OSgrid birthday celebration starts July 25

OSgrid’s OSG15b1 region. (Image courtesy Maria Korolov.)

OSgrid, the largest grid in land area and active user numbers, will celebrate its 15th birthday starting on Monday, July 25. The celebration will run through July 31.

“We’ll have live music and DJs to entertain us as we celebrate everything that is OSgrid,” grid president Wizard Atazoth.

Former president Dan Banner is now a board member of OSgrid, which is a registered non-profit.

OSgrid’s OSG15b1 region. (Image courtesy Maria Korolov.)

“OSgrid is an essential part of the larger OpenSim community with a diverse and dedicated user base ranging from artists to educators and everything in between,” Atazoth told Hypergrid Business. “This year’s theme is outer space, so bring your helmets. We encourage anyone that’s interested to come and join the celebrations.”

OSgrid is hypergrid-accessible, so users of other grids can teleport in for events without having to create an account on OSgrid itself.

Most of the events will take place on the grid’s Event Plaza, at hypergrid address hg.osgrid.org:80:event plaza.

The birthday regions, with builds celebrating the grid, are at the following addresses:

  • hg.osgrid.org:80:OSG15b1
  • hg.osgrid.org:80:OSG15b2
  • hg.osgrid.org:80:OSG15b3

 

OSgrid’s OSG15b1 region. (Image courtesy Maria Korolov.)

OSgrid is the largest OpenSim grid, with a third of the land area of all public grids combined.

One of the reasons is that OSgrid is free to connect. That means that individual users can download a free region installer and run as many regions as they want on their home computers. The downside of a free home-based region is that it can be laggy, depending on how fast your home internet connection is. So if more than a handful of visitors try to come all at once, they might run into slowdowns. In addition, home-based regions are only up while your computer is up and running the region. If you turn off the computer, the region disappears until you turn your computer back on again.

But it’s free, and, for a lot of people, they have an old computer sitting around they can use to run their regions, and they don’t get too much traffic. The regions are just for them and their friends to play on.

OpenSim regions as of July 2022. (Hypergrid Business data.)

OSgrid is also the most popular grid.

OSgrid has been around the longest and, though it does occasionally have downtime because it’s run by volunteers, it’s usually considered one of the most reliable grids on which to have your avatar. Many people use their OSgrid avatars to visit other grids, or to keep copies of their inventories in, in case the other grids go down or go out of business.

OpenSim actives as of July 2022. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Plus, if you’re looking for tech support, OSgrid’s LBSA Plaza always has people hanging around who can help.

I call LBSA Plaza “the crossroads of the hypergrid.”

Its hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:LBSA Plaza.

LBSA Plaza region on OSgrid. (Image courtesy David Kariuki.)

There are also weekly meetings every Saturday where the general public can come and ask questions.

And, on Tuesdays, the grid hosts a regular meeting for OpenSim developers.

It is completely volunteer-run and supported by donations.

For many years now, the grid has been one of the original OpenSimulator-based grids dedicated to testing OpenSim projects. Many creations are shared for free in the grid and, over the years, it has become a haven for creators to unleash their ideas and designs, and has seen a strong social community evolve.

Watch a video about OSgrid below:

Maria Korolov