This year’s Hypergrid International Expo kicks off at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, October 6 at the HIE’s Auditorium on Craft World, featuring an opening party with music from Zoree Jupiter at 11 a.m., Arianna Nightfire at 1 p.m., and Forest Azure at 10 p.m. Pacific Time. “The three artistsRead More →
Well, the NFT craze certainly crashed and burned quickly. According to a new report by DappGambl, 95 percent of NFT collections now have zero value. That’s not a typo. Zero. Out of over 73,000 collections, only around 3,500 still have any market cap at all. And only a tiny fractionRead More →
Remember those mixed reality combat goggles that Microsoft was building for the Army that made soldiers nauseous? (See our previous story here.) Well, they’re back. Microsoft got its hands slapped and had to go back to the drawing board after reports came out last year that its new AR gogglesRead More →
OpenSim land area has passed 130,000 standard region equivalents this month, for a new all-time high. This is the second month in a row that OpenSim has set a land record. The total number of regions grew by over 2,000 over the past month. Registered users also increased, by moreRead More →
The annual OpenSimulator Festival, known as OSFest, takes place September 15 through September 30 inside the OSFest virtual world grid. The sixteen-day event features live music, exhibits, talks, tours, social spaces, and shopping for attendees across the Hypergrid metaverse. This year’s OSFest offers 94 hours of non-music events at free,Read More →
StoryLink Radio and Seanchai Library will host a series of Halloween-themed live voice, streamed, and in-world storytelling sessions during the month of October, which is high story-telling season. Virtual world citizens are welcome to listen to the stories at the Halloween Merchant Mall in Kitely. There will also be aRead More →
The Metaverse Spectrum Business Conference, Expo, and Pitch Fest will highlight expanding business applications for the metaverse at its virtual conference this coming December. The event, which will be held in the metaverse, will include sessions on marketing, product development, training, and recruiting applications of the metaverse. Speakers will hailRead More →
OpenSim’s public grids hit a record high this month with its largest land area ever, the equivalent of 127,958 standard regions. This was an increase of 2,252 regions compared to last month. Meanwhile, the total number of registered users on public OpenSim grids increased by 7,440 and the total number ofRead More →
AviTron owner Alexander Pomposelli has a long history of closing grids without warning. Back when he ran AviWorlds, I counted more than a dozen times that he closed that grid, often without any warning. Residents complained of losing access to regions, inventories, and in world-currency balances. At one point,Read More →
AvatarLife is launching its Wild Poker game today, based on Texas Hold’em poker. But it’s more skill-based, said AvatarLife CEO Sushant Chandrasekar. There is also a starting jackpot of 1 million AV$, the grid’s local currency — which translates to about US $4,000. “The launch event will be a threeRead More →
OpenSim grid stats decreased by 1,347 active users and 131 regions this month compared to last month’s tally due to several grids suffering outages or not publishing their statistics this month. For example, New Life Italy did not report its active user stats this month — it had over 400Read More →
The Discovery Grid will host its seventh anniversary party on Saturday, July 1 at the Louisville region, featuring a virtual Thunder Over Discovery 2023 aviation event which will coincide with the real-life Thunder Over Louisville aircraft event, showcasing vintage and modern aircraft in action. Both grid residents and hypergrid visitorsRead More →
New research reports and surveys released this month show that interest in virtual and augmented reality is continuing to drop. According to an EY Consulting survey released earlier this month, only 24 percent of people said their company has started using VR and AR technologies, putting it in last placeRead More →
AvatarLife grid will host a virtual Pride Week for residents and visitors from other grids starting at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, June 24, with events running through Friday, June 30. The Pride Week, which coincides with and has events that match those held during the United Nation’s PrideRead More →
The public OpenSim grids reported over 2,600 new active users this month, the biggest increase since last fall. The total land area also hit a record high, of 125,841 standard region equivalents. All of the growth has been on hypergrid-enabled grids. In fact, there were only 499 active users reported byRead More →
This is the monthly stats report, where we count up all the regions and users on the public OpenSim grids. This month, the number of active public grids hit an all-time high — 428. This is despite the fact that we’re now categorizing many grids as private if they don’tRead More →
The public OpenSim grids gained nearly 2,000 regions this past month, and more than 1,300 new registrations, but continued to bleed active users as the weather improves and people spend less time inside at their computers. However, the total number of active public grids has reached a new record highRead More →
Virtual reality hasn’t caught on with American teens, according to a new survey from Piper Sandler released on Tuesday. While 29 percent percent of teens polled owned a VR device — versus 87% who own iPhones — only 4 percent of headset owners used it daily, and just 14 percentRead More →
Littlefield grid turns ten on Saturday, April 1, and will host a week-long birthday party on its Anniversary region. There will be a live performance by OpenSim renowned artist Rogue Galaxy at 5 p.m. Pacific time on April 1, followed by a live DJ dance party with Littlefield’s own DJRead More →
Development of Crystal Frost — a mobile-friendly Unity-based Second Life viewer which is now in beta trials — will continue despite Second Life recently announcing its own mobile virtual world viewer. Crystal Frost is currently a downloadable Windows virtual world viewer like Firestorm, but will also be available on Linux andRead More →
The size of OpenSim virtual land just got bigger this month by an additional 996 standard-size regions even as the number of active users dropped by 991, mostly likely due to normal seasonal variations. OpenSim also added close to 3,000 new registered users this month, reversing the hefty loss ofRead More →
I can’t tell if he’s just being tone deaf, or trying desperately to do some damage control, but after releasing ChatGPT without any warning on an unsuspecting world late last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is now calling for slow and careful release of AI. If you remember, ChatGPT wasRead More →
Florida-based Avalon Corp. has raised $13 million to build a platform for games capable of taking advantage of the metaverse, featuring a universe of interoperable worlds with various intellectual properties, to be built using technologies including blockchain and game engines. According to the press release, Avalon Corp is uniquely experiencedRead More →
OpenSim land area has this month gone up by a significant 6,622 standard region equivalents thanks to new grids and a significant expansion at other grids. All public OpenSim grids now have a total of 110,458 standard-sized regions in virtual land area. Speaking of new grids, the total number ofRead More →
I get dozens of emails every day from people who want to contribute articles to Hypergrid Business. Sometimes, they even want to pay me to run the articles. The catch? There’s a link somewhere in the article to something the author wants to promote. I’m not, in principle, opposed toRead More →
At Hypergrid Business, we’ve been covering OpenSim and other desktop-based virtual environments since 2009, and began covering virtual reality extensively in 2014. Our goal has been to promote an open-source, distributed metaverse, and to help the little guy and gal with navigating that landscape. Specifically, the people running OpenSim-based virtualRead More →
Hi, everyone. This is me, Maria, your friendly local technology reporter and blog editor. You might know me from such things as my annual OpenSim stats presentations at the OpenSimulator Community Conference, my various attempts to run an OpenSim grid on my home computer, or the fact that, since 2009,Read More →
After ChatGPT was released on Nov. 30, 2022, the world changed. Whatever you might personally think about AI, the events of last year showed that AI was capable of human-level creativity in art, music, writing, and coding. And, for the first time, AI demonstrated common sense. Or, at least, somethingRead More →
Hosting4OpenSim, a virtual world hosting company, has announced its grand opening. Founded in December 2022 by three friends from Mexico, the US, and Brazil, the company aims to become the leading provider for OpenSim hosting services. As part of its launch, the company is offering a deal to the nextRead More →
I love building in OpenSim, but I don’t love the process of finding or creating textures. It’s hard to find just the right one, and even harder to figure out its license terms. All those texture packs floating around — are they legitimate? Or are they ripped off from SecondRead More →
OpenSim virtual land area continued to increase this month, adding 942 new regions since we reported the stats, as well as registering 4,098 new users. However, the number of active users fell by 3,806 this month as the December holidays came to a close. Generally, there are fewer seasonal eventsRead More →
“AI is the big one,” said Bill Gates in a recent Q&A session on Reddit. “I don’t think Web3 was that big or that metaverse stuff alone was revolutionary but AI is quite revolutionary.” The tech giant and philanthropist went on to express his admiration for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, calling itRead More →
Ever since Vivox announced last year that it was planning to discontinue its free voice service for OpenSim, the community has been searching for an alternative. The goal is to find a free or open source system that offers positional audio and works for Windows, MacOS, and Linux viewers. Unfortunately,Read More →
OpenSim added 2,061 active users this past month, hitting a new record high of 47,169 unique monthly users. Some of the increase could be due to the recently-concluded OpenSimulator Community Conference , or due to the fact that people are home from work or school for the holidays, and haveRead More →
Celebrity Cruises yesterday unveiled Wonderverse, a virtual experience that lets travelers explore a realistic digital recreation of the line’s newest ship, Celebrity Beyond.Read More →
On Nov. 30, OpenAI released a beta of its ChatGPT chatbot to the public — for free. It is currently, hands-down, the best text and code generator out there. Within the first six days, more than a million people signed up to use it. They’re using it to write workingRead More →
Experiencing a destination in the metaverse could make travelers more likely to visit the place in real life, according to a new study by Booking.com.Read More →
More companies are planning to invest in the new frontier that is the metaverse, but new and old cybersecurity threats are a top concern, according to a study released today by cybersecurity company Tenable.Read More →
Imagine that a soldier has a tiny computer device injected into their bloodstream that can be guided with a magnet to specific regions of their brain. With training, the soldier could then control weapon systems thousands of miles away using their thoughts alone. Embedding a similar type of computerRead More →
OpenSim grids added 2,897 active users for a new record high of 45,108 this month. The grids also registered 1,950 new local users within the past 30 days. The active user numbers include both local residents and hypergrid visitors, which means that some users may be counted twice — however,Read More →
Gaming technology will be the biggest driving force for the evolution of the metaverse in the near term, according to a new report published last week by S&P Global Market Intelligence.Read More →
Relay for Ukraine is having the grand opening of its Kisma in Ukraine art installation in Craft World next Wednesday, November 9, at 1:00 P.M. Pacific time.Read More →
Sushant Chandrasekar, a renowned gaming developer at Second Life, and Gaurav Gupta, a former high-profile consultant at Bain & Company, have completed a seed funding round of $1.5 million with InfoEdge Ventures to develop AvatarLife grid with skill-based play-to-earn games, community content building, marketplace, freebies, and in-world currency. ThatRead More →
Neuralink still hasn’t received FDA approval to test its brain-computer interface on humans, even though Musk had predicted the company could begin human trials as early as 2020.Read More →
There are a variety of businesses that exist only — or at least mainly — inside OpenSim worlds. Those businesses are often run by creative artists who use their talents to make digital art which they market as products to customers in OpenSim.Read More →
As OpenSim technology continues to improve, prices are dropping. The average 15,000-prim region in OpenSim is now $12.89 a month. The median price is now $10 a month, unchanged from what we had in 2021, but the average has fallen more than $2, from $15.18 last year. And that numberRead More →
The public OpenSim grids now have the equivalent of 120,044 standard-sized regions, a new record high, and more than four times the land area of Second Life, according to the latest Grid Survey numbers. OpenSim land is very attractive because land prices are dramatically lower than in Second Life. InRead More →
In a live – actually, it was prerecorded – keynote address, Zuckerberg announced the Meta Quest Pro, a new, business-focused advanced virtual reality headset the company’s been teasing for the past year.Read More →
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