Nineteen years ago, a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and accompanying seizures cost Marianna Monentes her driver’s license and landed her in the hospital. After a few years of dealing with medical issues, she found a new path in Second Life where she learned to make virtual jewelry. In 2012, she

This year, self-driving cars started getting pretty good. Deep fakes video started getting pretty convincing. Our virtual assistants got to the point where they could understand us well enough to do some simple things, like tell us the weather or get driving directions home. When it comes to artificial intelligence,

The world of augmented reality is undergoing a major metamorphosis. This past winter, the industry saw the collapse of three major AR players, all of which lacked sufficient funding and were unable to deliver on promises. But fast-forward six months and one of those companies, Meta, has been resurrected by

In July, the team behind the popular Firestorm viewer announced that they planned to split the Second Life and OpenSim versions of their popular virtual world viewer. But after seeing the reaction from the OpenSim community, the developers have reversed their decision. “It made sense to split, but your points

Ever since Google Plus closed down for good earlier this year, the OpenSim community has been scattered across a lot of different platforms — Discord, MeWe, Facebook, and others. So, we used to have more than 2,000 members in the OpenSim Virtual group on Google Plus. Google Plus was public,

Looking to learn a new language, or to have some fun brushing up on a language you’re already familiar with? With so many apps available nowadays, how do you know which one to pick? Mondly’s an app I recently tried, and if you’re looking for an immersive language learning experience,

VR and AR vendors are seeing a lot more growth on the enterprise side of the market, with 46 percent saying that growth has been strong or very strong for enterprise VR, and 47 percent saying the same about enterprise AR and MR. By comparison, only 24 percent are reporting

It seems like something out of a sci-fi story, but you might be able to control a device or talk to a friend just by using your thoughts — and it could happen sooner than you think. External and internal neural interfaces are already in use in the medical field

Analysts at the International Data Corporation are predicting smartphone sales to resume growth in 2020, driven by 5G and emerging markets. Sales declined for the past three years straight, as a result of consumers holding on to their phones longer. “To be clear, we don’t think 5G will be the savior

OpenSim land area went down by nearly 10,000 regions this month, registered users fell by more than 28,000, and active users fell by nearly 2,000. So here’s what happened. First, two major Brazilian grids went offline this month, Virtual Brasil and 3D Love. Virtual Brazil reported 212 actives last month,

I should just cut-and-paste that headline every month. Okay, so…. AviWorlds has a new website and new sky-high land prices. A 15,000-prim region is now $65, for a grid with almost no users, not much content, and a history of shutting down and losing user content on a regular basis.

Hypergrid Business has had exactly two site designs during its ten-year history. From 2009 to 2014, we were using a WordPress theme called The Stars, and were using it even after the company stopped supporting it. Here’s what it looked like when it first launched: Then, in 2014, we switched

Looking for a VR headset but not sure where to start?  Here’s a short but sweet list featuring five of the most popular VR headsets available on Amazon this fall.  There’s a choice for any budget, from under $20 to over $1,000.  With many satisfied customer reviews and answered questions, each of these units has something good to offer.

  If you are in the UK this fall, and are interested in seeing some virtual reality and augmented reality art for free, check out the Alternate Realities touring exhibition that is part of the Sheffield Doc/Fest and will be coming to Brighton in October, Manchester in November and will

When I was emailed a free invitation to the world’s first theater production combining VR and a real world audience, I figured “Why not?”  I’ve always enjoyed watching live plays, from small local productions all the way to a large scale broadway show, and as a fan of video games

FPV drones let you explore the world from a whole new vantage point.

Parrot’s latest drone, the Anafi FPV quadcopter is here and it’s focused on putting you in the driver’s seat, flying as if you were in it.

The sixth annual Tangle Grid Steam Expo is live now and will run until October 1. The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items, and also purchase content using the Gloebit currency. (Learn how to

We asked the best and brightest in virtual reality to share their thoughts on what we can expect from VR in 2020. We’re more than halfway through 2019, so let’s get real about what’s happening in virtual reality. Across the globe, VR is a trend that is rapidly exploding and

There is now a virtual reality enabled version of the Firestorm viewer, developed by Peter Kappler. Austin Tate, director of the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute at the University of Edinburgh, has posted an article about how to install and run it here. Also known as “Ai Austin” in-world, Tate runs

From the editor: The commentary below is from Sam Adama, owner of Caprica Grid, about the Kazakhstan-based freebie grid Sacrarium, which has been accused of hosting stolen content and inappropriate child avatars and accessories. The opinions expressed below are his own. Do not allow yourself to be misled. What the

It took ten years for me to get my first book done, Krim Times. The second one just took eight months! Thank you to all my beta readers who helped make it possible! If you would like to be a beta reader on the next book in the series, “Dressed

The total number of active users on OpenSim’s public grids dropped by just over 500 active users, which is typical of the summer months. But land area was up by nearly 5,000 standard region equivalents, to 88,512, a record high. OpenSim grids also registered 3,948  new users this month, for

The topic of Second Life’s — and OpenSim — default camera offset is an old one. The first Second Life blogger who brought it to people’s attention was Penny Patton, with her seminal post “A Matter of Perspective” from as far back as 2011. Ever since then, various other bloggers

A couple of weeks ago, the Firestorm team announced that they planned to split the Second Life and OpenSim versions of their popular virtual world viewer. “This means we can now issue updates for Second Life and updates for OpenSim independently of each other,” wrote Jessica Lyon, CEO and project

Immersive technology means you are able to place yourself inside a world, not just to peer inside it. Like all of the tech industry, extended reality features a diversity imbalance — is this burgeoning XR sector a chance for us to finally build a diverse corner of technology? And is

The Encore Escape grid will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival in mid-august. The Woodstock 2019 reenactment will take place in real-time, from August 15 to August 18, on 150 virtual acres of land sculpted using US Geological Society topographic maps from 1967, to reflect the

In case you’re thinking that fully immersive virtual reality will require full-body suits of some kind to replicate all the senses, there’s promising research coming out of the medical prosthetics field that shows that we’re well on our way to brain-computer interfaces that will make all that irrelevant. Scientists at

All the stats were up this month on OpenSim’s public grids, including land area, registered users, and active users. Land area was up by 49 standard region equivalents, to 83,516. OpenSim grids also registered 6,649 new users this month, for a new total of 421,087 registered users. The number of

Patriotic Americans — or anyone, really, who’s looking for a party — will find plenty to do on OpenSim grids this week. Begin your day out on Discovery Grid, where the party starts at 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time at discoverygrid.net:8002:Discovery Events 2. Then head over to Tranquility Grid, where the