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AviWorlds is celebrating a whole year of not closing down. “To celebrate one year online AviWorlds is now offering $5 per month private regions with 25,000 prims,” grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. The grid is currently hypergrid-enabled, allowing residents to teleport in and out to other grids, andRead More →

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I’m barely able to type this right now. I have a massive turkey hangover. But that’s not stopping me from scouring the web for Black Friday deals. This is probably a bad idea, because my sales resistance is so low, but I just can’t help myself. But it’s not justRead More →

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Tangle Grid has long offered free land plots to both local residents and hypergrid visitors, as well as free stores for merchants Now, the grid has expanded the offer. Instead of two free land regions, there are now six, joined together. “It gives it that community feeling,” grid owner LeslieRead More →

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It may look at first glance that OpenSim numbers went down this month. The total number of region equivalents fell by 8,955 to 72,911, and the number of active users fell by 1,166 to 35,589. But in fact, grids actually gained both land and users. The discrepancy is due toRead More →

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Tangle Grid‘s sixth annual Winter Expo starts Sunday, Dec. 1, and will run through Jan. 13, 2020. The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items, and also purchase content using the Gloebit currency. (Learn how to use GloebitsRead More →

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The Infinite Metaverse Alliance released the beta version of its simplified SceneGate viewer for OpenSim this weekend. The official launch of the viewer, which is available for Windows only, was Monday, November 25. Linux and Mac versions are coming soon, according to the organization. The SceneGate viewer is a forkRead More →

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Some lucky cows are apparently finding virtual reality to be quite moo-ving. A farm in Russia gave its cows custom made virtual reality headsets in an attempt to reduce their anxiety and improve the quality and quantity of their milk production. The experiments took place northwest of Moscow at theRead More →

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In addition to the official distribution of the OpenSimulator software, there are several variations of the open-source virtual world platform, including the mini-grid Diva Distro version, the easy-to-install-at-home DreamGrid version, the HalcyonGrid distribution from the now-defunct InWorldz grid, the AuroraSim distribution which hasn’t been updated since 2014, the still activelyRead More →

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  The November issue of HyperGrid Zone Magazine includes a feature about how to get banned from DigiWorldz, as well as features about artists, performers, and designers from around the hypergrid. HyperGrid Zone Magazine is supported by DigiWorldz grid owner and founder Terry Ford, and is published monthly. “We’re workingRead More →

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When you think of university level English education, an AR game might not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, with the current availability of powerful cellphones and inexpensive standalone VR headsets, augmented and virtual reality could be regularly used in college humanities courses sooner rather than later.Read More →

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Halloween is tomorrow, and OpenSim grids are turning up the spookiness — and the music. Get your costume on and check out these creepy spots tonight and tomorrow night! I’ve sorted the events below by time, in case you want to hit them all. OSgrid’s Halloween party Date and time:Read More →

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The United States Air Force had a problem. They needed to train hundreds of airmen, but there weren’t enough real aircraft to go around. Virtual reality offered the next best thing. Vinci VR, a two year old virtual reality startup founded by a 22 year old college undergrad, was recently awardedRead More →

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The new release of the OpenSim server software is out, OpenSimulator 0.9.1.0, also known as “Snail.” It supports animated mesh, the new YEngine script engine, and fixes a few bugs, according to core developer Ubit Umarov. It is also the first release to have a name, not just a number.Read More →

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The hypergrid turned 11 years old today. If you’ve ever wanted to teleport from one virtual world to another and be able to make friends and go shopping on other worlds, that’s the hypergrid. You can even join groups and send messages to friends on other grids. And if youRead More →

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Are you interested in presenting a panel at this year’s OpenSim Community Conference in December? Visit the OSCC’s Call for Proposals page and fill out the form. This year’s conference will focus on visions of the future and the evolution of the platform. It will take place on December 14Read More →

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The Tag Grid Marketplace, in development since 2015 but which the grid began widely promoting this year, has grown at nearly twice the rate of the Kitely Market over the past five months. Tag Grid merchants added 4,058 new item listings, while Kitely merchants added 2,289. However, Kitely is stillRead More →

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OpenSim land area went up by 3,300 regions this month, with the largest growth recorded on OSgrid, which gained more than 1,500 regions. OSgrid conducted a major clean-up last month, and some of this increase may have been due to region owners reconnecting their regions to the grid. OSgrid alsoRead More →

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The sixth annual Tangle Grid Halloween Expo is live now and will have its grand opening next Tuesday, Oct. 15. It will run until November 19. The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items,Read More →

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DigiWorldz, one of OpenSim’s most successful commercial grids, went down Tuesday due to a database issue and will be down for a few days while the grid uses the opportunity to do a major update. All in-world events have been canceled, and residents are used to follow the grid onRead More →

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This year, self-driving cars started getting pretty good. Deep fakes video started getting pretty convincing. Our virtual assistants got to the point where they could understand us well enough to do some simple things, like tell us the weather or get driving directions home. When it comes to artificial intelligence,Read More →

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In July, the team behind the popular Firestorm viewer announced that they planned to split the Second Life and OpenSim versions of their popular virtual world viewer. But after seeing the reaction from the OpenSim community, the developers have reversed their decision. “It made sense to split, but your pointsRead More →

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Analysts at the International Data Corporation are predicting smartphone sales to resume growth in 2020, driven by 5G and emerging markets. Sales declined for the past three years straight, as a result of consumers holding on to their phones longer. “To be clear, we don’t think 5G will be the saviorRead More →

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I should just cut-and-paste that headline every month. Okay, so…. AviWorlds has a new website and new sky-high land prices. A 15,000-prim region is now $65, for a grid with almost no users, not much content, and a history of shutting down and losing user content on a regular basis.Read More →

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Hypergrid Business has had exactly two site designs during its ten-year history. From 2009 to 2014, we were using a WordPress theme called The Stars, and were using it even after the company stopped supporting it. Here’s what it looked like when it first launched: Then, in 2014, we switchedRead More →

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  If you are in the UK this fall, and are interested in seeing some virtual reality and augmented reality art for free, check out the Alternate Realities touring exhibition that is part of the Sheffield Doc/Fest and will be coming to Brighton in October, Manchester in November and willRead More →

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The sixth annual Tangle Grid Steam Expo is live now and will run until October 1. The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items, and also purchase content using the Gloebit currency. (Learn how toRead More →

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The total number of active users on OpenSim’s public grids dropped by just over 500 active users, which is typical of the summer months. But land area was up by nearly 5,000 standard region equivalents, to 88,512, a record high. OpenSim grids also registered 3,948  new users this month, forRead More →

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The Utopia Skye OpenSim grid will be holding an art fair this month, and submissions will be accepted until June 15. The Skye Art Fair itself will run from June 29 to July 28, with special events on the opening weekend, June 29 and June 38. There will also beRead More →

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OpenSim has suffered a number of shocks in the past year, with several significant grid closings in a row. OpenSim’s largest closed grid, InWorldz, shut down last summer. Its successor, Islandz, closed earlier this year. Virtual Highway shut down in December. We lost both Lost Paradise and its owner thisRead More →

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In its ongoing quest to find a sustainable business model, the commercial AviWorlds grid is giving the no-hypergrid approach another go. “AviWorlds needs to be a private community now,” grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “Avi-Labs needs to create value and also a distinguishing characteristic from all these other gridsRead More →

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The Kitely Market, OpenSim’s largest commercial content marketplace, has passed the 30,000 item milestone this month. The market currently delivers to 345 different grids, both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. (Instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.) According to Kitely co-founder and CEO IlanRead More →

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John Skakandy, known to OpenSim users as Cloneu Inglewood, died of cancer last month in Florida. Skakandy was the owner of the Lost Paradise grid, which he founded in 2011. The grid received the top rankings in our 2012 reader survey, with perfect scores for community, content, support, and technology, thoughRead More →

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The first annual OpenSim Fest officially opens its doors tomorrow, with musical performances tomorrow and this weekend, then a showcase of exhibits from 45 different grids in the OpenSim community running through April 6. This is an event to give exposure to our fellow OpenSim neighbors and revel in theirRead More →

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As many of you pointed out in emails to me, Hypergrid Business has been down since Friday morning. There was an infection on the site, and it took Sucuri, our security service, and DreamHost, our hosting provider, four days to resolve the issue, which included three different rounds of cleaning outRead More →

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Metropolis, one of the oldest non-profit OpenSim grids, and the second most popular grid (after OSgrid) announced that it will be upgrading to the latest version of OpenSim at the end of the month. Read the full information document here. Users will need to pay 5 Euros to transfer theirRead More →

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Sony Pictures announced that it’s making a sequel to the hit Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. But it’s animated. And it’s in virtual reality. Groundhog Day: Life Father Like Son takes place in the same setting, but this time the hero is Phil Connors, Jr., the son of Phil Connors,Read More →

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Exhibitors can already start setting up for February’s Sci-Fi Expo on Tangle Grid. The month-long exposition, accessible to hypergrid visitors, officially opens on Tuesday, February 5 and runs through March 5. The hypergrid address is tanglegrid.net:8002. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items, and alsoRead More →

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    Islandz, the official successor to the InWorldz grid, is shutting down, owner Beth Reischl announced today on the grid’s Discord channel. Residents will have ten days to wrap up any current projects. Reischl, who is also known as Elenia Llewellyn  in-world, cited financial difficulties. “I’m not working for free for anotherRead More →

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There’s a lot of OpenSim stuff out there. Last year, for example, there were 380 different grids for the public to explore, and an unknown number of personal, business, and educational grids that didn’t make the Hypergrid Business lists but were open to visitors. It’s hard enough for long-time OpenSimRead More →

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Kitely  is now offering private grids for organizations, the company announced today. For more information, check out this Kitely support thread. There are a lot of questions about how this will work. I will be posting a longer article tomorrow. If you have any comments or questions, add them below,Read More →

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A group that claims to be affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivist collective announced the launch of a new OpenSim grid on Saturday. “Anonymous began to a great degree in a virtual world called SecondLife,” the grid said in a message on its website. “We hope to bring back this foundational platformRead More →

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The 2018 OpenSim Community Conference. started off with a bang this morning with an announcement of a new virtual reality viewer for OpenSim. OpenSimulator core developer Melanie Thielker — also known as Melanie Milland in-world — announced that she is releasing her virtual reality OpenSim viewer to the open sourceRead More →

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From The Ashes Of AvatarFest, OpenSim Fest Rises AvatarFest has been a creative effort which has celebrated the people of OpenSim for years, and AvatarFest 2018 was its final year. In the spirit of this incredible yearly festival, OpenSim Fest begins with our first festival starting in March 2019. WhatRead More →

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Update: I’ve added numbers for more than 40 additional grids since this article first run, and now the active user numbers show an increase of more than 2,000. I’ve run the stats for OpenSim this weekend, and here are the results: Full monthly stats Active grids list Hypergrid destination listRead More →

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The 2018 OpenSim Community Conference is this weekend, and you can check out the schedule here. Registration is free, and you can still register here. In previous years, the conference was also broadcast via the web, for those who couldn’t attend in-world. Follow OSCC on Twitter at opensimcc.  Read More →

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AviWorlds, the grid that’s up and down more than a yo-yo, is back again — this time offering 100 free full-sized regions. Owner Alexsandro Pomposelli has shut down the grid more than a dozen times over the last seven years, and has attempted multiple different business models. It’s had free land,Read More →

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Tangle Grid’s Winter Expo opens its doors this Saturday, inviting hypergrid travelers from any OpenSim grid to come and check out the exhibits and shopping opportunities. The hypergrid address is tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. For folks new to hypergrid travel, type Ctrl-M to pull up the map, cut-and-paste the address into the map’s addressRead More →

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Registration is now open for the Mainstreaming Virtual World Learning Colloquium. This Colloquium is a free event — held on December 1, 2018 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Central Time – in the AvaCon Grid Quaternary Stadium, and is also a community event affiliated with the upcoming Open SimulatorRead More →

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Islandz, the successor to InWorldz, officially opened for business last week, writes Ryan Schultz. InWorldz, one of the most successful and longest-lasting commercial grids in the OpenSim ecosystem, closed in August due to financial problems. InWorldz was one of the last remaining closed grids. Almost all other OpenSim grids allowRead More →

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“We estimate that on average 1.5 new VR studios open for business somewhere in the world every day.” “Regardless of what you or I may think about it the big brands are the ones sitting on the money to pay for top notch VR. And they are very much incentivizedRead More →

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As the November 1 opening of the Santorini 1st Digital Bienniale art festival approaches, organizers have made available the 28-page preview book free exclusively for Hypergrid Business readers: download it here. Read the original festival announcement here. #Neighbourhood: Art is a political act Digital and real worlds will handshake at Santorini onRead More →

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Since Google announced that they were shutting down their Google Plus social platform by end of next summer, organizers of OpenSim-related communities on that platform have begun searching for an alternative. Google Plus was particularly attractive for OpenSim users since it allowed avatar names, a welcome alternative to Facebook’s realRead More →

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Google has announced today that it is shutting down the Google Plus social network for consumers. The platform has been popular for OpenSim users to share news about the hypergrid. OpenSim Virtual has more than 2,000 subscribed members and there are many other communities serving different cross-grid communities as well as individualRead More →

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The Second Life-based Community Virtual Library is opening two branches in OpenSim next summer, on the Kitely and Avacon grids. The two new library branches will be CVL Hypergrid Resource Libraries with content designed to help people navigate virtual worlds across grids with various viewers. How to help Many peopleRead More →

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Kristopher Therrien, known as Quill Littlefeather to the OpenSim community, passed away this month. His family will be holding a memorial service on Saturday, September 29 at 11 a.m. at People’s United Methodist Church in Fremont, NH. Littlefeather has been involved in a number of OpenSim grid projects, including SkyLife GridRead More →

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Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference to Return to San Francisco on November 9-10, 2018 SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Annual Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference ‘The Future Present’ is happening November 9-10, 2018 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California. Educators registering for the conference can expect hands-on and networking opportunities,Read More →

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Survey: Enterprise Companies Seeing Strong Return on Investment in VR & AR LONDON – Businesses working in areas such as automotive, construction, manufacturing and retail are seeing a good return on their investment in virtual and augmented reality, according to an industry survey by VR Intelligence. The survey targeted senior-levelRead More →

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Breadables creator oYo, formerly based on the now-defunct InWorldz grid, has found a new home — the Tag Grid. The True to Life horses have concluded a successful beta test and will be officially released this Friday, Sept. 14. “We will gather at 8 a.m. for a party and countRead More →

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Elf Clan, one of the largest themed communities in OpenSim, has found a new home after the collapse of InWorldz. It will now be headquartered on OSgrid, with hypergrid linked locations on DigiWorlds, Kitely, and other hypergrid-enabled grids. Full list of affiliated locations is here. “After our experience with SecondRead More →

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  OSgrid, the largest grid in the OpenSim metaverse, will hold a donation carnival this month, staring on Friday, Sep. 21 and running through Sep. 28. “We are hoping to raise enough this year to do some much needed upgrades,” Koni Lanzius, OSGrid’s donation drive coordinator, told Hypergrid Business. “The wholeRead More →

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Pornhub Awards Show to bring Virtual Reality to the Masses Combining live VR streaming and a massively multiuser VR virtual world will deliver two breakthroughs for the premier of the Pornhub Awards Show on September 6, 2018 Vancouver, B.C. – In the latest example of the power of porn to launchRead More →

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Beth Reischl, founder and owner of the now-defunct InWorldz grid, is starting a new grid, called Islandz, she told New World Notes yesterday. The new URL has been purchased, islandzvw.com, though there is nothing up on the site just yet. Some filtered content from the old InWorldz grid will be movedRead More →

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Citing changes in the social fabric of the hypergrid, Han Held announced in the official AvatarFest Google Plus group that 2018 would be the last year of AvatarFest, the annual OpenSim festival celebrating end user creativity. “VisionZ has folded, Hypergrid Business is decreasing focus on OpenSim, the HG Safari hasRead More →

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The 1st Digital Bienniale immersive interactive art exhibit will open to the public on September 20 on the Metropolis Grid. There is also companion physical world event organized by Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art on September 17 for press and contributing artists. There will also be a OpenSim basics workshopRead More →

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Editor: This is a contributed announcement from Tag Grid. The Adult Grid has changed its name to Tag Grid. We can still be reached on our old URL and we are in the process of changing the whole site to reflect the new name. We have changed the name asRead More →

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Update: As of July 25, the GoFundMe campaign has been halted, after having raised more than $16,000 — just shy of the $17,000 goal. It’s unclear what is happening now. The official InWorldz announcement page about the issue seems to be the best place for updates. There’s also some discussionRead More →

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InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful commercial grids, is shutting down this week, owner Beth Reisch announced today, citing financial difficulties. According to Reischl, travel-related communication problems, bureaucratic mistakes and other issues resulted in the shutdown of the grid’s PayPal accounts and the calling in of the company’sRead More →

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Kitely will soon offer the option of hosting Virtual Private Grids on top of the Kitely grid, the company announced this week. According to the company, this new offering will enable groups and organizations to benefit from Kitely’s stability, performance and ease of use while gaining a new level ofRead More →

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Tranquility has unveiled their newest addition, Halcyon, a Gloebit-enabled region with a hypergrid shopping mall. It has more than 20 stores available for creators who wish to sell to the whole OpenSim community. Three different size stores are in place to accommodate small or large needs. There are also larger stores availableRead More →

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The gambling-focused, Bitcoin-friendly YrGrid has been down and out lately — and it’s looking like that might be permanent. We did see it online last month, so it’s still on our active grids list, but readers have been emailing us complaining that they can’t get it in, and can’t getRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids lost the equivalent of nearly 4,000 regions, for a new total land area of 80,671 standard region equivalents. The number of active monthly users dropped by 2,580, to reach a total of 35,399. Most of the land area losses were due to a regular cleanup on OSgrid,Read More →

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The GreekLife grid has been around for eight years, but it has really started to take off in the last two, now reporting thousands of regions and active users. Now the grid owners are turning their experience running their own successful commercial grid into a service for other would-be gridRead More →

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OpenSim land area and users rose slightly this month, despite outages and maintenance on several grids. Atek was down for a while before later resuming, as was Virtuality Grid, while Kinky Grid also went under construction temporarily. Tangle Grid is currently still down for maintenance. And Gevolution was doing loadRead More →

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With sexism still strong in the gaming industry, a Europe-based 3D model marketplace is looking to create a welcoming place for women developers in the surging virtual reality industry. With almost as many women using virtual reality as men — 14 percent versus 20 percent, according to a study byRead More →

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Blockchain — the technology powering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — is coming to virtual reality. Today, High Fidelity, the new VR platform from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, announced the launch of the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance, which is dedicated to using the blockchain to create an independent identity systemRead More →

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The Atek Grid has launched a new cryptocurrency, which will become the primary in-world currency, grid owner Frank Corsi told Hypergrid Business. The new currency, Dosh Coins, is based on blockchain technology. This is similar to the way Bitcoin works, except that its based on a slightly different cryptocurrency technology, EtheriumRead More →

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OpenSim land area continued to increase gaining a total of 3,400 standard region equivalents this month — after gaining more than 9,000 regions last month. The number of active users also increased by 1,300. OSgrid is still the biggest grid with a total of 20,203 standard region equivalents, followed byRead More →

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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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LSL Editor, software that helps users write scripts more easily for Second Life and OpenSim objects, has been updated with more support for OpenSim functions. With the new version 2.56, users can also create scripts that run other scripts, LSL Editor developer Frank Rulof told Hypergrid Business, and the testingRead More →

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OpenSim active user numbers hit a new high of 34,908 users this month. Land area also went up and is now at the equivalent of 80,175 standard regions, reversing a couple of months of declines. However, it still falls short of the 88,225 regions last November. Much of the movement isRead More →

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The Sacrarium grid has taken down illegal content after receiving complains from users through emails and forums, and removed users who allegedly engaged in illegal behavior with child avatars. Neustadt, a region in Sacrarium grid and which was selling naked child avatars and had children avatars moving around naked, wearing BDSMRead More →

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About a week ago, a social media post accused a region on the Kitely grid of distributing infringing content. Strictly speaking, any infringement complaint needs to be made by the original content creator, through official channels. That wasn’t the case here. It was a pseudonymous user, DMCA GridSkipper, claiming that the FashionistasRead More →

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Keng City will open a new museum on Wednesday, February 1 on the DigiWorldz grid to celebrate Black History Month. The museum will showcase African-American accomplishments and events throughout history starting with the slave trade to present day inventors and innovators. Although they will not exhibit everything owing to space limitationsRead More →

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OpenSim’s longest-running live music venue — Maritime Club Belfast — is celebrating its tenth anniversary this weekend. The party starts at the club location on OSgrid on Sunday, January 28, at 1 p.m. Pacific Time. The club is a virtual recreation of a blues club opened and run by Van Morrison in 1964 inRead More →

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OpenSim land area fell by the equivalent of  8,667 standard regions, and active users dropped by 3,473 due to combination of school holidays and fewer grids reporting stats than in the last couple of months. In addition to InWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, and The Adult Grid, other grids that did notRead 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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  YrGrid denies allegations that it is refusing redemptions in order to profit from the recent spike in Bitcoin prices. Instead, the problem is caused by their Bitcoin wallet service provider, said the grid, which is a Hong Kong-based commercial gambling-oriented grid with a Bitcoin-based virtual currency. Residents and users haveRead More →