On the grids in October

October promises to be a busy grid on the OpenSim grids, with German residents celebrating Oktoberfest, some grids celebrating their anniversaries, and everyone celebrating Halloween.

If you’re looking for a group to get you comfortable with hypergrid travels, check out the Hypergrid Adventurers Club, which started up up again last week with a virtual trip to East Africa.

For more information about the group, check out their discussion list, or follow club founder John “Pathfinder” Lester on his Be Cunning and Full of Tricks blog.

You’ll be even more comfortable on the hypergrid with a new viewer. Check out the latest Singularity release, which does away with the 4,096 bug! No more hassles trying to find out how far away your destination is, or searching for an intermediary jump region.

Metropolis goes all out for Oktoberfest

Teleport over to hypergrid.org:8002:Oktoberfest on Metropolis for the hypergrid’s biggest Oktoberfest celebration, Metroberbest.

It starts Tuesday, October 1, at 11 a.m. Pacific (SLT) time — 8:30 p.m. Berlin time — and the main festivities and parties will go on until October 5. Fashion shows, parties, DJs, freebies, fireworks — this celebration has everything.

Thursday night, for example, is the “Flower Power” party with folk and blues music, with attendees encouraged to come in their vintage 60s hippy clothing.

This is also a great opportunity to explore the grid, since many great destinations have info booths set up at the landing area of the Oktoberfest region. If you don’t speak German, don’t worry — many of the signs are bilingual, and many residents either speak English better than you do, or use translators. More info about the event here.

If you like the grid and decide you want to live there, you can connect a self-hosted region for free, get a free homestead plot for three months, or rent a full region from the grid administrators — full instructions and prices here.

Metropolis is an open grid, so you can also rent regions from any third-party OpenSim hosting company, including Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex, Oliveira Virtual Lands or MA Rentals.

Littlefield and OSgrid also celebrated Oktoberfest, but in September. However, the regions are still up if you want to visit them and check out the builds. Hypergrid teleport to Littlefield’s Oktobfest region by pasting lfgrid.com:8002:munich into the search field in Map (CTRL-M in your OpenSim viewer).

Munich region on Littlefield.
Munich region on Littlefield.

On OSgrid, hypergrid teleport to hg.osgrid.org:oktoberfest.

Oktoberfest region on OSgrid.
Oktoberfest region on OSgrid.

Elsewhere on OSgrid

If you missed OSgrid’s Oktoberfest, don’t worry — there’s a lot of other stuff going on. For example, every Sunday at 2 p.m. Pacific (SLT) there’s a live music or other performance event at Virtual Belfast’s Maritime Club. Hypergrid teleport to hg.osgrid.org:80:Maritime Club Belfast.

Belfast-born Tony Kaluarachchi is performing jazz and blues on Sunday, October 6. The week after that is Truelie Ellen. Region owner Stiofain MacTomais posts regular announcements in the OpenSim Virtual Google group. Check it out.

OSgrid is also home to several weekly community events, including an OpenSim developers Office Hours Tuesday at 1 p.m. Pacific (SLT) on Wright Plaza, a BulletSim Hour on Tuesdays on the Bulletsim region at 8 a.m. Pacific, a PrimWords competition every other Sunday at 1 p.m. Pacific on Recreation Plaza, and a Speedbuild competion on odd Thursdays on Recreation Plaza. For more event listings, check the OSgrid events forum.

Halloween on Littlefield

Littlefield grid is celebrating Halloween all month, with its annual Halloween build opening on October 1 on the Stonehaven Party Isle region. It includes a haunted house, haunted hayride, haunted corn field maze, and many other Halloween related attractions. Landmark this region — there will also be  Halloween dances there on Halloween night, October 31 and again on Saturday, November 2 at 8 p.m. Pacific.

The hypergrid teleport address is lfgrid.com:8002:Stonehaven Party Isle.

Bring a Halloween costume, or, if you don’t have one, pick one up from the costume store on the grid’s main mall region, at lfgrid.com:8002:Littlefield.

The Halloween-themed Stonehaven Party Isle on Littlefield grid. (Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.)
The Halloween-themed Stonehaven Party Isle on Littlefield grid. (Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.)
For Sci-Fi fans, Littlefield  has just opened a region full time called DrWho which is a tribute to the Dr Who television series.  It is modeled after a Tardis and encompasses an entire region.  The region was created by Toy McBride and is worth a visit for any Sci-Fi fan.  Teleport to lfgrid.com:8002:DrWho.

The grid also runs a free weekly Blender class run by Aaack Aardvark for those intersted in 3D modeling. It’s on the OBA region, owned by the OpenSimulator Builders Alliance.  These classes are open to the public and are held at 3:00 p.m. Pacific (SLT) on Fridays and 2:00 p.m. Pacific (SLT) on Sundays.  Teleport to lfgrid.com:8002:OBA.

Speakeasy region on the Littlefield Grid. (Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.)
Speakeasy region on the Littlefield Grid. (Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.)

In addition, Littlefield hosts a weekly dance party on the Speakeasy region with a live DJ and dancing.  The party starts every Saturday night at 8 pm p.m. Pacific (SLT) and runs for five or six hours.  Hypergrid visitors are welcome and the region can be accessed via hypergrid at lfgrid.com:8002:Speakeasy.

Spellscape grid plans magical Halloween night

The Halloween party will be held on Saturday, October 26, at 3 p.m. Pacific (SLT) on the witchcraft and vampire-themed Spellscape grid. It’s not hypergrid-enabled, but you can create an account here.

Red Moon Club on Spellscape. (Image courtesy Spellscape.)
Red Moon Club on Spellscape. (Image courtesy Spellscape.)

Cash prizes — in the form of in-world currency — will be awarded to the avatar who wins the “Best Dressed” contest. DJ Stella will be spinning the tunes. The event will be held on the Red Moon Club region and has a “mature” rating.

Island Oasis plans full month of Halloween events

The commercial Island Oasis grid is celebrating fall in a big way this month. Looking for a scary underground maze? Check out the Castaway region, and its Devil’s Grove Haunted Sim build. It will be up all month.

Prefer your mazes with more of a vegetable theme? Visit the Corn Maze on the Summerset Isle region. It might not be as scary, but it will have free gifts hidden inside the maze, plus a big vault at the center. All prizes donated by the grid’s merchants. The Corn Maze will be up all month, with all-new prizes every week.

If you’re looking for carnival rides and other fun activities as well as live music and DJs, visit the Autumn Breeze region and its Fall Festival Sim build, up all month. There are also two contests already underway and ending on October 9, so time is running out. The contests are a Haunted House building contest and a Halloween Costume design contest, with cash prizes in in-world currency.

Fall festival on the Island Oasis grid. (Image courtesy Island Oasis.)
Fall festival on the Island Oasis grid. (Image courtesy Island Oasis.)

On October 30, there will be a Corn Maze Race and a Costume Contest, with in-world cash prizes going out to the winners. A new themed region is opening on October 15, the combat-themed Combat Sim. The grid will hold its Town Hall Meeting on October 6 at 1 p.m. Pacific (SLT).

The grid has launched a cash-back stimulus program, with residents getting 2 percent cash back on all in-world purchases during the previous 30 days. The first payments are scheduled to go out on October 1. There are also free 150-prim shops available to all merchants looking to get started on the grid, and free residential plots available to new residents.

Corn maze. (Image courtesy Island Oasis.)
Corn maze. (Image courtesy Island Oasis.)

Finally, the grid plans to start offering inventory backups to all residents starting on October 25. No word yet on whether these will be full IAR downloads like those available on open grids, or backups made by the grid itself, for use in case of server outages or accidental deletions. Check out the Island Oasis calendar here.

Oktoberfest on InWorldz

Festivities on the commercial InWorldz grid begin on October 1, with DJ G Winz at 2 p.m. on the Oktoberfest stage on  Sim 14 of InWorldz Halloween Fright Fest. Then DJ Tony Foxx is spinning tunes from 4 to 6 p.m. Pacific (SLT).

There are 14 regions dedicated to the Fright Fest this month, so there’s plenty to explore. Plus, dozens of shops have set up booths, so come and check out the merchants. The grid is not hypergrid-enabled, but you can create an account here if you don’t have one yet. Once you have set up an account, visit the InWorldz events page.

There is so much stuff going on I can’t list everything here. And check out this forum post on the Halloween Haunt Shop, for holiday supplies.

Halloween Haunt Shop on InWorldz. (Image credit Smokie Ember.)

Halloween on Avination

The commercial Avination grid is also holding Halloween events. To get ready, visit the Blue Moon region and its Halloween Market starting on October 1 and running the entire month. Some stalls are still available for merchants and creators.

And don’t forget to look up Moonie McLachlan, the resident psychic, for a personal reading.

Then, on October 5, visit the Virtuelles Koeln region for a live performance by Barcelona-based performer Karma Auer.

For more grid events, bookmark the Avination events calendar. Avination has plans to enable hypergrid in the future, once security is in place, but meanwhile you can visit the grid by creating an account.

Virtual Gay Kingdom celebrates Halloween with giant party

Succumbing to the stereotype that gays are fabulous and throw the best parties, Virtual Gay Kingdom is holding weekly parties this month with live music and DJs, to climax on Halloween itself with a giant all-out celebration.

There’s also a new shopping region with a wealth of free content, including textures, animations, scripts, clothing, and avatars — plus a cinema playing horror movies all month.

Unfortunately, you can’t just teleport in and visit.

“Due to people stealing whole regions on Virtual Gay Kingdom grid with copybot viewers, we have deactivated hypergrid for now,” grid owner Andy King told Hypergrid Business. “We wouldn’t mind if people like our stuff and take one thing or another but copying whole regions…??”

Chin up, Mr. King — copybotters can take your stuff, but they can’t take your community.

The grid is growing steadily. “And we are happy to report that our total users are all active users as well,” King said.

Kitely continues to improve marketplace

The on-demand Kitely grid, which launched its Kitely Market in at the end of August, continue to roll out improvements to the system. This includes a Kitely Market-specific workaround to a bug that shows up occasionally with permissions on boxed items (see Kitely blog post here).

The grid also donated a patch that fixed  long-standing bug that occasionally popped up with rezzing coalesced objects, and another patch that fixed a problem with attachments.

Ilan Tochner
Ilan Tochner

Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business that the market was starting to attract high-profile merchants from Second Lifes. These merchants don’t even need to own land on the grid, he added.

“A few weeks ago we added free tools for merchants to help them debug their Kitely Market products in order to make it easier for content creators to bring in content from Second Life. Merchants who don’t own land on Kitely can still use these tools for free via the open access Kitely Merchants Sandbox.”

Today, the Kitely Market contains 904 active products, with 1,235 variation, up from around 700 items when it first launched. One of these new merchants is Amiryu Hosoi, the creator of the popular Japanese-themed Hosoi Ichiba regions in Second Life, who has moved several dozen of her 1,000-plus products over to Kitely and is working on the rest.

Hosoi Ichiba store on Kitely Market. (Image courtesy Kitely.)
Hosoi Ichiba store on Kitely Market. (Image courtesy Kitely.)

“Amiryu is taking full advantage of Kitely Market’s potential for increasing her sales and is offering her content to users of all hypergrid-connected grids with Copy/Modify/Export permissions,” said Tochner. “Her prices are listed in US Dollars and she’s already sold enough in the few days since she opened her Kitely Market store to cover the cost of hosting her unlimited free access world in Kitely for several months, which she uses to showcase her products in-world.”

Kitely Market doesn’t currently support hypergrid delivery of its products, but that feature will be added “in a few weeks,” Tocher said. The grid also debuted a new resident-built Welcome Center. This region isn’t just to outfit new avatars. It is also used to showcase Kitely regions and merchants, and is the site of weekly Kitely Mentor Group meetings. The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 2, at 1 p.m. Pacific (SLT).

Showcase of Kitely destinations on Kitely's Welcome Center region.
Showcase of Kitely destinations on Kitely’s Welcome Center region.

There is no charge to visit the Welcome Center.  Some regions on Kitely cost money to visit, in the form of Kitely Credits, if the region owners so decide. Region owners can also choose to pick up the access costs for their visitors, or buy an unlimited-access region.

Vanish launches podcast

You might know Vanish Seriath from OpenSim Creations, a content sharing site and grid that he founded.

Or you might remember him from his defense of content sharing at the OpenSimulator Community Conference on September 6. (Check out the video below for the entire presentation, which I moderated, and where Avination grid’s Melanie Thielker talked about the content protection features available in OpenSim.)

Now Vanish is hosting a regular bi-weekly podcast, as well, called The Missing Image. The show is taped in front of a live studio audience on the Mare Terribile region of Metropolis, accessible via hypergrid teleport at hypergrid.org:8002:mare terrible.

You can visit the OpenSim Creations grid at opensim-creations.com:9000.

HewittSim hosts a Greek theater

The education grid HewittSim is back up and running, featuring a new build of the Theater of Dionysus, located near the Parthenon.

Erik Nauman
Erik Nauman

The Hewitt School‘s eighth grade teacher, Colleen Britt, will be using it with her classes over the course of the next three trimesters. This isn’t the first time the school’s students have ventured into OpenSim.

“The Parthenon temple was actually built by students a couple years ago in a math class,” Erik Nauman, the school’s technology coordinator, told Hypergrid Business.

Three years ago, Nauman took three groups of fifth graders on a virtual field trip to Mars. (The OAR and instructions for this build are available here.)

Theater of Dionysus. (Image courtesy Erik Nauman.)
Theater of Dionysus. (Image courtesy Erik Nauman.)

The school’s grid is not hypergrid-enabled, since it’s used for classes. But the Parthenon build is also available for download, on Nauman’s Open Blackboard blog.

Avalonia Estate plans weekly Sunday events

The start-up Avalonia Estate grid, which serves the femdom community, held its grand opening party on September 15 and will now be hosting weekly Sunday events.

“Being a small and niche grid, I wasn’t expecting a great turn out, may be three or four people,” grid owner Justin Ireman told Hypergrid Business. “So I was very pleasantly surprised to see 15 people turn up!”

Upcoming events will be listed on the grid’s events page, he said. In addition to the Sunday night party, there might also be a lower-key mid-week event, on Wednesdays.

Avalonia Estate's grand opening party. (Image courtesy Justin Ireman.)
Avalonia Estate’s grand opening party. (Image courtesy Justin Ireman.)

Month of live music

For live music and DJs, check out the Virtual Highway calendar for October — which, by the way, is one of the better-looking calendars out there, in my opinion — and the 3rd Rock Grid calendar for October.

Maria Korolov