MetaStellar accepting flash fiction submissions
Our sister site, the speculative fiction magazine MetaStellar, is accepting original flash fiction stories this month. If you have an original, never-before-published sci-fi, fantasy, or horror story of 1,000 words or less, you can submit it here. Authors whose stories are accepted will be paid 8 cents a word forRead More →
Great Canadian Grid returns with low prices and new servers
The Great Canadian Gid has reopened under new management and is now back up online after shutting down for nearly one year. The Canadian Grid, whose website is also online now, has new reduced land offers at $5 Canadian dollars — or about US $3.80 — for a standard-sized regionRead More →
Skypads now available for free renting on Tangle grid
Tangle grid offers free skypads on the Skylife Properties region for people who want to set up private homes, private clubs, and other services. A skypad is a small island floating in the sky above a region, allowing users a plot of land with more privacy than traditional home plotsRead More →
OpenSim hits record high in land area, active users
OpenSim’s total land area hit a record high this month, with the equivalent of 90,310 regions. And this is actually an undercount — many grids don’t report their stats, many schools and company grids run in completely private mode, and some grids count large variable-sized regions as single regions. ThisRead More →
Gay Nation offers free shops on AviWorlds grid
Gay Nation, which is an area on the AviWorlds grid dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community, is offering free spaces for shops, businesses, venues, recreational activities, and hypergrid travel agencies. Anyone can request space, including residents of other grids, as long as their offerings are of service to the LGBTQ+Read More →
Tranquility Grid merges with Little Breath
Tranquility grid has now been sold to the owners of Little Breath grid and is now part of the Little Breath grid. The old Tranquility grid was previously scheduled to shut down on February 28, but was closed earlier. Region owners who move their regions to the Little Breath willRead More →
Apple’s rumored XR headset needs to overcome bulkiness and fatigue
Apple’s new rumored mixed reality headset — expected to be released later this year — will reportedly have an 8K display and hand and finger tracking features, an Apple spokesman told Bloomberg recently. The new headset may also have a lightweight fabric exterior, but is expected to be priced higherRead More →
Audi’s 3D virtual office more than helpful during COVID 19 pademic
Many companies have switched to virtual offices and Zoom meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some are going a step further, into immersive 3D office environments, similar to that of Second Life or OpenSim. Auto manufacturer Audi, for example, has rolled out Audi Spaces, a virtual 3D version of Audi’sRead More →
OpenSim offers virus-free Valentine’s Day celebrations
Can’t make it out to a fancy restaurant this Valentine’s Day because of, you know, fear of death? Or maybe you and your loved one are apart this holiday season? Or maybe you just want to treat yourself — OpenSim grids are offering a variety of options this holiday season.Read More →
Barefoot Dreamers
US $5 per month for a 20,000 prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Barefoot Dreamers grid. Var-regions, extra prims, OAR uploads also available.Read More →
OpenSim performers protest fan group restrictions on Alternate Metaverse grid
Music club owners, performers, and other OpenSim users are protesting tomorrow against Alternate Metaverse grid’s restrictions on fan groups. The protest is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, January 28 at the GasWorks region on the AviWorlds grid and will feature speakers, musicians, DJs, and vocalists.Read More →
Sundance goes all-in on virtual this year
The Sundance Film Festival starts tomorrow, and this year, for the first time, it’s all virtual. Now, Sundance has been featuring cutting-edge content at its New Frontier category for more than 15 years now, and virtual reality has been playing a bigger and bigger part for the past few years.Read More →
Craft World celebrates birthday, turns 11 tomorrow
Craft World grid will be celebrating their 11 year anniversary tomorrow, Wednesday, January 27 starting at 1 p.m. Pacific time at the Jubilee Expo facility on the Jubilee region of the grid. The hypergrid address is craft-world.org:8002:jubilee. DJ Arianna, Dancegroup, and VJ Josina Burgess will host the event at 1Read More →
AviWorlds adopts Gloebit currency
AviWorlds has completed its migration to the multi-grid, hypergrid-enabled Gloebit virtual currency. “Gloebits have been working well for us,” AviWorlds CEO Josh Boam told Hypergrid Business. “I notice an improvement with transactions. The grid has sold a good handful of Gloebits from our Gloebits application.” With a local virtualRead More →
First Apple VR headset could be expensive and bulky
Apple’s first entry into virtual reality could be an expensive VR headset with limited AR capabilities, according to a Bloomberg report. “Apple Inc.’s first crack at a headset is designed to be a pricey, niche precursor to a more ambitious augmented reality product that will take longer to develop, accordingRead More →
Fence in VR with a real sword
Wouldn’t it be cool to fence with a real sword in VR? Russian VR studio Boxglass has released Fencer, a VR fencing trainer designed to help new players learn the sport of fencing while using a real fencing weapon. Fencer uses the Oculus Quest headset and controllers attached to aRead More →
Kitely now offers always-on regions
Since it first began offering OpenSim hosting in 2011, Kitely has been known for its on-demand regions. The regions are activated when someone teleports in, and put to sleep when they’re not in use. This allowed the company to leverage Amazon cloud hosting and offer high-performance regions at a veryRead More →
VR and AR tech shows marginal improvements at CES 2021
Judging by the lack of breakthroughs at this year’s CES, the VR industry’s not going to have a break out year in 2021. The Consumer Electronics Show, which was all digital this year, ended last week with only a few new AR and VR products showcased, and none of themRead More →
Land up, actives down in January
OpenSim land area grew the equivalent of 2,270 standard regions and OpenSim grids reported more than 4,000 new registered users this month compared to last month. However, the number of active users dropped by 646. This loss — and then some — could be attributed to Foundation Grid and VirtualRead More →
Darkmoon’s breedables celebrate first birthday in OpenSim
Darkmoon Breedables is celebrating its one year anniversary as the first horse animesh breedable OpenSim and the first breedable in DigiWorldz. “Breedables” are in-world pets users can breed for a variety of traits. Darkmoon’s low-lag breedable horses can also be trained for racing and riding when they become mature, DarkmoonRead More →
Lenovo announces lightweight ThinkReality A3 smart glasses at CES 2021
Electronics giant Lenovo introduced a new set of augmented reality glasses this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, held virtually this year. CES 2021 officially starts tomorrow, but Lenovo got a head start with its ThinkReality A3 smart glasses, which will be available to purchase later on this year. WhatRead More →
Experts: AI Needs Ethics
Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a part of our daily lives, both in the workplace and at home. Some AI experts are stressing the need to focus on making AI ethical and keeping it human friendly. Bias in programming, security concerns, and a lack of public knowledge about how AIRead More →
Exoskeleton prototype demonstrates future of movement in VR
You can already see and hear in a virtual environment using a device like the Oculus Quest 2. There could be a device in the not too distant future that lets you feel like you’re actually moving around in VR too — and one man is starting to build it.Read More →
Facial recognition in 2020: biased and wrong
Imagine you’re driving to work, get pulled over, and told you’re being arrested for a felony. This happened to Michael Oliver. Last year, he learned that the police had profiled him from one grainy cellphone video that didn’t look like him at all. Fortunately, his case was dismissed but evenRead More →
Apple VR glove tracks movement of individual fingers
A new VR glove could be coming that tracks the motion of each finger and thumb bone. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just published a patent application from Apple for a VR glove made with smart fabric that will be capable of this fine-level motion capture. The glove shouldRead More →
A third of small and medium companies to add AR or VR next year
Around 35 percent of businesses plan on implementing virtual or augmented reality technology in 2021 according to a recently published research report by GetApp, involving 700 small and medium business leaders from around the world. According to the new report, small businesses will adopt virtual technologies to respond to newRead More →
Ring in the New Year in Iceland — virtually
Most of us will be stuck at home for New Year’s Eve, but that doesn’t mean we can celebrate at a concert in Iceland — virtually, at least. Iceland has announced Polar Beat, a live and fully virtual New Year’s Eve concert experience, with Northern Lights and fireworks guaranteed. Icelandic techRead More →
Spacial’s app turns any room into a 3D workspace
You can now join virtual meetings in any location and see avatars of coworkers or friends. The VR and AR collaboration platform Spatial released a free AR app for iOS and Android last week. Instead of using a bulky and expensive VR headset, the platform now works with just aRead More →
Where to celebrate the winter holidays in-world
No need to socially distance in OpenSim this holiday season. Grids are going all out with hunts, songs, dances and parties. Here are a few places to start and things to do. Shop, party and hunt on Virtual Dream grid The French Virtual Dream grid‘s Christmas market is now openRead More →
OpenSim sees growth in land and users this month
More than 5,000 new users signed up on OpenSim grids in the last 30 days, the largest gain in four months. In addition, the public OpenSim grids added the equivalent of 367 standard regions and 548 new active users. Kitely gained the highest number of regions this month with 189Read More →
Tangle’s Christmas Expo will be its last
Tangle grid is closing down its expo series after six years of events. “I want to thank all that have participated and visited us at the Expo over the years,” grid co-founder Leslie Kling told Hypergrid Business. She explained that there wasn’t enough interest to keep the program going. TheRead More →
ARtillery reports VR revenue expected to reach $12.2 billion by 2024
Sales of virtual reality hardware and software will grow at double-digits rates over the next four years, according to a report by ARtillery Intelligence. VR revenue is predicted to grow from $4.98 billion in 2019 to $12.19 billion in 2024, a 19.6 percent compound annual growth rate. There was aRead More →
Deloitte: Augmented and virtual reality set to grow in 2021
The global pandemic has affected the tech world — but not all in a bad way. Zoom has been getting all the attention, but demand is also growing for virtual and augmented reality, among other technologies. And this trend is going to continue, according to a report by global consulting andRead More →
Gloebit payment services is down
Update: On Saturday, Gloebit CEO Christopher Colosi told Hypergrid Business that Gloebit is back up. “The website is back up,” he said. “The API service should also be back up, though we are still testing some things and we have a lot of cleanup to do once we know everythingRead More →
MeetinVR tries to make VR meetings feel more real with better avatars
The global pandemic’s forced people apart, but technology is stepping up to bring us all back together, even if we’re not in the same room. MeetinVR and Wolf3d, two major players in VR, have teamed up to make meetings as human as possible. MeetinVR’s been working since 2016 to makeRead More →
Experts predict how AI will look in 2030
Artificial intelligence is doing some amazing things in 2020. It’s driving our cars. It can create art and music. It’s reading our brain waves and letting us control computers and other devices with our minds. AI will only get better at all these things, and some new developments thatRead More →
Hypergridders visit virtual Ireland at Tuesday’s Christmas Hop
The Hypergrid Hoppers are heading over to Ireland tomorrow, Dec. 15, to meet Santa Claus. Virtually, that is. “The end of the year is coming and we will hop to the place where Santa has one of his main package stations,” Reiner Schneeberger — also known as Art Blue in-worldRead More →
Top 3 VR Headsets for Half Life: Alyx
Half Life: Alyx is the 2020\’s VR game of the year. If you want to play the game the best way, we’ve put together a guide to the best VR headset for Half Life: Alyx. What is Half Life: Alyx? Half Life: Alyx is a VR game built from theRead More →
Ten most popular VR headsets on Amazon
2020 has been a challenging year and nobody could be blamed if they were looking for a little reprieve from reality. One outlet that’s gained in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic is virtual reality or VR.Read More →
Create mind-control apps with new NextMind DevKit
You can now create apps controlled by a user’s thoughts. Yup, you can operate computers, lights, TVs, music, games with your mind — as long as you’ve got a little lighter-sized device strapped to your head. Neurotechnology startup NextMind is now shipping its 399 Euro development kit for a real-timeRead More →
VR training platform Mursion raises $20 million in funding
Mursion, an immersive VR training platform focused on improving emotional intelligence in the workplace, announced that it closed $20 million in Series B funding led by Leeds Illuminate, a growth equity firm dedicated to partnering with high growth companies in education and workforce development. Mursion uses a combination ofRead More →
Varjo launches human-eye resolution XR and VR headsets
Helsinki based Varjo has launched its next generation XR and VR headsets with human-eye resolution for use in industries where high visual accuracy is important, including training and simulation, engineering, research, medical and design. With most of the world working remotely and demand for virtual and mixed reality on theRead More →
Gasworks Blues holds grand opening in AviWorlds
GasWorks Blues, the performance club formerly based on the Alternate Metaverse grid, held its first grand opening at the GasWorks region on AviWorlds this week. “It is an opportunity to gain new followers, that perhaps we hadn’t reached previously, and we feel that the Aviworlds grid is well positioned forRead More →
Terra Nova, Utopia, Tangle, Craft and Kitely shine in user survey
More than 240 valid responses came in for the Eleventh Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and Terra Nova received all perfect scores, with Utopia Skye, Craft World, Kitely and Tangle Grid close behind. Terra Nova and Utopia Skye were both write-in grids. Most years, there’s at least one smaller grid thatRead More →
OpenSim hypergrid visits and active user numbers increase
The OpenSim hypergrid gained over 2,600 active users since last month, to hit its highest point in over a year. The total number of active OpenSim users went up by 1,096, however, due to the fact that Tag, a non-hypergrid world, did not release its active user numbers this month.Read More →
Hypergrid Hoppers head to Amerika Monday
The Hypergrid Hoppers, a club for the explorers of the OpenSim hypergrid, is going to Amerika Monday. That’s a virtual world where the travellers will be able to get a preview of Biennale Amerika Art festival. The trip will begin at the HG Hoppers region of Craft World at 1Read More →
OpenSim conference registration now open
The eighth annual OpenSimulator Community Conference will be held virtually on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid on December 5 and 6, and registration is now open. The OpenSimulator Community Conference is an annual conference that focuses on the developer and user community surrounding the OpenSimulator software. “2020 is a year inRead More →
Kitely offers mega-worlds in November, rolls out land sales
Through the end of November, Kitely is offering eight-by-eight “mega worlds” — similar to the variable-sized regions on other grids — for $100 a month. The mega worlds can support up to 80 simultaneous visitors and up to 150,000 prims on a dedicated Amazon server. They can be configured inRead More →
AviWorlds down for server migration
Update 10/30: The migration is now complete and the grid is back online. The AviWorlds grid, formerly owned by Alexandro Pomposelli and now owned by Josh Boam, is down due to a server migration. “We will be back up in a few days,” Boam told Hypergrid Business. “We’re upgrading ourRead More →
The Great Canadian Grid is back
The Great Canadian Grid is back, grid owner Rod MacDougall — also known as Roddie Macchi in-world – told Hypergrid Business. “I have spent an entire year day and night learning the back end of everything,” he said. Previously, MacDougall used an OpenSim hosting provider to manage the back end, aRead More →
Hypergrid turns 12 today
On this day in 2008, Crista Lopes, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, sent an email to the OpenSim developers mailing list. “I started working on an extension to OpenSim that makes it work in peer-to-peer mode… I’m really excited to say that this is working!” sheRead More →
Tangle Grid creates virtual church walkthrough
A virtual walkthrough of the new planned Pentecost Church of Lumberton in North Carolina has been built in Tangle Grid in order to show parishioners what the final building will look like. The virtual build was commissioned by the senior reverend to help the church raise money for construction andRead More →
OpenSim land area, actives continue fall increase
OpenSim grids added a total of 1,574 standard region equivalents to their land area in the last one month, while the number of active users increased by 375. On a further positive note, OpenSim gained an additional 4,000 registered users. OSgrid gained the largest land area in terms of theRead More →
October full of Halloween events and celebrations in OpenSim
Grids around the OpenSim metaverse are gearing up to celebrate Halloween, and some have already started the festivities. Tag Grid holds Halloween build contest The Halloween Build contest on the Tag Grid started on Wednesday, October 7, and will run until Friday, October 31. To participate, a builder chooses a ten-by-tenRead More →
BritGrid
£5 (US $6.50) for a 15,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled BritGrid. Variable-sized regions and additional prims also available.Read More →
Virtual Ville back up, now with higher prices
Update 10/25: The new grid, now called AviTron, has changed its prices yet again today. For some reason, though this is a commercial grid, Pomposelli is calling the rents “donations” and it starts at $10 per month for a 15,000-prim region and goes up to $200 a month for upRead More →
Pomposelli shuts down Virtual Ville
Update 10/15: Alex Pomposelli just sent out an email saying that Virtual Ville was back up and asking for financial support. “The grid is online now and if we will do this I am going to need your help and support,” he wrote. “The estate of my finances is critical afterRead More →
New VR camera delivered to space station
A new virtual reality camera was successfully delivered to the International Space Station today. It’s not the first VR camera on the ISS, but this new one will allow the astronauts to film spacewalks in virtual reality. According to NASA, The International Space Station Experience is creating an immersive virtual reality seriesRead More →
MetaStellar accepting flash fiction submissions
Metastellar, a new online magazine dedicated to speculative fiction, is now accepting submissions of flash fiction stories for paid publication. They’re looking for original, never-before-published fantasy, horror, or sci-fi stories and are absolutely open to publishing stories about virtual reality of virtual worlds. The stories need to be less thanRead More →
OpenSim land area up as metaverse expands
OpenSim grew by more than 1,700 regions over the past month while active users increased by more than 1,400. There is usually a seasonal uptick in the fall as students and teachers return back to school. This year, that may have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well. OpenSimRead More →
HBO VR events and concerts start today on VRChat
“Garden of Eden,” the first in a series of three live VR art explorations, concerts, and shows organized by HBO, kicks off today at 10 p.m. Eastern time on VRChat, a social VR platform. Those without a VR headset can watch the “Garden of Eden” livestream on YouTube and will beRead More →
Fire and Ice grid’s art contest starts today
The Fire and Ice Opensim grid is running an abstract art competition to celebrate hitting several milestones this month. “The theme is abstract art, beyond this, the scope is very open,” grid owner Sara Payne told Hypergrid Business. “Entries can be your own art. Additionally, they can also be anRead More →
Gloebit addresses payment issues
Multi-grid payments provider Gloebit has been experiencing technical difficulties these past few months, resulting in processing details. But the core problem has been fixed, company founder and CEO Christopher Colosi told Hypergrid Business “I’m still waiting to hear from more people,” he said. “But in my own testing, I completedRead More →
Virtuality, Virtual Reload grids closing
Virtuality Grid halted new user registrations in July and will wrap up all operations at the end of this month. Region archive files — OARs — and cash refunds are being distributed now. “Once that is done, all DNS will be shut down,” grid founder Candi Infiniti told Hypergrid Business.Read More →
Free animation overrider tuned for OpenSim
AOs — Animation Over-riders — are popular scripted items in Second Life and OpenSim that replace the built-in system animations for walking, running, sitting, and other basic motions, but they usually bog down servers. I have written a drop-in replacement script that uses a feature of OpenSim to make theseRead More →
Educators, take this survey about VW use during pandemic
Kay McLennan, OpenSim educator and professor at the Tulane School of Professional Advancement is holding a survey to determine how educators are changing their use of virtual worlds and virtual reality during this coming academic year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “As evidenced by educator participation in annual OpenRead More →
OSgrid map cleanup leads to OpenSim land losses
OpenSim stats are down this month by a little over 1,000 active users — but Tag Grid, OpenSim’s largest closed grid, did not report stats this month, and had over 1,500 active users this month. Active users are expected to increase again next month, as students return to school. CraftRead More →
Craft sees 25% increase in education due to coronavirus
Craft World has seen a 25 percent increase in the number of school regions and more teachers attended lessons in immersive education at the grid as a consequence of the coronavirus lockdown, grid owner Raffaele Maci told Hypergrid Business. “At the moment, we have about 140 teachers, 350 students —Read More →
Does your VR training really work?
Virtual reality use cases have greatly matured over the past few years. VR has gone from an experimental technology to something that’s transforming the way enterprises work. A large portion of the industry has moved past proof of concept into real world applications. A Grid Raster survey this spring foundRead More →
Short film festival held in VR on Friday
Discover.film will be holding its short film festival in virtual reality this Friday on the VRChat virtual reality meeting platform. The event will start at 8 p.m. British time — or noon Pacific, following by a second screening at 1 a.m. British time, or 5 p.m. Pacific. The screenings willRead More →
VRCollab app is helping builders adapt to new normal after the pandemic
VRCollab, a remote meeting and collaboration app that lets users in the construction industry coordinate and collaborate on projects in real-time from different construction sites and offices, has witnessed a twice-and-a-half increase in monthly signups during the coronavirus pandemic related lockdowns. Because many people have been unable to go toRead More →
SuperViz lets you host video conferencing and meetup on a browser
SuperViz is a browser-based platform that supports 360-degree videos, and thus allows users to attend or host any virtual event, and attend conferences and meetups without any need to download any app on their device, and the user does not need to wear a virtual reality headset to use it.Read More →
Firestorm user survey
The Firestorm viewer developer team has created a quick, three-question survey to help them determine their user base on OpenSimulator and what problems they have with viewer compatibility. According to the developers, if they know what operating systems and grids their users use most, they can try to make theRead More →
AviWorlds celebrates 1,000 users with COVID-19 fundraiser
AviWorlds will host a party from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific time this Friday, 24 June at the Bellmar Dance Club – also known as Bellmar Islands 16 — to celebrate attaining 1,000 registered users, and will donate all the proceeds towards COVID-19, grid owner Josh Boam told HypergridRead More →
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 onRead More →
Training employees is 4 times quicker with VR
It is four times faster to train employees soft skills when using virtual reality than when using traditional in-person classroom or online training, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. And it’s cheaper, too — organizations spend about $195 per trainee when using virtual reality, compared to the $207 to $265Read More →
Little Breath
US $9 (8 Euros) for a 20,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Little Breath grid. Full land rental details here. Read More →
Augmented, virtual reality see uptake during pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the use of virtual reality and augmented reality, experts say, especially in retail, education and health. “The trajectory is clear that this technology is set to become the next ubiquitous computing platform, much like we saw with mobile devices and personal computers,” Taylor Freeman, founderRead More →
OpenSim numbers grow as grids get set for 4th of July
The number of active users on OpenSim increased by more than 3,000 this past month, and land area grew by over 2,000 regions as people continue to wait out the pandemic. Meanwhile, if OpenSim users are wary of attending real-world Fourth of July events, OpenSim grids, including Tag Grid and Littlefield,Read More →
Pop-up market opens at the Seattle Space Needle
A new pop-up marketing will open on June 19 and run through July 5 at the Seattle Space Needle. The virtual Seattle Space Needle, the one on the Seattle region of the Discovery grid. “The previous pop-up markets were highly successful with over 200 visitors from throughout the metaverse,” saidRead More →
3rd Rock’s Nuna gallery hosts sonic art exhibit
A sonic art exhibit title “Synapse” will have its grand opening at the Nuna Art Gallery on 3rd Rock Grid This Sunday, June 14, at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. This exhibition is an interactive sound installation where viewers are part of the work. Created as a collaboration between Lorin Tone,Read More →
Swiss Grid
US $17 (15 Euros) for a 15,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Swiss Grid. Vivox voice and varregions.Read More →
Top 30 enterprise-friendly VR spaces
For the past few years, virtual reality meetings, events, and classrooms haven’t taken off the way that proponents expected, due to inconvenience, usability issues, bandwidth requirements, the need for high-end computers, and expensive headsets, new software, and more. Nothing works right — it’s easier to have a phone call orRead More →
Craft hosts grand opening of museum exhibition today
Today, Craft World will hold a grand opening of a group exhibition of eight artists. The exhibition will last for three weeks, and the artists are Eva Kraai, Paola, Bianchi Mills, William Nessuno, Tosha Tyran, Adriana Midni and WizardOz Chrome, and Art Blue — also known as Reiner Schneeberger in-world.Read More →
Gloebits back from outage
The multi-grid Gloebit payment system has recovered from a major outage it suffered earlier this month, company CEO Christopher Colosi told Hypergrid Business. The platform is based on Amazon’s Web Services cloud hosting platform. “It seems like our AWS servers got into a really bad state and wouldn’t recover onRead More →
Popular Quest VR headset available again from Oculus
The Oculus Quest headset has been sold out almost everywhere since the start of the epidemic, but it’s available now from the company itself., for $400 for the 64GB version and $500 for the 128GB version. Once it runs out, however, there are still second-hand versions available on Amazon startingRead More →
3rd Rock Raises over $2K for doctors
3rd Rock Grid‘s third annual No Borders Festival of music and arts at the end of March raised 1,996 Euros — about US $2,160 — which the grid donated to Doctors Without Borders, an international non-profit that helps with emergencies around the world. “The hard work of board member Rhia Bachman,Read More →
Record number of OpenSim grids this month
All stats — area, registered users, active users — went up this month on the public OpenSim grids. In addition, we have hit the highest number of active grids in the history of this report, 365, as well as the highest number of grids reporting stats, at 293. Many ofRead More →
Second Life runs out of land
Due to unprecedented demand resulting from the COVID-19 epidemic, Linden Lab is having trouble getting enough server capacity to create new Second Life regions. “Our current server systems cannot accommodate unlimited growth without adversely impacting that stability and performance,” the company said in an announcement Thursday. “This means that regionRead More →
Sinespace demoes new virtual world
Sinespace, a Unity-based virtual world platform from former OpenSim core developer Adam Frisby, has a new ready-to-go virtual world for meetings and education, called Breakroom. The world requires that users install desktop — mobile versions are in the works. The platform starts at $500 a month for up to 50Read More →
Kitely Market passes $250,000 in sales
OpenSim users have purchased more than a quarter million dollars worth of virtual goods on the Kitely Market since its inception in 2013, Kitely announced yesterday. In that time, it has grown from fewer than 1,000 listed items to nearly 34,000. When it launched, it only delivered to one grid,Read More →
Kitely’s private worlds help students learn empathy
With the pandemic, educators around the world are finding out first-hand that most virtual meetings don’t provide the same kind of educational benefits as in-person classes. Students don’t have the sense of being together that allows them to learn collaboratively. So when a group of teaching colleges in Israel wasRead More →
How to create 3D content for OpenSim with Photoshop
Did you know that Photoshop has an amazing 3D tool that you can use to create many items for OpenSim and Second Life? All you need to start is any image that’s in PNG format and has a transparent background. I get my images from Google Advanced Image Search, whichRead More →
First look at HTC Vive Sync
Yesterday afternoon, I got a preview of the new HCT Vive Sync virtual meeting platform from HTC Vive, and it’s the best one I’ve seen yet — and I have seen a lot of these platforms. But I’m still not sure that it’s worth spending several hundred dollars, or more,Read More →
Magic Leap abandons consumers, lays off 1,000 employees, misses opportunity go to big during pandemic
Extended reality company Magic Leap announced this week that it is abandoning the consumer market and laying off employees. According to Bloomberg, 1,000 employees are being let go, or about half the company’s workforce. The company had raised about $2.6 billion from investors for its mixed reality headset, promising aRead More →
AviWorlds founder is back at it with new grid, new feud
This should come as no surprise to regular readers of Hypergrid Business, but Alexandro Pomposelli is back at it again. Less than a month ago, he said, “This is it,” when he shut down his AviWorlds grid. Four days ago, after selling it to former partner Josh Boam, he promisedRead More →
OpenSim grids show growth during pandemic
OpenSim land area continued its four-month growth streak this month, and the number of active users in OpenSim is up this month by over 2,400 users, mostly due to the fact that the Tag Grid released numbers this month, but not last month. But some of the increase could alsoRead More →
AviWorlds reopens under new ownership
Two weeks after its latest — and supposedly final — shutdown, the much-troubled AviWorlds grid is back up and running again, this time under new management. “I’ve liked AviWorlds ever since I first started working for it,” new owner Josh Boam told Hypergrid Business. “I’m excited to be able toRead More →
Linden Lab sells Sansar to Wookey
In another blow to the viability of VR-based virtual worlds, Linden Lab has sold off its next-gen Sansar virtual world to an unknown startup called Wookey Project Corp. Wookey has no information on its website except for the names of three employees. In a press release late last month, Linden LabRead More →
Pandemic spurs Second Life usage, book club, lower non-profit prices
Second Life saw a 60 percent increase in new registrations and a 10 percent increase in the number of returning users in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg said during an interview with Lab Gab. ”We are seeing a quite resurgent of returning as wellRead More →