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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 →

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Apple and Meta will soon be going head-to-head in the high-end virtual reality headset arena — and at enterprise price points. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the new Apple augmented and virtual reality headset could be called Apple Reality Pro and will be released sometime in January 2023. Apple’s headset may shipRead More →

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Many companies are following the hype and rushing to invest in the metaverse. According to a July survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 66 percent of 1,000 business executives reported their company is actively engaged in the metaverse — but what these companies are developing and what their customers want to do with theRead More →

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If you want to try high-end consumer virtual reality headset, one that’s not part of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ecosystem, the best options are the headsets that you tether to a PC. One that I haven’t tried yet is the HP Reverb G2 VR headset. And it’s discounted today, from $599Read More →

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  Shanghai, China’s largest city, is about to invest billions of dollars in the metaverse. Though its exact definition is unclear, the metaverse is basically supposed to be a 3D version of the internet where people can live their digital lives and interact with each other through avatars. The metaverseRead More →

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Ukraine 2025 is having its grand opening on Friday, August 5 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time in Craft World on sim Ukraine. The hypergrid address is craft-world.org:8002:Ukraine The event features an art installation and concert by Terra Merhyem. Ukraine 2025 is the first contribution to the Ukraine Borderland Art project, runRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids lost more than 4,000 active users and nearly 2,000 regions since this time last month for a combination of reasons, the biggest being the closure of the Metropolis grid. Metropolis closed at the end of June so that the owners could focus on educational projects. TheRead More →

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Griefers can be a real nuisance in OpenSim. Also known as bad faith players, they can fill a world with various self-replicating items to deliberately irritate other users. There are a number of ways to do away with the objects left by griefers, including automatic detection, shutdown, and restarting ofRead More →

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

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This year’s OpenSim Fest 2022 kicks off at 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, July 8 with pomp and color and goes until Monday, July 25, 9 p.m. Pacific time. The hypergrid address is grid.opensimfest.com:8022.  For further information check out the fest’s Discord community page or the official event website. The firstRead More →

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Discovery Grid is celebrating its sixth birthday with an air show and a pyro-musical fireworks display. The event, Thunder over Discovery 2022, takes place this Saturday, July 2, at 2 p.m. Pacific time, with an encore event at 6 p.m. Pacific. The hypergrid address is discoverygrid.net:8002:Lousville. You’ll want to arrive earlyRead More →

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OpenSim customers that use Diva Distro version of OpenSim or its Diva Wifi website interface screen, as in the image above, should install the latest security patch to the software to seal a vulnerability that could render their grids susceptible to crashing. The Diva Distro software is almost as oldRead More →

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The Metropolis grid will shut down on midnight on June 30. But before one of the oldest OpenSim grids closes for good, it will be the site of the premiere performance of a play by Reiner Schneeberger. The play is titled “The Art Giantess Is The Work: Thea von Harbou,”Read More →

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OpenSim reported land area growth for the third month in a row with the addition of more than 1,400 new regions, for a new record high of 114,567 standard region equivalents. Active monthly users went up by 525, for a new record high of 44,061. Logicamp and Creatrix World —Read More →

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The Virtual Worlds Education Consortium is launching a seven-region virtual education campus called Eduverse, comprising a group of education-focused virtual sims in Second Life. The event starts at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, May 21 on VWEC’s VWEC Eduverse region, the group’s welcome sim. The other regions that areRead More →

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All OpenSim stats are up this month. The total land area of the public OpenSim grids increased by more than 1,000 regions, to 100,880, while the active users increased by more than 3,000, to 43,272. Creatrix World, which reported more than 700 regions last month, is currently recovering from aRead More →

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Just like Brandon Sanderson, I, too, have been busy during this pandemic. In fact, I’ve written more than ten new books. Take that, Sanderson! Okay, most of them are really short. His books are 400 pages long. My books are shorter. Krim Deeds, for example, is 150 pages. But, onRead More →

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The educational play “We Are Going to Lviv” is back for a single performance tonight on the Meta region of the OpenSim Community Conference grid. The trip was originally part of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2022 conference and is an artistic journey that spans the past andRead More →

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The 15th annual Virtual World Best Practices in Education conference kicks off on  Thursday, March 31 and will run through April 2 at the VWBPE region in Second Life. This year, about 23 exhibitors including universities, non-profits, journals, community organizations, and individuals are set to exhibit at the VWBPE Conference Exhibit Hall,Read More →

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You can join the Hypergrid Hoppers — a club for explorers of the OpenSim hypergrid —  as they travel to Ukraine. The trip is part of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2022 conference and is an artistic journey that spans the past and future of Ukraine with a focusRead More →

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“Metaverse” is a word thrown around a lot lately, and its meaning seems to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. Here’s a breakdown of the most common definitions. Metaverse as virtual reality The term “metaverse” was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. He usedRead More →

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The total number of active users was up quite a bit this month, but total land area and registered users dropped slightly. The loss of 144 standard region equivalents and 1,141 registered users was more than accounted for by the fact that FrancoGrid had server issues and didn’t report itsRead More →

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The 29th edition of Sheffield DocFest, the United Kingdom’s biggest documentary and digital media festival, will take place from June 23 to June 28 this year — and it’s looking for submissions. Sheffield DocFest’s Alternate Realities program has some upcoming deadlines if you’d like to apply, and applicants from theRead More →

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The total land area of the public OpenSim metaverse shrank by over 2,000 regions over the past month. Nearly all of that loss can be attributed to ZetaWorlds — which lost 2,336 regions due to maintenance on the grids. The total number of both active monthly users and registered usersRead More →

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  Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic we’d expect hybrid teams to regularly meet, work and learn in virtual reality (VR), wouldn’t we? After all, over 10 million high-quality, reality-bending virtual reality (VR) headsets have been sold heavily. But here we are in our video meeting, staring at a webcamRead More →

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Strapping on an Oculus Quest 2 to explore the vast game options on the Oculus store and all over the internet is thrilling, and some of them are sure to give you an adrenaline rush. I searched around and tried several games on my new Oculus Quest 2, thanks toRead More →

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Phillip Rosedale is returning as a strategic investor and advisor to Second Life, a company he founded 19 years ago, but it is unlikely that Second Life is going to change much given the tough company culture, closed nature of the platform, and the fact that High Fidelity is itselfRead More →

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Steve Gray, former executive at Tencent Games, the world’s largest gaming studio, is getting into the metaverse. His new company, Meta Music Studios, launched The Apollo Project last week, a blockchain-based gaming platform for music and games, with its first game TAP Stars, an avatar growing game, set to launch next month.Read More →