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Currently, the New World Studio distribution of OpenSim — the single easiest way to get an OpenSim mini-grid up and running — only runs in standalone mode. This means that your region, or group of regions, is not connected to any grid, but exists all by its lonesome. If youRead More →

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October promises to be a busy grid on the OpenSim grids, with German residents celebrating Oktoberfest, some grids celebrating their anniversaries, and everyone celebrating Halloween. If you’re looking for a group to get you comfortable with hypergrid travels, check out the Hypergrid Adventurers Club, which started up up again lastRead More →

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In researching today’s news story about Linden Lab terms of services change, content seemed to be the main topic. Protecting it, licensing it, controlling it, owning it. Everyone wants content. Creators make content, then content attracts users. Without any content, there is no grid. Or is there? Is content reallyRead More →

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Regions on Second Life are going black, creators pulling out, Renderosity and CG Textures forbidding the upload of their content to Second Life, and a new survey of content creators indicates they expect things to get worse, while OpenSim grids stand ready to welcome another crop of fleeing content creators.Read More →

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If anyone has visited Hyperica lately — hypergrid teleport to  hg.hyperica.com:8022 — you might have noticed many of the gates not working correctly. The scripts keep requiring manual restarts because they keep doing weird things, and I haven’t been able to track down the problems. But it’s all a mootRead More →

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A public version of the browser-based PixieViewer will be available by Christmas, German-based PixieTec announced earlier this month, as will the source code for the project. Currently, the preview version of the viewer only works on the company’s own grid (read more about the preview release here). PixieTec is also working onRead More →

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It’s been more than four years since the hypergrid was invented, and the “4096 bug” has plagued hypergrid travelers for all that time, preventing users from jumping more than 4,096 regions in any direction. The problem involves both viewer and server code, and is a legacy of the Second LifeRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids have reached 28,186  regions, a new record high and an increase of 578 regions since this time last month. They also reported 309,792 total registered users and 18,442 active users this month, a total of 281 new registered users and 520 new active users. Some of theRead More →

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Over the course of the past week, I attended two very different technology conferences. One was a virtual conference, last weekend’s OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013. The other was a traditional conference, held in a hotel complex in the Chicago suburbs, the Unisys Universe conference. Both included participants from around theRead More →

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The Kitely Market is significantly different from Second Life’s Marketplace. Not only because it will soon allow delivery of items to foreign grids – that’s just the biggest and most obvious difference. But there are a number of other areas where, according to Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner, the new platformRead More →

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The Kitely Marketplace is now open for business to residents of the Kitely grid with over 700 items listed. The web-based platform allows users to buy items for either Kitely Credits or real money, using PayPal. Payments made via Kitely Credits help preserve the anonymity of the buyers, while PayPal paymentsRead More →

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CtrlAltStudio released a viewer yesterday that can be used to access Second Life and OpenSim grids with an Oculus Rift. This is a preview viewer, which can be used to walk and look around inside the virtual world, but is missing user interface functionality. It works both in standard mode,Read More →

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The folks behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset announced an app store yesterday, called Oculus Share. The site is intended for developers at first, but the company plans to grow it into a full-scale gaming marketplace. Oculus Share is already up and running. “With Share, you can host Oculus-readyRead More →

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I recently read Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses and as I was reading it, I kept thinking, “This would be great advice for grid owners!” Ries was the co-founder and CTO of IMVU, which I’ve never used, butRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids have reached 27,608  regions, a new record high. They also reported 306,942 total registered users and 17,922 active users this month. This is 709 more regions than on the Second Life grid. Meanwhile, of the 266 currently active public OpenSim grids, 214 reported their statistics this month,Read More →

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At some distant point in the future, virtual reality will be good enough and immersive enough that we can telecommute to our jobs by simply stepping into some version of a Holodeck or plugging into some version of the Matrix. Today’s virtual reality has only very limited use for theRead More →

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If you’re an educator considering taking advantage of Second Life’s newly-restored educator discount, but wondering about what else is out there, check out some of these OpenSim-based alternatives. You typically get much lower prices, more control and privacy and — best of all — ability to back up entire regionsRead More →

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Linden Lab has restored the 50 percent discount for educators and non-profits last month, but some educators are wary of taking the company up on its offer. “Our IT [information technology] folks, like many who once supported experiments in Second Life, have moved on,” said Joe Essid, who directs the WritingRead More →

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The promise of virtual reality was all the rage in the 90s, but didn’t go anywhere because the headsets were laggy, low-resolution, had small fields of view, and made their users sick. Today, the Oculus Rift is ushering in a new wave of virtual reality technology, with over 17,000 developmentRead More →

Train wreck image by Wystan via Flickr

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Whenever a grid closes unexpectedly, there are always some users who are surprised and unprepared. They didn’t make offline backups of their builds, didn’t get their OAR or IAR exports, didn’t move their in-world social networks to a more permanent — or, at least, different — platform like an emailRead More →

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Linden Lab has cut its land and setup prices in half for educators and non-profits, the company announced this morning. “We’re pleased to announce an update to Second Life pricing for educational and nonprofit institutions,” the company said. The offer is effective immediately, and applies to any accredited educational institution.Read More →

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AviWorlds, a commercial grid which allowed people to connect self-hosted regions, went down yesterday. At the time, it had 138 regions and 319 active monthly users. Many of the grid’s regions, as well as centralized grid services, were hosted by Zetamex. “The owner has just contacted and left me,” ZetamexRead More →

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The land area of the top 40 OpenSim grids continued to grow, with the number of regions now at 25,783 — an increase of 535 regions compared to the same time last month. This is another record high month for OpenSim region totals. ScienceSim saw the most growth, with 512Read More →

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InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, has made it possible for OpenSim users to have well-fitting mesh clothing. The grid hired former Second Life developer Karl Stiefvater — known as Qarl Fizz in-world — to finish work on his mesh deformer project, which began with a $5,555 crowdfunded project on Indiegogo. TheRead More →

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The Oculus Rift is coming to Second Life. It’s already available for the Unity platform. Other virtual world platforms and games are rapidly signing on, including the Unreal engine, Valve, Bioshock, Hawken, Minecraft, Portal, and many, many more. This 3D headset — and the flood of competitors soon to comeRead More →

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Vivox may be the gold standard of voice in video games, and be the best integrated with Second Life and OpenSim viewers, but it isn’t the only game in town.  TeamSpeak, for example, is another commercial voice product used on some grids. However, like Skype, it requires users to haveRead More →

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The Vivox voice platform is currently used on more than 500 OpenSim grids, according to Vivox co-founder and CTO Jim Toga. The vast majority do not pay for the service, and do not need to, because they are non-profits, educational grids, or personal hobby grids. The large commercial OpenSim gridsRead More →

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San Francisco-based virtual worlds developer David Rowe has released a 3D viewer for OpenSim and Second Life, based on the Firestorm Viewer. The CtrlAltStudio Viewer works in conjunction with active shutter glasses and high-end graphics cards to create a 3D effect. “With the CtrlAltStudio Viewer, the display effect is that the virtualRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids have reached 25,248 regions, a new record high. They also reported 295,411 total registered users and 19,505 active users this month, both of which are also record highs. The previous record high was last October, when the 40 top grids had 25,202 regions. The numbers dropped dramaticallyRead More →

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Stand4Love, an annual event in support of marriage equality, has expanded beyond its traditional base in Second Life to include an OpenSim grid, Avination, in this year’s celebrations. “This event is actually our first Stand4Love event in a different grid other than Second Life,” said Stand4Love founder Editorial Clarity. “Our mainRead More →

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Avination donated code to the OpenSim project today intended to reduce viewer disconnects, crashes, server instability, and teleport failures. According to the company announcement, the technology is called “HTTP-inventory throttling.” What happens is that when an avatar first appears in a new location, the user’s viewer requests information about theRead More →

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Second Life customers who have difficulty buying Linden Dollars from the official LindeX exchange — your voices have been heard. When Linden Lab shut down all third-party currency trading in early-May, there was a mass outcry that included two public petitions. Linden Lab reversed course ten days later,  allowing approved outside exchangesRead More →

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While many OpenSim grids are trying to attract users from Second Life, or other grids, 3rd Rock Grid has decided to reach out to the real world for its latest marketing and outreach campaign, centered around its 3RG Music Village virtual performance space. The campaign will include targeted advertising through music-relatedRead More →

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More than 200 people responded to our survey of how people use OpenSim, and the results are in — the majority of people use OpenSim for work and for creative self-expression. The first question of the survey asked people who they were. Around 40 percent of respondents said they usedRead More →

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Who are the main users of OpenSim? This is an important question for vendors, grid owners, developers and other types of service providers deciding where to invest their resources. Please help us find the answers by answering a couple of very quick questions.Read More →

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In a surprising reversal, Linden Lab has decided to allow third-party exchanges to sell Linden Dollars to users, a move that will benefit international Second Life residents who had difficulties using the official LindeX exchange. “We’ve heard from some users outside of the US who are concerned that it mayRead More →

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I had put up this page since Linda Kellie’s site was going down, but Zetamex just announced that they purchased it, and it will be staying up. Yeay. So you can continue to go there to download these things. There’s also a download page here, of all the OAR andRead More →

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Update (May 17): Linden Lab launches Authorized Reseller program, five exchanges now live. Linden Lab announcement is here. List of Authorized Resellers is here. The five exchanges currently allowed to sell Linden Dollars to users are  AnsheX, Buildo, VForEx Inc, VirWoX, and Zoha Islands. No third party exchanges are allowed to purchase Linden Dollars from users, however. ——————- WhileRead More →

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Recent outages at two of the biggest, most popular grids in the metaverse — Metropolis and AviWorlds — cut into this month’s active user numbers, but overall the OpenSim metaverse continued to expand. The top 40 OpenSim grids by land area gained 1,173 regions this month, for a new total ofRead More →

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Despite dire warnings from Linden Lab, the Podex, Crossworlds and AnsheX virtual currency exchanges still seem to be operating, with, so far, no ill effects to users. As a result, DXexchange has decided to resume selling Linden Dollars, pointing to the clause in the Linden Lab Terms of Service that saysRead More →

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In the wake of the recent closing of at least 16 third-party Linden dollar exchanges — only AnsheX, Podex, and Crossroads are still up, as of this writing — some Second Life residents have launched petitions to allow third-party exchanges to remain, or asking for more information. A petition on Change.org, Linden Lab: Lets try to openRead More →

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Kitely merchants can now start uploading products to the Kitely Market, the company announced today. There’s a 100 Kitely Credit fee to list new items, which is between US $0.33 and $0.50, depending on how many Kitely Credits are bought at once. Adding variations on the same product — different colors, forRead More →

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After Tuesday’s surprising announcement by Linden Lab prohibiting third-party trading in the Linden Dollar, some virtual currency exchanges are now fighting for their lives. “It is not only problem for Linden Lab or third party exchanges but also for but a big number of residents, especially from European countries, who will beRead More →

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So I’m building a themed region — Maria’s Virtual Fit Club — on Kitely. (Facebook group here, Kitely login link here, story about the project here.) So, the first thing I think about, because I’m at heart a traditional newspaper layout designer, is the style template for the signs. There’sRead More →

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Today, two commercial grids — AviWorlds and Avination — announced their continued support of third-party currency exchanges. The announcements were in reaction to yesterday’s Linden Lab decision that third-party exchanges would no longer be authorized by the platform. As a result, 11 exchanges have already announced that they are endingRead More →

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Update (May 17): Linden Lab launches Authorized Reseller program, five exchanges now live. Linden Lab announcement is here. List of Authorized Resellers is here. The five exchanges currently allowed to sell Linden Dollars to users are  AnsheX, Buildo, VForEx Inc, VirWoX, and Zoha Islands. No third party exchanges are allowed to purchase Linden Dollars from users, however.Read More →

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Three years ago, I participated in a groundbreaking fitness and lifestyle modification program in Second Life, as a result of which I made long-term changes — and lost 20 pounds. (Read more about my experience here and more about the Club One program here.) It may seem crazy that virtualRead More →

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I love participating in online conversations, so here’s my take on the “Why do I blog?” meme which recently showed up on New World Notes and Journey To The Center of the Metaverse and Daniel Voyager’s Blog after a challenge by Strawberry Singh. How long have you been blogging? I launched HypergridRead More →

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These last few weeks, I’ve felt a feeling of foreboding. Like there were big things looming on the horizon. Big things that would change the world as we know it. These big things are still far off, and even bigger things maybe creeping up behind them, out of our view.Read More →