July actives down on 3D Love, ZetaWorlds stat drops

The number of active users on OpenSim dropped by around 3,500 users this month, mostly due to stats problems on the adult Brazilian 3D Love grid, which reported more than 3,000 active users last month but none this month. Another big drop was a loss of over 1,000 actives on ZetaWorlds.

When there’s a single-month drop of that size, there’s usually a problem with servers on the part of the grid, not necessarily a sign of a general downturn in usage. Neither grid has reported any downtime this past month.

The total OpenSim land area expanded by more than 800 regions.

OSgrid got the highest increase in land area in terms of the number of regions added in the last 30 days with 1,541 new regions, followed by Tag Grid with 168 new regions, Virtual Dream with  114, DigiWorldz with 71, and ZetaWorlds with 46 new regions.

OpenSim land area has been increasing steadily since January this year. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

 

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid distribution of OpenSim, or private company or school grids who used other installers.

There are 4,250 Dreamgrids that have been booted up since DreamWorlds cleared the database earlier this year. This does not include DreamGrids attached to other grids such as OsGrid, Metropolis, or to a DreamGrid. 1,198 used an IP or a non-Outworldz.net name.  Roughly 500 to 600 unique DreamGrids are booted at least once each month.

There have been 6,829 grids of any type that have been crawled by the Hyperica robot since Jan 1, 2020. These are tracked in a different database. Hyperica stores online DreamGrids, regions, parcels, regions, objects, and hypergrid events provided the region or item is set for ‘Show in Search’ in-world.

Out of the total counted 6,829 grids, 6,129 are Dreamworlds or virtual worlds created using the OutWorldz DreamWorlds software. Out of these only 624 were detected as online using the Hyperica grid crawler, and out of these online grids, 429 are hypergriddable Dreamworlds or Dreamworlds accessible to the metaverse via the hypergrid port.

Hyperica is currently tracking 9,018 online objects on 842 regions. These are one click away in Viewers that log into a DreamGrid, or whose grid tech has pointed their data snapshot service at Hyperica.

Owner of OutWorldz Fred Beckhusen.

“The destination guide is now automated. Grids that fill out a simple survey and add an image are shown in the Destination Guide when they are online,” OutWorldz owner Fred Beckhusen told Hypergrid Business. “The setup page in the publicity module sets the grid in the viewers’ Destination Guide.”

“How to add the destination guide to your grid is at this link though V3HG links are the only ones people should use now, as the others all fail in one way or another, or many ways,” he said. “V3HG works on all viewers and on web pages, in Media on a prim, and links to both local and hypergriddable grids.”

OutWorldz also reported a total of 4,875 regions as added on a total of 662 grids that reported their stats this month on the OutWorldz crawler, while 13,156 users were recorded as active users on these grids in the last 30 days. Also, these 662 grids have reported a total of 9,850 users in the last 30 days.

 

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.

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.

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz. OutWorldz also provides OpenSim users with free mesh items, OARs, and free seamless textures that you can download and use on your grids.

Top 25 grids by active users

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.

OSgrid recorded the most growth in active users this past month, with s at 595 new actives, followed by Virtual Dream with 493, Grimm with 182, Island Beach with 171, and Party Destination Grid with 103 new active users.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

      1. OSgrid: 6,070 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
      2. DigiWorldz: 1,624 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
      3. Metropolis: 1,609 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
      4. Tag Grid: 1,567 active users
      5. Kitely: 1,136 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
      6. Foundation Grid: 964 active users (HG gridfoundation.ddns.net:8002)
      7. Party Destination Grid: 953 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
      8. AviWorlds: 898 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
      9. Exo-Life: 848 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
      10. ZetaWorlds: 823 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
      11. Discovery Grid: 746 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
      12. RAKis World: 686 active users (HG yeali.outworldz.net:8002)
      13. Virtual Dream: 622 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
      14. Virtual Dream Grid: 599 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
      15. Free Life: 587 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002)
      16. Virtual Ville: 581 active users (HG login.virtual-ville.com:8002)
      17. Craft World: 571 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
      18. Quintonia: 495 active users (HG worlds.quintonia.net:8002)
      19. DreamNation: 492 active users
      20. Eureka World: 436 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
      21. Arkham Grid: 408 active users (HG arkhamcity.hopto.org:8002)
      22. Counter Earth: 401 active users (HG jand.dyndns.biz:7002)
      23. 3rd Rock Grid: 391 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
      24. Astralia: 349 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
      25. Tranquility: 341 active users (HG tranquility-life.info:8002)

The actives list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know. The active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids, or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory.

This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, not all grids need a stats page, especially grids that aren’t open to the public, like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this “dark metaverse” of OpenSim grids might actually be bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Kitely Market

There are currently 16,931 product listings in Kitely Market containing 34,328 product variations, of which 29,250 are exportable.

Exportables continue to rise on Kitely Market. (Kitely Market Data)

The Kitely Market, which is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim , has delivered orders to 442 OpenSim grids to date, both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. (Instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.)

Virtual Ville Marketplace Opens

Virtual Ville grid marketplace just went online, and any grid and creators are free to place items for sale on the marketplace. The marketplace is open on the metaverse meaning anyone from any grid can sell and shop on the marketplace. The currency is Gloebits.

Alexsandro Pomposelli

“Visitors can use it and buy things and also sell on it,” Virtual Ville grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “People are starting to post a few items.”

“The marketplace costs one Gloebit to register,” he said. “Everything else is free, no sales fees. People can open their stores and all. Unlimited quantities.”

Virtual Ville is a new grid, launched by Pomposelli this April, after selling his old grid, AviWorlds, to former partner Josh Boam. Read more about that here.

 

Tag Grid Marketplace now has over 27,000 items listed

Tag Grid Marketplace.

The Tag Grid Marketplace has a total of 27,931 items so far.

The Tag Grid Marketplace, which has been in development since 2015,  is a place for merchants to list their items for sale and customers can buy items for in-world use.

Currently, there are thousands of items listed in different categories including apparel, avatars, and other accessories.

Unlike Kitely Market, which delivers more than 80 percent of its items to hypergrid or metaverse, The TAG Grid marketplace delivers items only to merchants who have accounts on the grid since it is a closed grid.

WordPress module for OpenSim on the way

WordPress module for OpenSim is being worked on. (Image courtesy Speculoos.).

Good news for those who wanted to integrate WordPress and OpenSimulator because Speculoos is working on a WordPress module for OpenSim.

The module is a plugin for WordPress which adds necessary functionalities to link an existing or new WordPress website to an OpenSimulator grid. As for now, it connects to the Robust database and allows a new user to register and choose a starting avatar from a selection of defaults, made by creating default avatars in-world, whose names match a predefined pattern. It also includes grid info and grid status blocks. If a user registers on the website while already having an avatar in-world, the avatar is linked to the new account. Passwords are also synchronized between website and grid.

Gudule Lapointe

“At this stage, the plugin is functional and ready to use, available from our Github repository. Installation is pretty straight-forward — activate the plugin, enter grid and database info, then start,” Speculoos owner Olivier van Helden told Hypergrid Business. “While a lot of WordPress users are used to downloading plugins from external sources, it would be easier to publish it on the official WordPress repository, which is just a matter of reviewing the code and ensuring it complies completely with WordPress rules. It’s a matter of days or a few weeks.” Van Helden is known as Gudule Lapointe in-world.

Current functionality includes avatar registration, default avatar models, grid info, and grid status. To be officially published on the WordPress plugin repository, the plugin requires a little polishing, he said.

“As for now, and as far I know, there were no ready to use integration for WordPress, although it’s one of the most popular content management solutions,” said van Helden. “We wanted to fill that gap.”

Existing systems such as the Diva Distro and Outworldz’ DreamGrid are not content management solutions and lack the ability to integrate with external or alternate services such as commerce or social networking.

Considering that WordPress is by far the most popular content management solution, integration with OpenSim would help many grid owners.

Further developments on the roadmap including a dedicated login page, public avatar profiles, region administration for admins and regions or lands dashboard for users, as well as an integration of most used web tools which currently rely on external libraries including a map, web assets, events, search, currency, offline messages.

“At this stage, we are already pretty excited to have a working solution,” he said. “We got some encouraging feedback, and we would love to have more grid admins trying it and give feedback.”

Speculoos is also involved in several other OpenSimulator sub-projects, like “2DO Events” which is a fork of the now defunct HypEvents board, Gudz Teleport Board, and OpenSim-Debian which is a simplified installation and management for Linux.

Quintonia releases Q2 edition of SatyrFarm system

Display area in Farm Shop. (Image courtesy Quintonia grid.).

Quintonia grid has released the second version of the popular SatyrFarm system. It is available at the Farm shop on the Mintor region, which is the default login region for the grid at the grid.

SatyrFarm is a complete farming system for role-playing or just for fun in Opensimulator regions. It contains farm plants, trees, storage, processing machines as well as multiple breedable animals and has some similarities to systems found on Second Life such as DFS and Aura, but with the benefit of being free.

Cnayl Rainbow

“The Quintonia edition extends the original farm system to include more plants and animals along with an interactive HUD which brings a ‘the sims’ for OpenSim type experience,” creator and owner of the Quintonia grid, Cnayl Rainbow, told Hypergrid Business.

There is a getting started guide and a growing community of users registered on the Quintonia.net website.

“We are planning on holding workshops in the learning center on Mintor starting hopefully next month,” she said.

Littlefield resumes regular weekly dances

Speakeasy region on Littlefield hosts dances every Saturday. (Image courtesy Littlefield grid.).

Now that the 4th of July celebrations are over, Littlefield is going to slide through the rest of summer with their regular weekly dances.

At 1 p.m. Pacific time every Thursday, DJ Essensual will be on hand to play some of “the most beautiful love songs and rock ballads ever.”

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Sweethearts

On Saturdays, there’s the Speakeasy Saturday Night Dance Party which offers all-around fun music and dancing. The music starts at 4 p.m. Pacific time with DJ Essensual and DJ Walter Balazic.

The hypergrid URI is lfgrid.com:8002:Speakeasy

On Sundays, starting at 5 p.m. Pacific time, DJ Essensual will be out on the Battersea at the Latex Lounge playing a mix of sexy, fetish, and downright dirty music for you.

The hypergrid address is: lfgrid.com:8002:Battersea

ZetaWorlds changing the method to calculate number of actives

ZetaWorlds will be changing the way it calculates the number of active users to filter out actives that record shorter visits and short login periods on the active user count, according to their latest blog post. This is to reflect realistic numbers about the visits, particularly to capture those that actually use the grid like exploring their regions instead of those who merely pop in.

New grids

The following two grids were added to our database this month: Little Breath and Xoss Grid

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database?

Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,572 different publicly-accessible grids, 372 of which were active this month, and 277 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.

Top 40 by land area