Covering virtual reality, immersive worlds, and other emerging technologies
Features / Metaverse / VR & AR
by Maria Korolov · Published August 22, 2019 · Last modified August 23, 2019
There is now a virtual reality enabled version of the Firestorm viewer, developed by Peter Kappler. Austin Tate, director of the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute at the University of Edinburgh, has posted an article...
A couple of weeks ago, the Firestorm team announced that they planned to split the Second Life and OpenSim versions of their popular virtual world viewer. “This means we can now issue updates for...
The Encore Escape grid will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival in mid-august. The Woodstock 2019 reenactment will take place in real-time, from August 15 to August 18, on 150...
All the stats were up this month on OpenSim’s public grids, including land area, registered users, and active users. Land area was up by 49 standard region equivalents, to 83,516. OpenSim grids also registered...
Patriotic Americans — or anyone, really, who’s looking for a party — will find plenty to do on OpenSim grids this week. Begin your day out on Discovery Grid, where the party starts at...
One of the first questions every new grid owner must answer is whether to have in-world payment, so that users can buy stuff, or pay for services, or donate money while they’re on the...
If you, like me, are looking to launch a little OpenSim grid of your own — or even a big commercial grid — but you don’t want to mess with all the details of...
Kitely rolled out its virtual private grid service at the beginning of the year. Today, I finally decided to try it out. The bottom line? It looks like a good option for schools, non-profits...
If you’re new to OpenSim, you’re probably here because you’ve heard about the ridiculously low land prices. Many grids offer regions for $10 a month — or less — and you can get a...
The gaming-themed Mobius Grid has introduced display names for its residents and is working to make the technology wider used within OpenSim, grid owner Roy Corr told Hypergrid Business. The grid rolled out display...
Columns / Features / Metaverse
by Maria Korolov · Published June 2, 2019 · Last modified June 14, 2019
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...
Update: For a full list of grids’ social media links, calendars, and forums, please see our Active OpenSim Grids List. Google Plus used to be a favorite place for grids and event organizers and...
Closed grids — where users can’t teleport over to other grids — have been losing ground in OpenSim lately and suffered a big hit last year with the closing of InWorldz. But some people...
If you haven’t done enough this week to honor our planet you can get some belated Earth Day action this weekend at the annual EarthX conference in Dallas, Texas — and, if you can’t get...
If climbing Mount Everest in real life is too expensive or dangerous, but you still want to find out what it’s like, virtual reality may have the answer. EverestVR is an immersive experience for...
Keng City, OpenSim’s only major African-American grid is working to promote awareness and inclusivity on the hypergrid, and to battle prejudice, with exhibits, events, and destinations of interest. Even simple things, like finding appropriate...
by Maria Korolov · Published February 12, 2019 · Last modified February 14, 2019
Gloebit is a virtual currency accepted on about forty different OpenSim grids, and is the most popular currency on the hypergrid by a very large margin. Gloebit works roughly similar to PayPal. Users create a Gloebit...
The Advanced Imaging Society held its tenth annual awards ceremony this week at Warner Bros Studios and virtual reality was a major focus of the event. Ready Player One, based in a virtual reality world,...
Kitely rolled out their new private grid service yesterday, and there’s a lot of information there to take in all at once. It’s not a full separate OpenSim grid, like you’d get from DigiWorldz...
More than 300 responses came in for this year’s Eighth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and Sacrarium received the highest overall scores, followed by Virtual Brasil, Utopia Skye, Kitely, Tranquility Grid, DigiWorldz, Discovery Grid, OSgrid and DreamNation, in that order. Between them, the respondents...
Augmented reality endorsement picks up pace, according to a recent market forecast. The AR market volume is expected to hit $30 billion by 2023, growing at 39 percent CAGR. This growth is rooted in AR’s...
DigiWorldz and Discovery Grid were the two top destinations of former InWorldz residents looking for a new home, with respondents almost evenly split at 38 and 36 percent, respectively. Kitely was in third place,...
OpenSim grids are welcoming former InWorldz residents with open arms, offering technical support to get their OARs uploaded, discounts on region rentals, and even free homes and stores. Scroll down for details about special...
The lights went out at midnight. InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful OpenSim grids, shut down last night. And it ended in a way fitting for a social grid — with a...
After Europe’s new data privacy regulations, GDPR, went into effect on May 25, OpenSim users saw a flurry of requests from grid owners asking them to agree to new privacy policies. Sometimes, those messages...
Twice as many grids now use Gloebit-powered payments compared to an older service, Podex, due to Gloebit’s easier set up and overall lower costs. Gloebits reports that it now has close to 2,000 account users...
Interested in taking a flight without worrying about the engine blowing out? You can now fly virtually, on an airplane filled with other passengers, on the Kea Nation enclave on the DigiWorldz grid. Kea Nation...
Child avatars are a sensitive topic in virtual worlds. For some users, the presence of child avatars opens the possibility of inappropriate sexual roleplay, which is at best extremely creepy and, at worst, illegal....
This year’s Virtual World Best Practices in Education 2018 conference, which ended last week in Second Life, was shorter than last year — three days, instead of four — and attracted about 1,100 attendees,...
This May, a major new regulation goes into effect — the European General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. It affects any company anywhere in the world that collects data on Europeans. And yes, that includes...
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...
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...
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...
Grids are getting an early start on the holidays this year, with a number of winter-themed regions already up and ready to visit, and a full calendar of events planned across the hypergrid. Skiing...
by David Kariuki · Published November 4, 2017 · Last modified November 10, 2017
Although many creators do not speak up, theft and illegal distribution of their content is hurting their morale and creativity, and may even be driving some out of OpenSim altogether. One creator of mesh...
More than 400 responses came in for this year’s Seventh 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...
There is a lot you can do or a lot of places you can travel to in-world during this Halloween festive period, with many OpenSim grids running Halloween-related events such as hunts and parties,...
If you’ve been keeping up with media based content marketing — and hopefully you have — then you know the current trend is to publish and share immersive, 360-degree videos. While a 360-degree video...
Virtual reality can breathe new life into old games, says video game expert Patrick Soulliere. And Soulliere knows about games — he’s organized more than 100 online e-sports tournaments for Micron Technology that feature...
by David Kariuki · Published September 7, 2017 · Last modified September 8, 2017
Second Life is moving its architecture to the cloud, Linden Lab announced last week, and that might help them offer lower land prices. The reason? On-demand cloud-based regions would only be up and running...
Educators are souring on virtual worlds, as evidenced by declining participation in online forums, in virtual conference attendances and education-related destinations on the Second Life grid. For example, Second Life Educators, the forum for...
If you’re using a default avatar that comes with some versions of OpenSim, your name might wind up on copybotted content without you knowing about it. That’s just what happened to a user known...
Starting your own grid isn’t easy. You need your own servers, membership website, plus, of course, residents. Plus, if you want an in-world economy, you have to put payments in place. There are hosting...
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....
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...
Students from around the world can now travel to Pakistan and learn more about the country — virtually. Online educational community PenPal Schools has launched a free six week field trip project to connect about 2,000 students from...
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,...
All approved Gloebits merchants can now, from Saturday, withdraw their in-world proceeds through PayPal. The cash-out limit of 5,000 Gloebits is also going up, based on the merchant’s transaction history and level of identity verification....
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...
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...
A number of grids are hosting Easter events including Easter Egg hunts and contests this Easter season. That includes two events on OSgrid. OSgrid‘s Easter Egg contest began last Monday and will go through Friday,...
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...
Grid owners, content creators, and other members of the OpenSim community are working to solve a serious case of alleged content theft that surfaced recently on the Alife Virtual grid and may involve several...
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...
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...
OpenSim users can buy legal mesh bodies for their avatars — and the news has helped keep noted designer Linda Kellie from leaving. “Jessica Random and I sat down the other day and made a...
Features / Spotlight / VR & AR
by Maria Korolov · Published January 7, 2017 · Last modified January 19, 2018
Updated: January 19, 2018 Virtual reality is still in its very very very early stages. The headsets are bulky or uncomfortable, the interfaces aren’t really there yet, there isn’t that much content, and the...
It seems that everyone has been getting virtual reality for Christmas — and posting the reaction videos on YouTube: And on Twitter… Holiday 2016 VR Reactions Here at Hypergrid Business, we normally get...
by David Kariuki · Published December 18, 2016 · Last modified December 31, 2016
Christmas and winter themed events, virtual tours, skating, creative contests, parties, and dances have already hit the ground running in various grids. A number of grids are also offering you to hunt and win...
If you missed the panels from last weekend’s OpenSim Community Conference, you can now catch up with some of them on YouTube. OpenSimulator Core Developer Panel A discussion of key issues facing OpenSim developers,...
Kitely Market sales have increased significantly over the past year, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. The market now delivers licensed OpenSim content to 162 grids, with 16,364 product variations grouped under 8,551...
It’s not too late to order virtual reality presents for the holidays — and they don’t have to cost a lot of money, either! Once you get your headset, click here for instructions on...
by Maria Korolov · Published December 10, 2016 · Last modified December 11, 2016
OpenSim hosting company Dreamland Metaverse received the highest scores for performance, support, stability and its user interface in this year’s hosting providers survey, followed by DigiWorldz and Zetamex Network. There were 40 responses total...
Today, most virtual reality avatars are very basic, cartoony figures, with a limited range of motions and expressions. Vendors are working to change this, and make avatars more realistic, with facial expressions that reflect...
Update: The data and chart have been updated to include the full 2016 calendar year. Almost every month, at least one person complains about why InWorldz is listed in our stats, or included in...
Finally, in these dark and tumultuous times, some good news — Linda Kellie is back, and creating new content. Outside of the core developers themselves, Linda Kellie is the most valuable member of the...
More big names names are jumping on the 360-degree video bandwagon. This fall, there were announcements from the NFL, the BBC, Sky, USA Today, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. National Football to launch new VR video program on Thanksgiving...
A number of grids are hosting Halloween themed events, destinations, parties and hunts this month. Halloween Dance at Littlefield Grid Littlefield Grid has dedicated the Halloween Themed region to host the event for the...
Nearly 800 responses came in for this year’s Seventh Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and after 31 were deleted as invalid, DigiWorldz came out with the most responses, while AllCity received the highest scores, followed by FrancoGrid,...
by David Kariuki · Published September 30, 2016 · Last modified October 4, 2016
Kroatan, a new social OpenSim grid, is hosting a Halloween Hunt from October 8 to November 8 at the Silent Meadow region. The hunt features the story of Frank Inglewood, an England citizen who disappeared from his...
OpenSim developers are getting ready to release OpenSim 0.9.0, and some grids are already experimenting with the new features by downloading the experimental version of the new release — and they are running into some...
by David Kariuki · Published September 22, 2016 · Last modified September 25, 2016
Virtual reality ad platforms continue to evolve, with vendors now offering analytics for advertisements placed inside 360-degree videos, virtual reality games, and other virtual experiences. Vendors are also trying to make the ads less...
Alife Virtual reported a dramatic increase in active users this month, to 1,576 unique monthly visitors, but those stats may not be accurate, according to technology expert Magnuz Binder, who has previously submitted patches to OpenSim....
VR VISIO, a Poland-based indie virtual reality studio, has opened a mixed reality studio — the first of its kind in Europe to be able to record live videos in virtual 3D spaces during...
If you spent the summer enjoying the doors and avoiding the news, then you’re one of the fortunate ones who was able to avoid the mess that is U.S. politics — but you might...
Filming a 360-degree video of a model train set isn’t like filming life-sized events and requires special techniques and equipment, according to a team of Norwegian entrepreneurs. Special cameras are needed to film in...
Public speaking is the single most common phobia, according to numerous studies. Now, virtual reality provides a low-stress way to overcome this fear and improve speaking skills. It can also help companies in the business of...
Kitely’s user community is celebrating History Month this August to celebrate history-inspired builds and encourage people to build more. It will also feature a number of events each week including live music and dance. Visitors can...
Virtual environments can let people step back in time, by visiting the recreation of a place or event. Tell people about your favorite historical destinations in the survey below. Each submission gives you another chance...
Scroll to the bottom of this article for the infographic. Virtual reality is a rapidly evolving market, which provides unlimited opportunities, and attracts a lot of newcomers. While the fastest growth in the industry is...
Virtual reality companies won’t see any significant revenues until 2019, when high-end devices become more affordable and business use of the technology becomes more popular, a panel of analysts predicted at the VRX Europe 2016 event held...
The Gloebit multi-grid virtual currency is now out of beta and can be used for shopping. Users who previously had a beta account will need to sign up again for the live version. You...
Up until now, virtual experiences have been pretty much ad-free. One company trying to change that is India-based VadR Networks, which is looking to bring ads from existing advertising platforms into virtual reality environments. The company...
The Dlodlo Glass V1 headset looks like a pair of sunglasses and weighs just 78 grams, or less than three ounces. It has a field of view of 100 degrees — a little higher...
Virtual learning environments can enhance retention through the feeling of presence and interactive learning tasks, according to the recently-published book Learning in Virtual Worlds, which is a compilation of studies about the use of virtual worlds in education. “Greater perceptions of...
The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids increased by almost 3,000 regions, but active users dropped by 405. The total number of standard region equivalents on the public grids is now 59,339, up...
Nothing beats taking an actual car for an actual drive, but virtual reality can whet buyer appetites for the real thing and can also offer customers an opportunity to see a broader variety of...
The growth of virtual reality devices market and the associated demand for new virtual reality experiences has increased the demand for low-poly 3D models, according to a report released last week. Sales of “low poly”...
Medical software development company Vedavi has its virtual reality anatomy app all set and ready to go for the Oculus Rift, but the lack of a controller with six degrees of freedom is holding...
Features / Spotlight / VR & AR
by Maria Korolov · Published June 1, 2016 · Last modified January 9, 2017
Open-sided virtual reality headsets are small, fold flat, and can be easily carried in a pocket or purse. Since most don’t have head straps, they are typically suited for quick, on-the-go VR experiences or...
In addition to Internet cafes and other out-of-home venues, early tech adopters and hardcore gamers, Chinese parents’ focus on education will be a major driver for HTC Vive’s success in that country, HTC‘s head for...
With this week’s Daydream announcement, Google is cementing its strong early lead in the virtual reality platform race. Although some virtual reality proponents don’t consider mobile-based headsets to be “real” virtual reality, this platform...
Online games and social networks are already hotbeds of bad behavior, but virtual reality offers an even higher degree of potential harm — and experts are urging VR innovators to build in more safeguards...
More than 100 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...
Four Norwegian experts recently proved that virtual reality live streaming systems can practically be employed to control vehicles, when they helped drive a real battle tank — a German Leopard 1 — with the...
Fifty more schools will get free Nearpod virtual reality headsets, lesson plans, professional development and one-on-one support, the company announced this week. And Google Expeditions, the biggest virtual reality education program, rolled its education program to Irish schools...
The results of our free land for hypergrid newbies survey are in, with over 60 responses. Here are the top seven grids mentioned by our readers. DigiWorldz This grid was mentioned by 17 different...
ZanGrid and other OpenSim grids are hosting a number of events this Easter weekend, featuring live music performances, games, and DJ parties. Aachen’s Easter Party 2016 on ZanGrid ZanGrid is hosting Aachen’s Easter Party...
At a time when immersive virtual reality seems to be the main focus for startups, one company, Edorble, has built a traditional, screen-based virtual world for educators. The company also plans to support mobile...
The popular and fast-growing Great Canadian Grid is rapidly nearing 1,000 named regions — but it won’t grow any larger than that, grid founder Roddie Macchi told Hypergrid Business today. This is the first OpenSim grid...
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