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Sinespace, a virtual world platform from OpenSim co-founder Adam Frisby, launched its virtual reality beta last week for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.Read More →

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US $10 for a 20,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled GeVolution grid, with a 14-day free trial. Private grids also available, at $150 for the first month and $125 a month after that.Read More →

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The results of the 2018 OpenSim sentiment survey are in, and the responses are, in general more optimistic than pessimistic about OpenSim’s future, and in general planned to more active this year. Readers were nearly twice as optimistic as pessimistic about OpenSim — 48 percent said that they were optimisticRead More →

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Update: The Chamber of Commerce group mentioned in this article has been shut down, according to a source. Merchants on the closed, commercial InWorldz grid are concerned about perceived drop in users and commercial activity, and worry that the grid owners are no longer committed to the success of theRead More →

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One of my top sources of OpenSim-related news this year has been OpenSim Virtual and similar Google Plus communities. Many grids also have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but I find that Google Plus offers a really convenient way to keep track of what’s going on across the metaverse. So,Read More →

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One of the most important numbers in OpenSim is how many new people sign up for accounts each month. New people means new customers for merchants, new creators and performers who help improve quality of life on the grid, new people to interact with, and, of course, potential new landRead More →

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OpenSimulator’s core developers said that they’ve gone pretty much as far as they can with the server code, and what the project needs is new people — and a new viewer. “My own kids say that it looks ancient,” core developer Melanie Thielker said at the developer panel that kickedRead More →

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The OpenSimulator Community Conference opened this morning. This is the fifth year that AvaCon is running the conference, celebrating ten years of OpenSim. It is being live streamed on YouTube. From 7 to 8 a.m., Pacific time, the developers will discuss the latest 0.9 release of OpenSim. Panel members includeRead More →

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OpenSim hosting company Dreamland Metaverse received the highest scores for performance, support, stability and its user interface in this year’s hosting providers survey for the fourth year in a row, followed by  Zetamex Network, DigiWorldz and 3DLES. There were 36 responses total to this year’s hosting survey, which asks grid ownersRead More →

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First, I’d like to apologize. I first noticed that Zetamex had posted its OpenSim hosting prices over the summer, and meant to do a story then, even contacting the company and some of its customers for quotes. But then a family medical emergency happened, and I’ve spent much of theRead More →

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More than 400 responses came in for this year’s Eighth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and Littlefield received the highest overall scores, followed by AllCity, Virtual Brasil, and DigiWorldz. DigiWorldz also had the largest number of readers who said it was their primary grid, followed by Kitely. This is the second year inRead More →

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This year’s OpenSimulator Community Conference will be held on Dec. 9 and 10, and applications for volunteers and presenters are now open. Organized as a joint production by core developers of OpenSimulator and AvaCon, this year’s conference will focus on the latest software release, visions for the future, and technologies or contentRead More →

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AltspaceVR, a social virtual reality platform, has come back from the dead. A couple of weeks ago, the company announced that it was shutting down because it ran out of funding. Today, it announced that it’s not closing down after all, thanks to overwhelming support from the public. “Thanks toRead More →

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SineSpace — formerly known as just Space — will hold a summer festival this coming weekend, August 19 and 20. The festival will include contests, live music, carnival games, a roller-coaster, movies, fireworks, and tours of the platform. SineSpace is a browser-based virtual world created by Adam Frisby, one ofRead More →

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As you folks know, I’ve been struggling with collecting all the stats from all the grids every month, and, earlier this year, have almost fully automated the process, using an extremely jury-rigged Filemaker script. Today, I accidentally stumbled on the fact that Google Spread can be used to do theRead More →

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Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform is currently my favorite. It’s built into the next generation of the Android operating system, and headsets cost under $100, making it widely accessible. And the platform’s motion controller is fun to use. Plus, the apps are a lot cheaper than those for higher-end platformsRead More →

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It can be hard to keep up with all the new virtual reality apps coming out. But, if you’re just starting out, it can be equally hard to find good ones to start with. Here are my favorite resources. Best review website: WeArVR Every tech pub, including Hypergrid Business, willRead More →

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Last night, I wanted to try out the  VR Spaceship VR app for Android on my Pixel phone with my Daydream View headset. Unfortunately, VR Spaceship is an older, Cardboard-compatible app, not a Daydream app, and I kept getting a warning message: I got the warning message as soon as I startedRead More →

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Eight year ago, when I first launched Hypergrid Business, virtual worlds offered a unique set of compelling features. There was presence, and immersion, and the ability to create your own virtual environments. Plus, they also had other benefits that, combined with the unique features, created a potentially world-changing technology platform.Read More →

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AltspaceVR will close its doors next Thursday, August 3, because it ran out of money. “We can’t afford to keep the virtual lights on anymore,” the company said in a note posted last night. I’ve been writing about the company since it released its first closed beta in early 2015,Read More →

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The first set of Daydream View clones have hit the market, and I just got one of them in the mail – the BoboVR Z5. Disclosure: I received the BoboVR Z5 free from GeekBuying, where it currently sells for $60. Bottom line: The big pluses are that the field of viewRead More →

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On Tuesday, David Kariuki’s article about a freebie store that distributed content that was “found and collected” on other grids — without any checks that the content was legal — drew some comments from people who defended the practice. Let’s put aside the main issue, that infringing content opens theRead More →

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Amazon is going all out today with deals on virtual reality products, running the whole gamut of headset options, computers, and accessories. If you’ve been waiting to get into VR until you see a good deal, this is a good day for you. For extra bang for your buck, makeRead More →

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It’s taken me a while to write this review, because I’ve been out of town and caught up with various other issues. So, my apologies to HelloPro, who sent me this headset more than two months ago. Sorry, guys! Now, I personally don’t like viewers with built-in headphones, and wasRead More →

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Last September, I looked at the land prices on all the public OpenSim grids, and the average price was $20.39 per standard region. Today, I reviewed the prices of all 55 grids that I know of that post their prices, and the average has fallen slightly to $19.22. The medianRead More →

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I occasionally get emails from people starting new OpenSim grids, and wondering how they’re going to pay for them. Here are the top five ways that OpenSim grids find success. 1. Commercial grids These are the best-known grids, typically because they put the most time and resources into sales andRead More →

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Genesis Metaverse, a commercial grid that emerged last fall from the collapse of Avi-Labs, has been having problems with its currency vendor, Podex, and took the dispute public today. For residents, this means that they will now buy and sell their currency directly from the grid and not from Podex,Read More →

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Today, I got another submission for a free ad that was basically just the grid’s name. And I regularly talk to grid owners who try to tell me that their grid is special because of its community, and to attract residents they offer low-cost land and free user accounts. HavingRead More →

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The Google Plus community OpenSim Everything gained 131 new members since last September, bringing it to a total of 506 members. It was the single biggest gainer of the OpenSim-specific communities we follow. However, more people could be visiting the community without becoming official members. OpenSim Virtual remains the largestRead More →

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If you’re a fan of Torben Asp — and you probably are, as he’s one of OpenSim’s favorite performers — and you live or visit the US east coast, you might now be able to catch him performing live, in person. “The move to the USA is to pursue a real lifeRead More →

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InWorldz announced that as of this month, it will no longer be publishing its region stats or active user numbers, two statistics which have been falling over the past few months. Total registered user numbers and the number of users currently logged in remain on the login screen, however. AccordingRead More →

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It seems unfair, but there are some people out there who seem to have the trust of their customers, no matter how many times they let them down. And other, completely decent, honorable grids can’t seem to get any respect. Part of the problem is that many honest, reliable, hard-workingRead More →

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This time, AviWorlds shut down not with a loud scandal, but without even a whisper. Over the past few days, grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli has opted not to renew his grid servers, let his domain name expire, and shut down his media accounts and stopped responding to emails, Skype messages,Read More →

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If you want to rent land, or sell other products or services, you need a landing page. A landing page is a page that converts someone who is vaguely interested in what you are offering into an actual customer. The effectiveness of your landing page is known as the conversionRead More →

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ZanGrid went live with the Gloebit virtual currency on Monday as the platform gets ready to start approving merchant cashouts. The currency can also already be used on Mobius Grid. Users can use a single virtual wallet to shop on any Gloebit-supported grid, and, when the grids allow, take the purchasesRead More →

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$6 for three years of protection against lawsuits from US creators — for any grid, anywhere in the world helps protect against take-downs by hosting companies and domain registrars helps keep creators from going to social media and blogs to get attention for problems The US Copyright office has madeRead More →

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In response to yesterday’s post about the changing editorial direction at Hypergrid Business — and free ads — I’ve been flooded with requests for advertisements. And I want to run the ads. Really, I do. Promoting OpenSim to the 100,000-plus site visitors who might not have heard of OpenSim beforeRead More →

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The world seems to have hit a tipping point when it comes to immersive environments, and the pace of change is exploding. These changes have been dramatically reflected in the readership of this site over the past couple of months. My life is about to change dramatically as well. SoRead More →

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OutWorldz founder Fred Beckhusen has purchased the Hyperica OpenSim directory from Hypergrid Business. He will continue to maintain the current website, add more content, and add more functionality, as well as the in-world hyperport, and the in-viewer destination guide. The Hyperica website had nearly 20,000 unique visitors over the courseRead More →

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AviWorldz has officially joined the big grid migration of 2017, becoming the latest in a string of grids to switch to DigiWorldz hosting. DigiWorldz is mostly known as a popular commercial OpenSim grid, but the company also provides hosting for other grids. This means that would-be grid owners can focusRead More →

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Firestorm is the preferred viewer for OpenSim users, based on a survey of Hypergrid Business readers. Nearly 53 percent of respondents chose Firestorm as their favorite, followed by 26 percent for Singularity and 7 percent for Alchemy. Firestorm was also the viewer that most people had tried. According to the survey,Read More →

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It didn’t take long at all. It was less than three weeks ago that Alexsandro Pomposelli announced that AviWorlds was back up and running — from his garage. The much-troubled grid is now down again as a result of a power surge, he told Hypergrid Business. “My anti-power surge didRead More →

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Last year was a mixed year for OpenSim grids. Active users were up, but the increase was much lower than in the previous year. The increase in registered users was also smaller, but this was mostly due to a multi-month outage on Avination, which is still down. Land area actually shrank thisRead More →