Grids reach new peak with moderate growth

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The top 40 OpenSim grids now have a total of 18,498 regions — up by 1,539 regions from a month ago. Meanwhile, total registered users grew by almost 12,000 to 206,098.

Total regions on top 40 OpenSim grids.

Avination, InWorldz lose ground

Both of the top commercial grids — Avination and InWorldz — lost regions over the past month.

Avination is now the large commercial social grid with 868 regions, down 86 regions from July. InWorldz is close behind with 842 regions, down by 133.

Avination was the most popular grid with users, with 5,956 unique visitors last 30 days. OSGrid was second, with 3,316 active users. InWorldz does not release active user counts.

AlphaTowne and Your Alternate Life were the only two other grids that reported more than 1,000 active users this past month, but those numbers may be mistaken since these grids reported 1,596 and 3,112 total registered users, respectively. On average, grids have ten to 15 times as many registered users as active users.

InWorldz, Avination both lose regions.

Kitely, an on-demand grid, gained 145 regions for a new total of 1,050.

The biggest surprise this month is the German-language science fiction-themed grid, The Other Universe, which took over NexXtLife. At 751 regions, The Other Universe is now the sixth-largest grid, right after InWorldz, in its first appearance on our top 40 list.

We’re also tracking several other new grids, including New Genres Grid, slitalia, Avatar Realms and Infinite Grid. The last one, at 97 regions, made our top-40 list this week.

Elsewhere on the hypergrid

There is currently no central system for tracking OpenSim grids. The OpenSimulator.org website does not track downloads, and grid owners don’t have to register their grids with anyone — unlike websites, where owners have to apply for domain names. The OpenSimulator grid list is out of date and incomplete.

If there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com.

In addition, a single download of the server software can be used to set up several grids, or can be used to set up no grids at all.

However, there are statistics for one popular version of OpenSim, the Diva Distro, a four-region, hypergrid-enabled, pre-configured minigrid.

The Diva Distro has been downloaded 488 times over the past month, another record high. The total number of Diva Distro downloads now stands at 7,452.

Diva Distro is also part of the popular Sim-on-a-Stick, a version of OpenSim packaged to run on a USB stick. According to Sim-on-a-Stick creator Ener Hax, the USB-friendly OpenSim package has been downloaded 745 times over the past month — bringing the total of these downloads to more than 2,956.

Meanwhile, according to data from The Hypergates, there are now 546 active hypergates on 45 different grids, an increase of 12 gates over the previous month.

In addition, the number of people using the gates has grown, though not the number of hypergrid jumps. There were 4,735 hypergrid jumps made during the past four weeks, a decrease of 1,081 over the previous month. And the number of hypergrid travelers increased as well, by 160 travelers, to 3,077, compared to the previous month.

Not all hypergates are part of The Hypergates network — anyone can create their own hypergrid by dropping a script on any object, such as our touch or walk-through single-destination hypergate script. In addition, many people do hypergrid jumps without using any gate at all, simply by typing a hypergrid address into Map-Search. There is currently no way of tracking that traffic.

Second Life shrinks

Meanwhile, Second Life continued to lose regions this month, down 96 regions to 31,142, and down 431 regions since August 2010, according to data from Grid Survey.

According to Second Life’s official second quarter economics report, the number of new daily user registrations is now around 16,000. However, total hours spent in-world fell from 104 million in the first quarter to 103 million in the second quarter — and this was down substantially from 116 million in the first quarter of 2010.

The average number of economic participants is also down, with 464 thousand in the second quarter, down from 466 thousand last quarter, and 496 thousands in the first quarter of 2010.

August Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids

We are now tracking a total of 170 different publicly-accessible grids, 87 of which reported their region counts this month.

The raw data for this month’s report is here.

 

 Anastasia Trombly contributed to this report.

Maria Korolov
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