the last year of AvatarFest, the annual OpenSim festival celebrating end...
Art exhibit opens on Metropolis next month
The 1st Digital Bienniale immersive interactive art exhibit will open to the public on September 20 on the Metropolis Grid. There is also companion physical world event organized by Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary...
The Adult Grid rebrands as Tag Grid
Editor: This is a contributed announcement from Tag Grid. The Adult Grid has changed its name to Tag Grid. We can still be reached on our old URL and we are in the process...
Why OpenSim is good for content creators
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...
Poll: Where are InWorldz folks going?
DigiWorldz and Discovery Grid were the two top destinations of former InWorldz residents looking for a new home, with respondents almost evenly split at 38 and 36 percent, respectively. Kitely was in third place,...
Grids welcome InWorldz refugees
OpenSim grids are welcoming former InWorldz residents with open arms, offering technical support to get their OARs uploaded, discounts on region rentals, and even free homes and stores. Scroll down for details about special...
Atek Grid seeks new business partner
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...
InWorldz residents say goodbye
The lights went out at midnight. InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful OpenSim grids, shut down last night. And it ended in a way fitting for a social grid — with a...
InWorldz co-founder has doubts about grid’s future
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...
InWorldz residents raise thousands to keep grid alive
Update: As of July 25, the GoFundMe campaign has been halted, after having raised more than $16,000 — just shy of the $17,000 goal. It’s unclear what is happening now. The official InWorldz announcement...
InWorldz to shut down end of week
InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful commercial grids, is shutting down this week, owner Beth Reisch announced today, citing financial difficulties. According to Reischl, travel-related communication problems, bureaucratic mistakes and other issues...
Kitely to offer virtual private grids
Kitely will soon offer the option of hosting Virtual Private Grids on top of the Kitely grid, the company announced this week. According to the company, this new offering will enable groups and organizations...
Tranquility Grid launches its first Gloebit mall
Tranquility has unveiled their newest addition, Halcyon, a Gloebit-enabled region with a hypergrid shopping mall. It has more than 20 stores available for creators who wish to sell to the whole OpenSim community. Three different...
GDPR compliance stymies hypergrid travelers
After Europe’s new data privacy regulations, GDPR, went into effect on May 25, OpenSim users saw a flurry of requests from grid owners asking them to agree to new privacy policies. Sometimes, those messages...
Oculus Go hits the sweet spot
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...
YrGrid tries, fails with Kickstarter to save grid
The gambling-focused, Bitcoin-friendly YrGrid has been down and out lately — and it’s looking like that might be permanent. We did see it online last month, so it’s still on our active grids list,...
Hypergrid Business is winding down
You might have noticed that the volume of coverage in Hypergrid Business has fallen over the past few months. Well, it’s about to get worse. First, I’m cutting the monthly stats report. It’s a...
Welcome to GDPR. What does it mean for grids?
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...
What GDPR means for our readers
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...
Twice as many grids are using Gloebits than Podex
Twice as many grids now use Gloebit-powered payments compared to an older service, Podex, due to Gloebit’s easier set up and overall lower costs. Gloebits reports that it now has close to 2,000 account users...
OpenSim land, active users down this month
The public OpenSim grids lost the equivalent of nearly 4,000 regions, for a new total land area of 80,671 standard region equivalents. The number of active monthly users dropped by 2,580, to reach a total...
Multi-passenger airplanes arrive on DigiWorldz
Interested in taking a flight without worrying about the engine blowing out? You can now fly virtually, on an airplane filled with other passengers, on the Kea Nation enclave on the DigiWorldz grid. Kea Nation...
GreekLife launches grid hosting service
The GreekLife grid has been around for eight years, but it has really started to take off in the last two, now reporting thousands of regions and active users. Now the grid owners are...
Outages plague grids this month; Speculoos returns
OpenSim land area and users rose slightly this month, despite outages and maintenance on several grids. Atek was down for a while before later resuming, as was Virtuality Grid, while Kinky Grid also went...
CGTrader looks to make VR more welcoming for women
With sexism still strong in the gaming industry, a Europe-based 3D model marketplace is looking to create a welcoming place for women developers in the surging virtual reality industry. With almost as many women...
Grids try to find balance on child avies
Child avatars are a sensitive topic in virtual worlds. For some users, the presence of child avatars opens the possibility of inappropriate sexual roleplay, which is at best extremely creepy and, at worst, illegal....
Virtual learning conference shorter, VR-focused
This year’s Virtual World Best Practices in Education 2018 conference, which ended last week in Second Life, was shorter than last year — three days, instead of four — and attracted about 1,100 attendees,...
High Fidelity launches new VR blockchain alliance
Blockchain — the technology powering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — is coming to virtual reality. Today, High Fidelity, the new VR platform from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, announced the launch of the Virtual...
Atek Grid announces cryptocurrency plans
The Atek Grid has launched a new cryptocurrency, which will become the primary in-world currency, grid owner Frank Corsi told Hypergrid Business. The new currency, Dosh Coins, is based on blockchain technology. This is similar...
OpenSim land rally continues
OpenSim land area continued to increase gaining a total of 3,400 standard region equivalents this month — after gaining more than 9,000 regions last month. The number of active users also increased by 1,300....
Sinespace launches VR beta
Sinespace, a virtual world platform from OpenSim co-founder Adam Frisby, launched its virtual reality beta last week for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.
New LSL Editor released
LSL Editor, software that helps users write scripts more easily for Second Life and OpenSim objects, has been updated with more support for OpenSim functions. With the new version 2.56, users can also create...
Immersive Reality closing due to regulations, lack of interest
The Immersive Reality grid, founded in late 2014, will close at the end of April due to new regulations and a lack of interest, owner Bob Reite announced yesterday. Land and currency sales will...
Users, land up this month on OpenSim grids
OpenSim active user numbers hit a new high of 34,908 users this month. Land area also went up and is now at the equivalent of 80,175 standard regions, reversing a couple of months of...
Sacrarium grid removes illegal content, misbehaving users
The Sacrarium grid has taken down illegal content after receiving complains from users through emails and forums, and removed users who allegedly engaged in illegal behavior with child avatars. Neustadt, a region in Sacrarium grid...
Whats Next For Tim?
[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...
How Kitely responded to infringing content rumors
About a week ago, a social media post accused a region on the Kitely grid of distributing infringing content. Strictly speaking, any infringement complaint needs to be made by the original content creator, through...
Keng City honors Black History Month with new museum on DigiWorldz
Keng City will open a new museum on Wednesday, February 1 on the DigiWorldz grid to celebrate Black History Month. The museum will showcase African-American accomplishments and events throughout history starting with the slave trade...
Maritime Club celebrates 10th anniversary
OpenSim’s longest-running live music venue — Maritime Club Belfast — is celebrating its tenth anniversary this weekend. The party starts at the club location on OSgrid on Sunday, January 28, at 1 p.m. Pacific Time. The club is...
OpenSim stats drop with holidays, reporting issues
OpenSim land area fell by the equivalent of 8,667 standard regions, and active users dropped by 3,473 due to combination of school holidays and fewer grids reporting stats than in the last couple of...
Does your grid need to prepare for GDPR?
This May, a major new regulation goes into effect — the European General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. It affects any company anywhere in the world that collects data on Europeans. And yes, that includes...
2018 OpenSim Sentiment Survey
The results of the 2018 OpenSim sentiment survey are in, and the responses are, in general more optimistic than pessimistic about OpenSim’s future, and in general planned to more active this year. Readers were...
InWorldz merchants concerned about future
Update: The Chamber of Commerce group mentioned in this article has been shut down, according to a source. Merchants on the closed, commercial InWorldz grid are concerned about perceived drop in users and commercial...
Top OpenSim communities of 2017
One of my top sources of OpenSim-related news this year has been OpenSim Virtual and similar Google Plus communities. Many grids also have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but I find that Google Plus...
Kitely was OpenSim’s most valuable grid in 2017
One of the most important numbers in OpenSim is how many new people sign up for accounts each month. New people means new customers for merchants, new creators and performers who help improve quality...
YrGrid blames Bitcoin problems on vendor
YrGrid denies allegations that it is refusing redemptions in order to profit from the recent spike in Bitcoin prices. Instead, the problem is caused by their Bitcoin wallet service provider, said the grid, which...
Users up, land down for holidays
OpenSim’s public grids reached a new high in active users this month, as traffic went up more than 7 percent, or nearly 2,500 actives. There are now 34,881 active monthly users on the grids that...
Gacha creators frustrated by lax Second Life oversight
Second Life, with a much bigger economy than that of OpenSim, also has a much bigger problem with copyright infringement than OpenSim. For instance, copybotters have long been using specialized third party viewers to...
Net neutrality is dead. Why that’s bad for OpenSim grids
Well, they’ve done it. Net neutrality is dead. I first wrote about net neutrality in June of 2014. At that time, we all had a unique opportunity to voice our concerns in a democratic...
Core devs: OpenSim needs new viewer, new people
OpenSimulator’s core developers said that they’ve gone pretty much as far as they can with the server code, and what the project needs is new people — and a new viewer. “My own kids...
OpenSim conferences opens today
The OpenSimulator Community Conference opened this morning. This is the fifth year that AvaCon is running the conference, celebrating ten years of OpenSim. It is being live streamed on YouTube. From 7 to 8...
Dreamland Metaverse tops hosting survey for fifth year
OpenSim hosting company Dreamland Metaverse received the highest scores for performance, support, stability and its user interface in this year’s hosting providers survey for the fourth year in a row, followed by Zetamex Network, DigiWorldz...
Kitely lets merchants re-deliver purchases to residents of closed grids
What happens if you’re resident on a grid, buy a bunch of products from the Kitely Market for your avatar on that grid, and the grid gets shut down and your avatar inventory is lost?...
Tangle outage and upgrade delays winter expo
The submission deadline for Tangle Grid‘s Winter Picture Contest has been extended to Sunday, December 17 following an outage that saw the grid offline for more than a week. The previous deadline was December...
How to become a Google Street View trusted photographer
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...
Zetamex’s new low hosting prices
First, I’d like to apologize. I first noticed that Zetamex had posted its OpenSim hosting prices over the summer, and meant to do a story then, even contacting the company and some of its...
Cool AR apps to try with Apple’s new phones
Apple has lagged behind in the virtual and augmented reality race so far. Their phones can be used for some low-end VR, via the Cardboard platform from Google, but they haven’t had anything of...
Places to visit in-world this holiday season
Grids are getting an early start on the holidays this year, with a number of winter-themed regions already up and ready to visit, and a full calendar of events planned across the hypergrid. Skiing...
OpenSim land area hits new high of 88,000 regions
OpenSim land area grew by the equivalent of 3,905 standard regions last month, a new record high of 88,225 regions. This was despite the fact that several large grids have stopped publishing land area...
Content theft quietly demoralizing for creators
Although many creators do not speak up, theft and illegal distribution of their content is hurting their morale and creativity, and may even be driving some out of OpenSim altogether. One creator of mesh...
Can VR stop sexual harrassment?
With all the latest news headlines about sexual harassment, Los Angeles based startup Vantage Point thinks it can make a difference with virtual reality. The company has developed a training program aimed at universities and...
Littlefield leads in OpenSim grid survey
More than 400 responses came in for this year’s Seventh Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and Littlefield received the highest overall scores, followed by AllCity, Virtual Brasil, and DigiWorldz. DigiWorldz also had the largest number of readers who said it...
OpenSim land area drops due to grid changes
The total land area of the public OpenSim grids fell by more than 1,000 regions this month as ZanGrid shut down and Genesis Metaverse moved its hosting. Total active users numbers continued to rise,...
Things to do in-world this Halloween season
There is a lot you can do or a lot of places you can travel to in-world during this Halloween festive period, with many OpenSim grids running Halloween-related events such as hunts and parties,...
Tangle’s Halloween Expo starts today
Tangle Grid is hosting the Halloween Expo starting this Sunday, October 15 at the Expo Isle region where different creators from all around OpenSim will come show off, sell and promote their Halloween-related items...
How to get support for VR music content
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...
ZanGrid to close after five years as an OpenSim grid
One of oldest commercial OpenSim grids is shutting down at the end of this month. ZanGrid was founded five years ago as Zandramas grid, and is one of the top 25 grids by both popularity...
Genesis Metaverse leaves DigiWorldz hosting
Barely a year after Genesis Metaverse stopped hosting its own grid infrastructure and moved to hosting services from DigiWorldz, the grid has decided to go it on its own again, according to a post. The move...
Gloebits proposes money module for OpenSim viewers
Gloebit has built, tested and proposed to Firestorm viewer team, a patch that, if implemented, will bring multi-currency support in OpenSim and eliminate the need for Gloebit users to do complicated coding and configuration...
OSgrid holds fundraiser
OSgrid, OpenSim’s largest and oldest virtual world, launched a fundraising campaign today. The OSgrid Carnival Fundraiser kicked off today at 10 a.m. Pacific and will run until 10 p.m. Pacific today on the grid’s Event Plaza region....
AviWorlds reopens after burying hatchet with former partner
AviWorlds is back online after owner Alexsandro Pomposelli put aside his differences with SkyLife owner Josh Boam. The two had an acrimonious dispute last year after AviWorlds went down due to server issues and other problems....
AvatarFest opens Saturday
This year’s AvatarFest, an annual celebration of OpenSim creativity, opens its doors this Saturday, September 23, at noon Pacific time. The third annual festival begins with two days of entertainment this weekend, followed by...
OpenSim conference seeks presenters, volunteers, and sponsors
This year’s OpenSimulator Community Conference will be held on Dec. 9 and 10, and applications for volunteers and presenters are now open. Organized as a joint production by core developers of OpenSimulator and AvaCon, this...
OpenSim land area and active users up
OpenSim’s public grids gained 2,546 active users this month, and land area increased as well, by the equivalent of 2,475 standard region. OSgrid gained the largest land area — 4,440 new standard region equivalents, followed...
5 marketing videos to check out in VR
If you’ve been keeping up with media based content marketing — and hopefully you have — then you know the current trend is to publish and share immersive, 360-degree videos. While a 360-degree video...
Generators help grids stay up through Florida hurricane
Several OpenSim grids using a Florida-based data center for their hosting have been able to stay up during Hurricane Irma with the help of backup generators. The grids include DigiWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, Genesis Metaverse,...
Festi’Avi 2017 submissions due end of month
Franco grid is calling on as many OpenSim creators as possible to submit their avatar creations for the fourth annual Festi’Avi 2017 event before the deadline at the end of September. The event is hypergrid-enabled...
VR gives new life to old games
Virtual reality can breathe new life into old games, says video game expert Patrick Soulliere. And Soulliere knows about games — he’s organized more than 100 online e-sports tournaments for Micron Technology that feature...
Second Life’s cloud move could lower land prices, hurt OpenSim
Second Life is moving its architecture to the cloud, Linden Lab announced last week, and that might help them offer lower land prices. The reason? On-demand cloud-based regions would only be up and running...
High Fidelity’s content protection plan has high costs
[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...
Educators make lemonade with Virtual Worlds
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...
OpenSim actives down but land area up this month
OpenSim’s public grids gained nearly 1,500 regions this month despite the summer season, but total active numbers were down by just over 1,700. The 257 currently active grids reported a record high area, totaling...
AltspaceVR is not dead after all
AltspaceVR, a social virtual reality platform, has come back from the dead. A couple of weeks ago, the company announced that it was shutting down because it ran out of funding. Today, it announced...
Educators sour on virtual worlds
Educators are souring on virtual worlds, as evidenced by declining participation in online forums, in virtual conference attendances and education-related destinations on the Second Life grid. For example, Second Life Educators, the forum for...
Renamed SineSpace holds summer festival this weekend
SineSpace — formerly known as just Space — will hold a summer festival this coming weekend, August 19 and 20. The festival will include contests, live music, carnival games, a roller-coaster, movies, fireworks, and...
Different way to scrape stats
As you folks know, I’ve been struggling with collecting all the stats from all the grids every month, and, earlier this year, have almost fully automated the process, using an extremely jury-rigged Filemaker script....
Summer sale on Daydream VR apps
Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform is currently my favorite. It’s built into the next generation of the Android operating system, and headsets cost under $100, making it widely accessible. And the platform’s motion controller...
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