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,

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,” said

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,

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 or

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.

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 on

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 starting

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,

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 of

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 region

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 50

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,

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 was

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, which

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,

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 a

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 promised

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 also

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 to

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 Lab

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 well

Enterprises are optimistic about the potential of virtual and augmented reality, according to a recent report by Perkins Coie in collaboration with XR Association trade group and venture capital firm Boost VC. Two-thirds of companies expect to increase spending on immersive technologies this year compared to 2019, the report said, with

The commercial Virtuality Grid has turned off hypergrid access as part of a switch to a different version of OpenSim, grid owners announced Monday in a Facebook post. Grid residents will no longer be able to teleport out to other grids, move content between grids, or send messages to friends

The on-and-off AviWorlds grid is off again. By my count, this is the 13th time that the grid has officially closed. And, as usual, grid owner Alex Pomposelli says that this time it’s for good. “This is it,” he told Hypergrid Business. “I’m no longer going to open AviWorlds. The domains

Update from GeVolution founder Cliff Hopkins: There are more than 500 OARs, which are stored on Great Canadian Grid servers. Hopkins has access to those servers and will be distributing the OARs. GeVolution will pay for the hosting costs for those servers for the next month. Once Hopkins gets the

Social gatherings in a virtual world? Some of you might ask what this means. I have been in virtual worlds since 2004. During that time, my friends have fallen into two broad categories. People I know in the physical world and those I know through virtual worlds. The COVID-19 outbreak and

With businesses, schools and other organizations sending many employees to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, this could be a good time for organizations to take another look at virtual reality. And VR manufacturers have just released some nice new high-end headsets. Earlier this month, HTC announced two business-oriented

The total size of the OpenSim metaverse grew this month, as 79 grids reported increases in land area, led by the non-profit OSgrid, which gained more than 500 standard region equivalents. Discovery Grid gained 249 regions and Kitely and ZetaWorlds both gained more than 100 regions each. As a result, total

The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be turning a corner in China, with no new cases reported today, but the virus is still spreading aggressively around much of the world, including the U.S. and Europe. For a glimpse of what it was like on the ground in China, check out this

Scope AR’s WorkLink platform, an augmented reality tool that provides AR-enabled remote assistance and step-by-step work instructions, is helping factories by having maintenance experts provide real-time remote assistance and work instructions to factory workers in geographies where Chinese experts are no longer allowed to travel due to COVID-19, previously known