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Merchants selling products on the Kitely Market now have a suite of analytics tools to help them optimize sales, Oren Hurvitz, Kitely co-founder and VP R&D, announced today in a blog post. The new features include historical data about sales, traffic sources, product demos, and delivery destinations for exported items. InRead More →

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Las Vegas-based Zetamex, a leading provider of low-cost OpenSim hosting, has been sold, CEO Timothy Rogers said in a brief announcement today. No services or existing pricing will be adversely affected, he said in an open letter later in the day, with the major change being the addition of newRead More →

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People interested in attending the 2014 OpenSimulator Community Conference can now sign up for tickets, conference organizers announced today. “Since seats are limited, registration is open on a first-come-first-served basis until the maximum number of virtual conference center tickets is reached,” said conference chair Chris Collins in the announcement. TheRead More →

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The Kokua viewer team is following in the footsteps of Firestorm developers and creating a new branch of the viewer software just for OpenSim. Because of Linden Lab licensing issues, there are some features that viewers can only offer to Second Life users. In addition, there are some features likeRead More →

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About 8,000 people are expected to attend this year’s virtual Utherverse community convention, Virtual Con, twice that of last year’s 4,000 attendees. This year’s convention also includes a job fair and keynotes by virtual reality headset manufacturers Gameface Labs, Metaio, Altergaze and other high-profile virtual reality-related companies. “This is theRead More →

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The Virtual Reality Foundation will holds its first-ever virtual reality award show The Proto Awards in Los Angeles on September 19 — and the deadline for nominations is this coming Monday. The Foundation will give out awards in several virtual reality-related categories, including art direction and design, interactive and social experience, sound andRead More →

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The Developer Kit 2 version of the Oculus Rift began shipping last month, and some OpenSim users already got their hands on one. Now the CtrlAltStudio Viewer has some preliminary support for the DK2, developer David Rowe announced yesterday. “I know some people are very anxious to try their DK2sRead More →

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Update 8/21: OSgrid Dan Banner posted an announcement saying, “OSgrid has suffered a critical failure in one of the primary drives in our RAID10 array. This is a matter of the gravest technical concern, and while we are working diligently with our datacenter services provider to resolve this issue without dataRead More →

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Beijing-based Noitom Ltd. has launched a Kickstarter for its Perception Neuron motion capture product which offers the promise of interacting with virtual environments at a lower cost than available with other platforms. Perception Neuron costs $175 with delivery estimated in February of 2015. The closest other system on the market todayRead More →

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OpenSim’s 40 largest grids gained over 3,000 new regions this month, many thanks to the new varregion functionality. Registered users and active users also increased this month, despite the summer season. The exact totals are 50,017 standard region equivalents on the top 40 grids, an increase of 3,110 regions; 363,884 registeredRead More →

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Las Vegas-based hosting company Zetamex — which recently tested out a $3 region offer — has decided to make the low prices permanent, and added some much-requested features. The company also raised prices slightly. Instead of $3 for a 15,000-prim region capable of holding up to 20 avatars, the newRead More →

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  Kitely customers will now have an easier time trying out Kitely Market products. The “Try demo” link is now right there on the product listing page, said Kitely co-founder and VP R&D  Oren Hurvitz  in an announcement this week. Previously, customers had to add the product to their shopping cart,Read More →

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The Virtual Worlds City grid is moving from OpenSim to Unity 3D. “Since our clients only will shop and explore there is no need for all the build tools that the OpenSim-based viewers have,” said Frank Corsi, co-founder and CTO of parent company 3D Virtual Web, Inc. I’ve compared Unity to OpenSim before,Read More →

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Most people who run their own grids — and this includes the little Diva Distro I’ve got on my home computer — use one of the official, recommended distributions of OpenSim. This means the latest stable, recommended release from OpenSimulator.org, or the Diva Distro mini-grid, Sim-on-a-Stick, or New World Studio.Read More →

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You can’t keep these guys down. AviWorlds is back in action, now in its seventh incarnation. The grid is pledging to make backups of everything, grid founder Alexandro Pomposelli  — also known as Alex Ferraris in-world — said in a Facebook post Saturday,  “so that all is well this time andRead More →

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Stay inside this month, in front of the air conditioner, and catch up on all the OpenSim events you’ve been missing. Nara’s Nook celebrates new releases The authors on the Nara’s Nook grid are celebrating new releases today, with a party on the Reader Cove region. Teleport to world.narasnook.com:8900:Greyville via theRead More →

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Have you ever teleported from one grid to another and had your attachments disappear? That problem has now been fixed, thanks to code donations from the on-demand Kitely grid. Grids running the latest, cutting-edge OpenSim code should already have this fix, said Oren Hurvitz, Kitely’s co-founder and VP of research andRead More →

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Las Vegas-based Zetamex, one of OpenSim’s leading hosting companies, is experimenting with a $3 region offer for 15,000-prim regions on OSgrid and Metropolis. “This is an experimental service, meaning we are changing and it may not last all depending on how you our customers and future customers take to theseRead More →

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OSgrid, the oldest virtual world running on the OpenSimulator software, is turning seven years old and birthday celebrations begin 10 a.m. Pacific time on Saturday morning with DJs and live performances. These include DJ Foxx Bode at 10 a.m., Bolt Dominica at 11, Joaquin Gustav at noon, and Sonya Jevette atRead More →

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Facebook will be “investing aggressively” in virtual reality, company executives said on an earnings call yesterday. The company closed on a $2 billion acquisition of virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR earlier this week. “We’re not getting into more specifics on the exact headcounts,” said Facebook CFO Dave Wehner. “But weRead More →

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The first-ever hypergrid fashion expo begins this Saturday on Tangle Grid and will last through August 3. Time is running out for merchants and creators interested in being part of the event. To participate, contact IsambardKingdom Brunel on Tangle Grid, or Peter2 Veliz in Second Life. Merchants looking for a more permanentRead More →

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Oliveira Virtual Lands, which rents regions and parcels on OSgrid and Metropolis, now has a presence on the French-language non-profit open grid FrancoGrid. Like the other two grids, FrancoGrid is hypergrid enabled and residents are allowed to make backups of entire regions and inventories. Oliveira has set up a home regionRead More →

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Press Release:  OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces Principal Scientist at Oculus VR as Keynote Speaker July 22, 2014 – The OpenSimulator Community Conference is pleased to announce Dr. Steve LaValle, principal scientist at Oculus VR and professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, will be a keynote speaker at theRead More →

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According to a new report by UK-based virtual worlds research firm KZero, 83 million head-mounted virtual reality display devices such as the Oculus Rift will have been sold by 2018. In addition, 18 million virtual reality input systems will have been sold by that year. Prices to drop from $350Read More →

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Press release: Virtual Facebook Refugees find new home on Avatar Social Network As Facebook continues to crack down on pseudonymous accounts such as those of Second Life avatars, some virtual communities are migrating to other sites. Most recently, Pointe Fusion Elite, a community of DJs, artists, and music fans, has movedRead More →

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The first image of Samsung’s new virtual reality headset, the Gear VR, have been leaked online. Gear VR is basically a more comfortable and durable version of Google Cardboard, though with one significant difference. Both headsets work by putting two lenses in front of a customer’s own smartphone. In theRead More →

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OculusVR, the company behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset that was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion this year, will hold a virtual reality conference in September. Oculus Connect will be held on September 19 and 20 in Hollywood, California and is aimed at virtual reality developers, engineers andRead More →

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The OpenSimulator Community Conference has begun running scalability tests on its grid every Tuesday at noon Pacific time. The hypergrid address is cc.opensimulator.org:8002:Keynote 1. Load testing doesn’t just help the conference organizers. “All related performance improvements are fed directly back into the OpenSimulator code base so will help everybody using the project,” saidRead More →

Screen shot of the WWII role play sim. (Image courtesy Suzan de Koning.)

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InWorldz residents are circulating a petition demanding the removal of a World War II-themed role playing build from the grid. “I cannot support a grid that makes it possible for people to play a role playing game based on World World II,” resident Suzan de Koning told Hypergrid Business. “ThereRead More →

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A little more than two weeks ago, AviWorlds came back from its fifth official grid closing — not counting temporary outages due to technical issues — to announce that they will be running the grid by themselves from now on, with no outside help. Portuguese-language messages on the grid’s FacebookRead More →

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Press release: DreamNation Establishes Own Virtual Currency, DNCoins NEVADA — DreamNation has established its own virtual currency, DNCoins (DN$). DN$ was successfully and smoothly rolled out over the last two weeks of June, and has been adopted by members of the grid with enthusiasm. DreamNation previously used Virwox’s OMC$ as its internal currency prior to adoptingRead More →

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Now that Facebook has bought OculusVR for $2 billion dollars, the pressure is on Google to do something in this space. This week, Google has released its own headset — and it’s made of cardboard.   Cnet calls Google Cardboard “perhaps one of the most important, quirky, and ingenious advances inRead More →

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Firefox is adding native support for virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift to its Web browser, developer Vladimir Vukićević said this week in a blog post. “We are adding native support for VR devices to early experimental builds of Firefox, so that Web developers can start experimenting with addingRead More →

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ANTVR — a Beijing-based, open source alternative to the Oculus Rift, completed a successful Kickstarter campaign this week. ANTVR is a wireless virtual reality headset that comes with a clever transformable controller. Kickstarter prices started at $270, and delivery is scheduled for this September. Some critics are worried that theRead More →

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Kitely, the largest commercial OpenSim grid by land area, plans to deliver its Kitely Market content throughout the metaverse — not just to OpenSim grids. “Our goal is to make Kitely Market the main metaverse marketplace,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. “As there are more than one platform vyingRead More →

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The popular Diva Distro version of OpenSim is now available with the latest 0.8 update of the software, supporting variable-sized regions and profiles. “Profiles and varregions both work out of the box for new installations of the Diva Distro,” developer Crista Lopes said in the announcement. Lopes, who is also known as DivaRead More →

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Linden Lab is working on a new virtual world, Linden Lab has confirmed, but urged users not to panic. “Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that will be in the spirit of Second Life, an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they canRead More →

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It was more than a year ago when developers from the Avination grid and the Singularity viewer got together and created a new permission for OpenSim, the export permission. Since then, no major grid has adopted it, not even Avination itself. Until now. But it’s not Avination rolling out the exportRead More →

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Press release: Science Fiction Inspires Lowe’s Holoroom and Home Improvement Innovation Augmented reality project planning experience is first concept from newly-formed Lowe’s Innovation Labs MOORESVILLE, N.C. – On Wednesday, Lowe’s underscored its commitment to advancing retail innovation as it introduced Lowe’s Innovation Labs and the first concept to come outRead More →

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Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale offered insights into his new company’s business model and technical architecture yesterday in a talk and question-and-answer session about High Fidelity on the MOSES OpenSim grid yesterday. Of particular interest from a business perspective is that the High Fidelity software will be open source, similar toRead More →

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As of today, the only Kitely users who can create new metered regions are those with premium accounts. As part of this change, the metered regions will also be renamed to “Premium” regions. In addition, all existing metered regions owned by free users will no longer be accessible by their ownersRead More →

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Do you think your design for a virtual Mars base is good enough to live in? Then you’ve got three days left to submit it to NASA. That’s right, the 3D content sharing site Thingiverse from MakerBot Industries LLC is teaming up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the MakerBotRead More →