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Last Friday, AltspaceVR announced that will be shutting down its virtual environment in March. AltspaceVR was a consumer-focused immersive space that could be accessed either via the desktop or through a virtual reality headset. Since its launch in 2016, the platform has hosted big names and quickly became the go-toRead More →

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A combat veteran suffering from PTSD shares his challenges in traversing the VA’s endeavor to keep up with technology. These institutional failures led to the founding of 2B3D, a first-of-its-kind metaverse for delivering live, free mental health services to vets via web3. The facts are not new. The number ofRead More →

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I’m Snoots Dwagon, head of greeters, exhibitor, and a performer at this year’s OpenSim Fest. It’s my first OpenSim festival, and I’ve got two parcels you might want to check out, Rascal Flats and Replicant City. In the case of both exhibits, the entire purpose is to provide some funRead More →

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To celebrate the completion of my most recent novella, Time of the Meatheads, the first novella in set in the Krim virtual world, Krim Times, is free this weekend. And it’s got a new cover, too. The book made the Amazon category bestseller list when it was released back inRead More →

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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 →

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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 andRead More →

Vive Pro Eye Office

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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-orientedRead More →

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DreamNation draws a great deal of its membership from Second Life members who have never experienced OpenSim worlds. DreamNation has been recommended to them by our own membership base as a great place to enjoy an entirely different environment from that of the restrictive and, at times, censorious Second LifeRead More →

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The metaverse is filled with humor it’s everywhere; it is what leads us back time and again, those hilarious memories with friends. With this in mind, I asked Maria what her position was on having a comic strip here at Hypergrid Business featuring the comedy of OpenSim humorist Reyn Softly.Read More →

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Creating jewelry for me has become quite the obsession, so much so that I feel it is now time to teach others just how amazing creating jewelry can be. Where does my inspiration come from? I get inspiration for my design ideas from shapes of nature, including flowers, stars andRead More →

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Big things grow from small things. Sometimes a couple of small things collide and merge and grow into a really big thing. I recall first stepping into virtual reality some years ago, into Second Life, and thinking “What the…?” From that very first exposure, looking through the eyes of anRead More →

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I’ve been using the Oculus Go for a while myself, and I’d say it’s totally worth it for most people, but it’s not for everybody.

If you’re new to VR and want to give it a try, then you should absolutely get the Oculus Go.  It’s affordable, and you’re getting a lot of good stuff for just around $200.
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From the editor: The commentary below is from Sam Adama, owner of Caprica Grid, about the Kazakhstan-based freebie grid Sacrarium, which has been accused of hosting stolen content and inappropriate child avatars and accessories. The opinions expressed below are his own. Do not allow yourself to be misled. What theRead More →

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It took ten years for me to get my first book done, Krim Times. The second one just took eight months! Thank you to all my beta readers who helped make it possible! If you would like to be a beta reader on the next book in the series, “DressedRead More →

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The topic of Second Life’s — and OpenSim — default camera offset is an old one. The first Second Life blogger who brought it to people’s attention was Penny Patton, with her seminal post “A Matter of Perspective” from as far back as 2011. Ever since then, various other bloggersRead More →

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Immersive technology means you are able to place yourself inside a world, not just to peer inside it. Like all of the tech industry, extended reality features a diversity imbalance — is this burgeoning XR sector a chance for us to finally build a diverse corner of technology? And isRead More →

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In case you’re thinking that fully immersive virtual reality will require full-body suits of some kind to replicate all the senses, there’s promising research coming out of the medical prosthetics field that shows that we’re well on our way to brain-computer interfaces that will make all that irrelevant. Scientists atRead More →

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Do you like reading science fiction and telling authors what’s wrong with their books? I need you! The draft of my second story in my Krim series is done and I’m certain that it’s full of plot holes and incomprehensive motivations and other problems that I’m just not seeing becauseRead More →

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OpenSim’s average region price has dropped to $15 per standard region, down from $18 last February. The lowest price for a region dropped slightly to $4.90 a month, at Tranquility, while the highest price fell from $60 to $50 a month. The median region price also fell, from $15 toRead More →

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If you’re a writer, or an artist you may cringe at the idea that computers are coming for your jobs. If you dig into how the content for AI art and poetry and stories are generated, you’ll breathe a little easier. I’ve done just that using tutorials I found online and collaborativeRead More →

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I miss having my own OpenSim place. I didn’t use it much when I had it, but now that it’s gone, I want it back. So, of course, since I don’t want to have to keep a computer up and running all the time to do my own hosting, andRead More →

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This Friday, New York City-based multimedia startup Walk In My Shoes Media is launching a VR platform that uses immersive storytelling to make a social impact and promote inclusivity. Company employees, or members of academic communities, will be able to experience the consequences of prejudices first-hand. The idea for theRead More →

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The  VR Airway Lab training application for medical professionals was recently put to the test in a study that found VR simulation to be on par, if not better than expected, when compared to a traditional teaching lab environment. Key Findings Faculty that took the VR training overwhelmingly felt it was aRead More →

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You know the scene. You’re walking down the street in a town, maybe your hometown, on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. The sun is shining, people are sitting outside a coffee shop chatting and browsing, and you can hear birds chirping and the drone of distant traffic. You turn the cornerRead More →

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As a person of color and a woman, I’ve become aware with the lack of representation expressed outside of the entertainment or sports world. That is even more prevalent within the Virtual Reality community. Even though African Americans are strong consuming anything tech related us making up less than 20Read More →

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Virtual reality is a hot topic in the field of science and technology. It is assumed that the cost of hardware and the complexity of production are the obstructions for the massive adoption of virtual reality. However, experts from the VR industry have different opinions. Virtual reality is an underestimated field thatRead More →

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One of the more novel shows of this summer has been NBC’s “Reverie,” which grapples with the potentials and risks of realistic virtual reality. The show stars Sarah Sashi (Person of Interest) as Mara Kint, a former negotiator for the police who left after she failed to prevent her brother-in-lawRead More →

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In the comments section on one of the several InWorldz-related articles these past few days, I saw some people talking about whether OpenSim is safe for content. The idea being that InWorldz was somehow safer because it’s not OpenSim. First, InWorldz IS OpenSim. It’s just another fork off the OpenSimRead More →

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Editor: This is a contributed comment from hypergrid entrepreneur Frank Corsi. The Atek Grid has been a long running open to connect grid, supporting many residents who enjoy the abilty to connect land regions from home PC or rented servers. As the sole owner of the grid, I have been busyRead More →

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Editor: InWorldz cofounder and former CTO David Daeschler just asked us to publish this statement about the current situation with the grid’s crowdfunding campaign. For all those that have been asking me what is going on with InWorldz, I’d like to make a public statement. I have not been involved inRead More →