Ex-Linden money chief creates new metaverse currency
By all indications, the hypergrid is hopping. As of mid-January, 68 percent of all active users, 75 percent of all public OpenSim grids, and 93 percent of all regions were on the hypergrid, and...
Category: Features
Social platform AltspaceVR comes to Gear VR
AltspaceVR, a virtual reality social platform previously only available for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, arrived in the Gear VR app store today. Users can choose from a handful of pre-built virtual scenes,...
Kitely merchant exports scripted content
Last Sunday we reported that Kitely Market‘s top-selling merchant, Ozwell Wayfarer, has made all this content exportable to other grids and has seen no evidence of bootlegging. I have long been reminding content creators that...
16-grid treasure hunt begins today
A treasure hunt involving 16 different grids begins today and ends March 1, with prizes ranging from virtual content, to small cash awards, T-shirts and MP3 players, to a $130 Fibrum virtual reality headset....
DigiWorldz donates unfinished Mumble code
DigiWorldz has donated unfinished code for the Mumble voice system to the OpenSim community, the grid announced this week. Mumble is an alternative to the proprietary Vivox voice system. Boston-based Vivox Inc. provides high-quality...
Top Kitely merchant goes all-export, sees no hypergrid ‘bootlegging’
Ozwell Wayfarer’s Worlds End Landscaping and Roleplay store on the Kitely Market is now all-export, the owner announced on the Kitely forums earlier this month. He also lowered prices 30 to 50 percent. “One...
CNET founder to launch VR video network
CNET founder Halsey Minor will launch a virtual reality network that will stream live 360-degree video to Samsung Gear VR and Oculus headsets within the next few months. Minor told Hypergrid Business that the new...
OSgrid, Kitely, Littlefield home to most popular hypergrid hangouts
Last week, I held a survey to find the most popular hangouts on the hypergrid. Dozens of people responded and the top three vote-getters were LBSA Plaza on OSgrid, Seanchai on Kitely, and Speakeasy...
Space shooter vs. space shooter
So you want to play EVE: Valkyrie but don’t have the $1,500 for a new computer and Oculus Rift headset? Checkout these two cheap alternatives — both of which are available now. End Space...
We hit 1.5 mil pageviews in 2015
Hypergrid Business saw a dramatic increase in pageviews in 2015, hitting 1.59 million — up almost three-fold from 565,553 in 2014. This was a record high for the publication. The number of unique readers...
Dreamland tops this year’s hosting survey
Dreamland Metaverse outscored the two other major providers in every category in this year’s OpenSim hosting providers survey, while CloudServe, the new kid on the block, scored a close second. Zetamex scored last in...
Five leading VR ecosystems
When investing in a new technology platform, whether that investment is in time or money, nobody wants to invest in a dead-end system. Businesses in particular that put all the eggs in the wrong...
Virtual reality to transform future workplaces
Virtual reality is set to transform future workplaces by becoming the preferred method of communication, training, socialization and collaboration due to its ability to deliver immersive experiences in these areas, London Business School professor...
Will v-commerce replace e-commerce?
More than a third of consumers say they would shop for more products online if they were able to try them virtually using headsets, and 63 percent say they expect virtual reality to impact...
AvatarFest features live performances, exhibits
This Friday, November 13, until Monday, November 16, AvatarFest celebrates the strength and diversity of the hypergrid community. With more than 10 live performances and over 15 exhibits this festival showcases the wide variety of talents from across the...
Landmark to open virtual theme park
LandMark Entertainment Group is bringing theme park experiences to living rooms — via virtual reality. The company, best known for traditional rides and other theme park experiences based on movies such as Jurassic Park and...
Four grids cut land prices
Just in time for the holiday season, four grids are lowering land prices or offering special holiday deals. 3rd Rock Grid A week ago, 3rd Rock Grid program director Zinnia Frenzy contacted Hypergrid Business to...
Devil’s dozen Halloween events
With Halloween slowly encroaching on us like a spooky ghoul, there are parties, hunts and games all over the metaverse for this special and scary season. Here’s a list of more than a dozen events, all...
Happy birthday to the hypergrid, which turns seven today
On this day in 2008, Crista Lopes, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, sent an email to the OpenSim developers mailing list. “I started working on an extension to OpenSim that...
Voxelus to launch VR platform, currency, and market
Argentina-based Voxelus has announced that it is working on a virtual reality game creation tool, viewer, virtual world currency, and virtual content marketplace. Voxelus co-founder and CEO Martin Repetto told Hypergrid Business that the new platform will...
Kitely Merchants Fair starts Sunday
The Kitely Merchant Fair starts tomorrow with freebies, events, and more at the Kitely Hypergrid Merchant Fair region on Kitely. Teleport via hypergrid to grid.kitely.com:8002:Kitely Hypergrid Merchant Fair.
VR headset hits Russian retail chains
Moscow-based Fibrum Ltd., known for its excellent virtual reality apps, has put Russia in the lead in the virtual reality hardware race — temporarily, at least — by getting its headset into retail chains...
Real estate company works virtually
There’s been a recent trend with real estate companies to create virtual walk-throughs of properties for prospective customers. But one company, eXp Realty, has taken this a step further and actually has its offices in...
Nara’s Nook, Tangle Grid top this year’s grid survey
A record number of respondents voted for a record number of grids in this year’s sixth annual OpenSim grid survey. A total of 1,006 ballots came in, of which 971 were counted. The rest were...
7 media companies adopting VR
Immersive experiences are transforming the way in which media companies present their content — movies, TV broadcasts, and films. These experiences can help the content producers reach new audiences and increase engagement with existing viewers. The following are...
VCs look for passion, prototypes when funding
When it comes to funding virtual reality startups, venture capitalists are looking for passion — and working prototypes. Others were more narrowly focused, looking for enterprise applications, they told virtual reality entrepreneurs at the 2015 VRLA...
Summer of Arts expo opens Friday
The third annual Summer of Arts 2015 virtual arts event begins on September 25. Metropolis Grid hosts this event to give cyber artists an opportunity to display their works to a wide audience. The...
InWorldz, Avination make major server code donations
InWorldz and Avination — two of OpenSim’s biggest and oldest commercial grids — have just made extremely large code donations to the OpenSim community. OpenSim server code is distributed under the BSD license. This means...
DigiWorldz spearheads fundraising for export permissions fix
Today, grids that want to be hypergrid enabled but still allow creators to protect content either have to write custom code — as Kitely did — or filter content based on the current copy,...
Astronauts turn to virtual reality to stay in touch with Earth
To help Mars astronauts overcome the potential effects of an extended separation from earth, the University of Hawaii is running a NASA funded experiment to let space travelers virtually bring some of their favorite...
Browser-based Beloola plans virtual reality push
Beloola, a browser-based social virtual world, plans to leverage new developments in Chrome and Firefox to support virtual reality headsets. It is a room-based world, where every user gets a free room to start...
Top virtual reality blogs
Virtual reality is a fast-changing field, and is about to explode. Stay on top of the news by subscribing to the top blogs on the subject. The page authority numbers are from Open Site...
How to market with Google Cardboard
Technology altering the way companies conduct business is nothing new. From devices like iPads, to the use of social media as a marketing tool, advances in technology have made running businesses more efficient. Now...
Avination cuts ties with Virwox, Mobius Grid signs up
It’s been a good-news, bad-news summer for Virwox, the European virtual currency exchange that used to dominate third-party Linden Dollar trading. On August 1, all third party Linden Dollar trading officially came to an end. And,...
Virtual theater opens new doors for performance artists
Storytelling is a valuable form of human expression that has been around since the very ancient times. Story itself is essential to so many art forms, and theater is one of them. We have written...
Zumba turns to virtual reality
When Zumba burst on to the scene in the early 2000s, it dramatically changed fitness in America. The company cemented its place as a juggernaut within its industry through innovative practices, and its...
Success! OpenSim on my phone!
As my regular readers know, I’ve been trying to use a smartphone-and-Cardboard combo as an Oculus Rift replacement so that I could walk around my OpenSim builds without having to shell out $350 for...
Admired leader leaves OpenSim for bio research
For many years, former IBMer Justin Clark-Casey has been the eternally-youthful face of OpenSimulator development and the president of the Overte Foundation which oversees OpenSim licensing issues. Then, on Sunday, the Justin Era ended with...
10 VR headsets for under $10
So you want to try out some of the new virtual reality apps coming out, or you want to watch movies in 3D, but aren’t quite ready to shell out real money for a real headset....
Mozilla gives developers early access to VR browser
Mozilla has given outside developers early access to their virtual reality test browser, according to a report last week in USA Today. Firefox Nightly is the preview version of Firefox, and is for testing...
Matterport turns real estate virtual
Today’s realtors struggle to promote homes to prospective clients when those clients are too far away, don’t have a lot of time for house hunting — of if the house hasn’t even been built...
Football’s latest game changer: virtual reality
When Stanford kicker Derek Belch started work on his master’s thesis in virtual reality football, he had limited aspirations. “Goal number one was to do a good enough job to get an ‘A’ on the project,”...
2 travel agencies already using virtual reality
Travel agencies and tour operators are now using virtual reality technology to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Agents are showing potential guests immersive virtual experiences that help the viewers better understand where they could...
5 days left in Fove Kickstarter
The Kickstarter for the Fove virtual reality headset — the one that tracks where you are looking — is coming to an end this Saturday. There are only ten headsets left at the $375...
Currency exchanges: sign petition to keep us alive
A week ago, Linden Lab announced that third-party exchanges have to stop offering Linden dollars, which will effectively put all or most of them out of business. Exchange operators are now asking users to...
NASA to use Microsoft’s HoloLens in space
Press release: NASA, Microsoft Collaborate to Bring Science Fiction to Science Fact NASA and Microsoft are teaming up to develop Sidekick, a new project using commercial technology to empower astronauts aboard the International Space...
Regions grow, activity slows on OpenSim grids
OpenSim’s land area hit a new high this month and more than 9,000 new users registered on the grids, but active user numbers slipped by 672Â as we enter the summer months. OpenSim grids gained...
Oculus shows off new headset, controllers
This week, Oculus VR demonstrated the new consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset, due to hit the market in the first quarter of 2016, as well as a couple of controllers — a...
Google Cardboard updated with new button, bigger screen, iOS support
More than a million Google Cardboard headsets are now in the hands of users, said Clay Bavor, Google’s VP of product management, in a presentation yesterday at the Google I/O conference. “We started with a...
Realiteer promises full VR kit for $40
It all started with broken toys. Fangwei Lee, a father of two, became frustrated with buying countless bubble guns for his son to play with. The quality of the guns led to them either...
Vote now in the Mobile VR Jam
More than 300 entrants are competing for more than $1 million in prizes in the Oculus’ Mobile VR Jam 2015 — and voting for the Community Choice prizes began yesterday, and will continue through May...
SLGo replacement Bright Canopy supports OpenSim
Bright Canopy, a cloud-based replacement to SLGo, will support OpenSim from day one, according to the founders. SLGo, operated by OnLive, was discontinued at the end of April when the company was acquired by Sony. It...
29 fun VR apps for the iPhone
I’m extremely sad that we don’t yet have a virtual reality OpenSim viewer for the iPhone. (If you’re new to this blog, check out What is OpenSim?) But that doesn’t mean that we iPhone users...
AltspaceVR solves nausea challenge
I’ve gotten a little wary of trying new virtual reality applications because some of the best ones, graphically, do the nastiest job on my stomach. There was that one swimming-with-sharks simulations that made me...
Where to get cheap regions now
Since last September, the lowest-price regions in the metaverse were on the Great Canadian Grid. But their $5 region pricing is coming to an end. You can still get a 15,000-prim region, with no...
Virtual reality helps patients relax
Press release: Improve Patient Care with Virtual Reality Mindfulness GLEN ELLYN, Ill. — Cubicle Ninjas‘ relaxing virtual reality application for the Oculus Rift, Guided Meditation VR allows patients to experience an exotic vacation, wherever and whenever they...
Firestorm by far most popular on hypergrid
The Firestorm Viewer is the most popular on the hypergrid by a wide margin, according to today’s analysis of Hyperica server logs. More than half of the last 3,600 visitors to Hyperica used the Firestorm...
Taarna Welles: the next Linda Kellie?
I’ve heard a lot of complaints about Linda Kellie while traveling the hypergrid. Okay, not about her per se — she’s probably done more for OpenSim than any other creator out there. But the...
New grid opens with mystery focus
Merrie Schonbach’s new grid’s business model is a mystery. Literally a mystery — Pillars of Mist will offer both self-paced and group murder mystery events. It is the newest example of a trend we’re seeing on...
OpenSim passes 30,000 active users
This was another record-breaking month for OpenSim, with new highs in regions, users, and active users on the 323 active worlds. For those who are new readers, OpenSim is a free, open source virtual...
Avination helps save OSgrid, donates cluster storage solution
OpenSim core developer Melanie Thielker is donating a new cluster storage solution to the community. Called FSAssets, it is designed to replace the MySQL databases or the RAID storage arrays used by other grids. FSAssets...
New grid uses Bitcoin for payments, gambling
In the past, several grid owners have discussed using Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, for in-world payments but, until now, no grid has done so — Bitcoins are typically too volatile to be used within...
Virtual reality a new frontier for religions
Virtual reality technology is going to radically change what it means to attend church in the next fifty years — and maybe much sooner. While the technology is still in its infancy, however, virtual...
Virtual reality adoption accelerating… and porn
We seem to be hitting the inflection point on the old hockey-stick curve when it comes to the adoption of virtual reality technology. Consider these headlines, from just the past few days. First, the...
OpenSim users pledge $2,000 to improve vehicles
Update: More supporters pledged funds to the effort, bringing the total to $2,000. Members of the OpenSim Virtual Google Plus community have pledged $1,550 to improve vehicle scripting by fixing bugs with the way...
AltspaceVR opens applications for closed beta
Platform offers synchronized videos, hand gestures AltspaceVR has opened up applications for a closed beta of what it claims to be the world’s first immersive social virtual reality platform. The Redwood City, CA-based company’s social and content...
Atek biggest land gainer this month
All OpenSim stats increased this month but the most dramatic increase was on Atek Grid, which more than quadrupled its land area this month with nearly 400 new regions. There are now a total...
Virtual reality breathes life into immersive storytelling
The craft of storytelling is experiencing a sea-change in its development. Putting a viewer in the event directly with the help of virtual reality technology is what journalists are likely to be doing in...
Can AviWorlds find stability under new management?
The name-calling and blame-throwing seems to be settling down, and it looks like AviWorlds is starting to find some stability under new management. Mike Hart is now the owner of the AviWorlds grid, and...
OMC’s no good, very bad year
If 2014 was the year of the hypergrid — and it was — then it should also have been the year of the OMC. After all, the OMC, or Open Metaverse Currency, is the...
Fastest growing grids of 2014
This past year has been a growth year for OpenSim. Over the previous twelve months, 22,409 regions, 71,442 registered users, and 2,189 active users. But some grids did better than others. User growth Metropolis...
Changing your home? Try virtual reality
Virtual reality is about to make a huge impact on everything from gaming to business. But virtual reality may be changing our homes as well. Here are five ways that virtual reality is impacting architecture and...
Tangle launches new open grid, WestWorld
Tangle Grid, a mid-sized commercial grid best known for its expos, has launched yet another open grid, WestWorld. Tangle previously launched another open grid, Tangle OS, at the start of October, which was then...
Christmas happenings on the grids
It’s shaping out to be a busy holiday season in OpenSim, with many grids holding holiday-themed events this year. A moment for quiet reflection If you’re looking to get away from all the crowds,...
Vote for your favorite freebie destinations
For the past couple of months, people have been submitting their favorite freebie destinations. After removing duplicates and offline destinations, here’s the final list. To travel the hypergrid, open your favorite viewer, log into any...
3rd Rock posts explosive growth post-hypergrid
After turning on hypergrid connectivity in mid November, 3rd Rock Grid saw a dramatic spike in both active users and in region purchases. “Growth has been exploding the last few weeks,” grid owner and...
Hypergrid users surpass those on closed grids
The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids reached a new high this month, with the equivalent of 54,867 standard-sized regions, an increase of 744 regions compared to the same time last month. OpenSim also gained 6,492 new...
OpenSim hosting providers survey
Update: The survey is now closed, and part one of the results is up. Part two of the results is here. It’s almost the end of the year, time for the annual Hypergrid Business OpenSim...
Virtual reality can make us nicer
There’s been quite a bit of debate about whether violent video games can make people more violent in real life — though no conclusive research. With the advent of virtual reality — immersive, interactive...
OpenSim-based SimB2B recognized at startup showcase
OpenSim-based virtual networking company SimB2B was recognized as a top-five startup at the CoInvent NY Startup Showcase on Thursday, one of over twenty companies presenting. “SimB2BÂ is the first grid to offer business to business...
OSCC14: Comfort key to VR success, says Oculus scientist
Virtual reality’s success or failure will depend on interface design, Oculus Rift chief scientist Steve LaValle told a packed virtual conference hall last weekend at the OpenSimulator Community Conference. “If we do fail, it’ll...
Jaunt’s killer VR: immersive video
Full immersion virtual reality might be here sooner than you think — for movies, at least. Palo Alto-based Jaunt VR is developing a suite of hardware and software tools for creating 360-degree virtual reality videos....
Tangle finds partner for new open grid
With OSgrid down for three months and no news from its managers about when it is expected to come back up, other grids have been stepping up to serve its users. Most recently, Tangle...
November events keep residents inside where it’s warm
If you live, like me, in a northern climate, then you might be starting to suffer from the lack of sunlight, and from the cold November winds. Fortunately, there’s plenty to do in on OpenSim...
Breedables arrive on the hypergrid
Love them or hate them — and many people do love them — but there are now breedables on the hypergrid. Previously, breedables in OpenSim were limited to closed grids like InWorldz, with Oyo Breedables,...
5 reasons VR headsets for smartphones are so great
Are you already preparing your smartphone to be your doorway to virtual reality? If no, it’s high time you did so. While virtual reality hardware keeps going three different paths, mobile platform is taking shape...
3rd Rock Grid to have hypergrid soon, offers $8 regions
3rd Rock Grid, a mid-sized closed, commercial grid won’t be closed for too much longer. The next grid upgrade will bring hypergrid functionality in the next two or three weeks, grid founder Terry Ford,...
Oculus licenses realistic 3D audio tech
It looks like a little gray box. But when you move it through the air, it sounds more as though you’re moving a whole orchestra around the room in the palm of your hand....
Exo-Life moves from Zetamex to Dreamland
Exo-Life, a small social world, has completed its move from Zetamex to Dreamland Metaverse hosting this week. Zetamex and Dreamland Metaverse are the two leading hosting companies for companies, organizations and individuals running private...
LIDAR accelerates virtual building
Anyone who has worked on the production side of virtual environments can attest that content creation and scene development is a costly and time consuming endeavor. Depending on the complexity and fidelity of the...
Virtual education brings down geographic barriers
Bassima Alansary came to virtual worlds in secret. Her family and culture forbid her from having an avatar, or from speaking to men even in virtual settings. She lived in Saudia Arabia, in fear...
Island Oasis back on top in grid survey
Island Oasis pulled in the highest overall scores in the fifth annual OpenSim grid survey, narrowly edging out The Adult Grid for first place. Island Oasis is a top-ten grid by active users, making its...
Halloween, Metroberfest, new grids, and more this October
It’s going to be a busy month, with Oktoberfest and Halloween parties across the grids. One of the biggest Halloween celebration this year is probably the InWorldz Frightfest, on the InWorldz Event sims which will...
Fifth annual OpenSim grid survey
Update: The poll is now closed. See the results here. It’s time again for the OpenSim grid survey, where OpenSim residents can rank their grids and see how they compare to others. If your...
Spellscape donates filtered IAR exports
The London-based Spellscape grid, a magic-themed role play world, has donated code for filtered inventory exports. This would enable grid owners to allow their users to save their inventories in the form of IAR files, while still...
EU offers $103 mil in tech funding; OpenSim web viewer might fit
The European Union is giving away more than 80 million Euro — US $103 million — as part of the FIWARE Accelerator Programme for tech startups using cutting-edge technologies such as realXtend, an early off-shoot of OpenSim. The...
3 ways virtual rewards improve education
As we wrote before, virtual reality is transforming education in many different ways. But one of the most powerful is that it helps students develop a motivation for learning through virtual rewards that provide real value...
Virtual characters help build real stories
Virtual worlds are providing a new and exciting, interactive landscape for writers. One such place is Nara’s Nook, an OpenSim grid on which which authors gather weekly to discuss their projects and to share...
3rd Rock leads OSgrid fundraising effort
3rd Rock Grid, a closed, commercial social grid known for its music scene, has stepped up with a fundraising call for another grid. OSgrid has been down for almost a month after a failure...
OSgrid outage drags down stats in September
The grid numbers were down this month, partly due to an outage on OSgrid, the oldest virtual world running on the OpenSim software and one of the largest grids. However, the number of downloads of...
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