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 the equivalent of 83,190 standard regions.

The biggest land gainer this month was Atek Grid with 703 new regions, followed by DigiWorldz with 495 regions, Discovery Grid with 384, OSgrid with 168 regions and Kitely with 164 regions.

There weren’t huge surprises in the loss of land area this month except with Virtual World Grid that lost a total of 424 standard regions. It was followed by Craft World with a loss of 82 regions, AllCity 51 regions, and Sanctuary with 39.

Land area of OpenSim’s public grids, in standard region equivalents. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Kitely was in the lead this month when it came to registering new users, adding 1,477 new people to its rolls. InWorldz was in second place with 1,166, followed by OSgrid with 468.

OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.

A list of hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here. And find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Popularity

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is: the busier, the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience… you get the idea.

Active user counts often go down in the summer, and this month was a prime example. More than 70 grids reported declines in their active users, with the education-focused Eureka World down 509 users, the most of any grid.

In addition, Craft World lost 231 actives and another education-focused grid, Islands of Enlightenment lost 105.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. Metropolis: 3,732 active users (HG hypergrid.org:8002)
  2. OSgrid: 3,583 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  3. AllCity: 1,871 active users (HG login.allcity.com.br:8002)
  4. DigiWorldz: 1,514 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  5. Island Oasis: 1,271 active users (HG islandoasisgrid.biz:8002:island Oasis)
  6. Kitely: 1,108 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  7. Lost Paradise: 969 active users (HG lpgrid.com:8002)
  8. Dorena’s World: 844 active users (HG dorenas-world.de:8002)
  9. Genesis MetaVerse: 735 active users (HG grid.genesismetaverse.com:8002)
  10. Virtual-EPI: 664 active users (HG 209.126.208.163:9024:virtual event planners int)
  11. Exo-Life: 664 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  12. Craft World: 637 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  13. DreamNation: 585 active users
  14. GreekLife: 539 active users (HG hg.grid-greeklife.info:8002)
  15. Logicamp: 515 active users (HG logicamp.org:8002)
  16. Virtual Brasil: 476 active users (HG mundo.virtualbrasil3d.com.br:8002)
  17. YrGrid: 414 active users (HG grid.yrgrid.com:8002)
  18. Party Destination Grid: 330 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  19. 3rd Rock Grid: 322 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
  20. FrancoGrid: 320 active users (HG hg.francogrid.org:80)
  21. Anettes Welt: 308 active users (HG anettes-welt.de:8002)
  22. ZanGrid: 301 active users (HG login.zangrid.ch:8002)
  23. Nextlife World: 301 active users (HG nextlife-world.de:8002)
  24. Dynamic Worldz: 269 active users (HG grid.dynamicworldz.com:8002)
  25. Genesis Global Journey: 269 active users (HG ggj.world:8002)

Kitely delivers to record high 203 grids

Kitely now has 10,205 product listings in the Kitely Market  containing 19,400 product variations of which 14,645 are exportable. The market has delivered to 203 OpenSim grids to date.

Ever since Kitely turned on the hypergrid export functionality, exportable content has been growing at a much faster rate than non-exportables, as merchants increasingly become comfortable to selling to the hypergrid.

However, non-hypergrid grids can also accept Kitely Market deliveries.

VirTec network records slight drop in merchants, purchases

VirTec vending platform recorded a slight decrease in the number of merchants from 55 last month to 49 this month and from $360 to $300 in dollar equivalents of transactions this month.

Merchant and revenue data at VirTec network. (VirTec data.)

Gloebits

The volume of transactions in Gloebits crossed the 5,000 mark in July, an increase of 33 percent over June. The number of users also reached a new high of 936, which was an increase of 14 percent compared to last month.

Increase in the volume of transactions and user accounts in Gloebits. (Gloebits Data.)

Meanwhile, more grids have continued to adopt the Gloebits multi-grid currency, with the latest additions being Encore Escape, World of Ascension, Discovery Grid, Quiet Harbor, Gothic Cross, HD Skin World, Logicamp and Devworks, Gnosis Grid, That Place and ZetaWorlds.

Here is a full list of Gloebits apps partners.

Get some freebies at Arts Manhas

Arts Manhas, a shop on the Virtual Brasil 3D grid, is offering mesh male and female avatars and male and female clothing and hair and other freebies, sourced from OS Grid, Metropolis, Adachi and all of freebie shops around OpenSim.

(Image courtesy Art Manhas.)

The sourcing and licensing information is a comfort to both purchasers and content creators.

There have been complaints recently about some freebie stores distributing content of unknown origin.

Grid owners should also ensure that the stores being promoted on their websites or social media are reliable and check and work with other store owners to check for license terms and provenances.

The hypergrid address is mundo.virtualbrasil3d.com.br:8002:Arts Manha.

Island Oasis to retain in-world staff after ownership change

Island Oasis has a new owner—  David Cannon, CEO and Owner of Mystic Darkstone LLC.

But the grid will retain its current in-world support staff, including greeters, mentors and hosts.

The new COO is Liz Harrington, also known as Sophia Paolino in-world, who was the grid director and director of marketing, according to an announcement. She will be the contact person for all official news concerning both Island Oasis and Mystic Darkstone LLC.

“We have also assembled a team of both new and old personnel to make sure your experience while on the Island Oasis grid is the best that it can be,” said Cannon. “I want to thank Damean and Sugar Paolino for what they have created in Island Oasis, it is a sound foundation for us to build upon into the future.”

DreamWorld reaches 1,500 installs

DreamWorld, an easy way to create a mini OpenSim grid on a home comptuer, has now been installed more than 1,500 times. Each of the installs comes with a default four-by-four variable-sized region, putting the total land area at about 24,000 regions, according to a post by owner Fred Beckhusen.

“Some will do less, many do much, much more,” Beckhusen told Hypergrid Business. “I have seen one sim running 45 var regions.”

Of those installs, 668 are hypergrid-enabled private mini-grids, he said.

You can read about my experience with DreamWorld here.

Transitions

World of Ascension is now in open beta until September 5. World of Ascension is hypergrid enabled and uses Gloebits for the currency system.

We also added Mare World, an adult grid that is also hypergrid-enabled.

The following 26 grids were marked as suspended this month: Arrival Nation, Bartelbe, Digital Multiverse, Hakusan, Hyperica, Infinite Metaverse Alliance, Ipsofacto, Joy, Keystone Grid, KoolPheller Estates, Lighthouse Point, Majickal Network, MajWorld, PaderGrid, Play Grid BR, Radiola, ScienceCircle, SimudyneGrid, Simugrid, Sinful Grid, Survgrid Otago, Tellus, That Place, TheGrid, Virtual Dreamz, and World 3D.

Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.

And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.

By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.

In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be undercounted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.

August Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,248 different publicly-accessible grids, 257 of which were active this month, and 182 of which published their statistics.

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.