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AviWorlds, a commercial social grid with a history of experimenting with business models, is putting a stop to its latest experiment with the hypergrid. This is the fourth time, by our count, that AviWorlds has turned hypergrid connectivity on and off. The last time was this spring. Hypergrid is theRead More →

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What do OpenSim users want for most of all? Content. According to this year’s OpenSim  Hosting Survey, 35 percent of respondents most wanted an online marketplace, and 30 percent wanted a bigger selection of content — and 53 percent picked one or the other, or both. In third place was a web-basedRead More →

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It was a three-way competition between Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex and CloudServe in this year’s hosting providers survey, since the OSgrid outage took a lot of the smaller hosting providers out of the running. Despite the outage, the total number of responses was up by 62 percent compared to last year.Read More →

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Toronto-based Cordon Media, Inc. has raised more than $21,000 Canadian dollars on a $50,000 Indiegogo campaign for a new virtual reality smartphone headset that works with both iPhones and Android devices, folds up into a slim 15mm phone case, and comes with an innovative multi-touch gesture interface. The Pinć– pronounced “pinch” —Read More →

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OMC helps establish an economy for the XMIR grid OMC allows hypergrid travelers to make payments OMCs can be purchased with the widest variety of payment options To help establish an economy for the grid, the recently-launched commercial Xmir grid has added support for in-world payments via the OMC currency from Virwox, a virtual currencyRead More →

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3rd Rock Grid, one of the oldest social OpenSim grids, has joined the hypergrid. As a result, the number of active users on hypergrid-enabled grids has just crossed the 12,000 mark, to 12,416. 3rd Rock reported 470 active users last month. And, with the addition of 3rd Rock’s 443 regions,Read More →

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OSgrid has begun the rebuilding process, grid administrators announced today, even as the latest attempt to recover data starts to approach the finish line. Around 3 terabytes of data has been recovered as of this morning, out of a total of 3.5 terabytes — or about 21 million files. On NovemberRead More →

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CANADA –  Corran Journal today announced their expansion to cover all OpenSim grids. Residents across the metaverse have a new source for reviews, opinions, and stories that affect their social lives. “We’ve been inworld since 2010, in SecondLife we were known as the Corran Sun,” said editor Winter Silversmith. “IRead More →

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The total number of regions, registered users and active users all hit new record highs this month. The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids rose by the equivalent of 1,943  standard regions to 54,123, the grids gained more than 8,000 new registered users, and the number of active users rose by an evenRead More →

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Press release: Announcing the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds 2015 Workshop, March 6-7, 2015 November 17, 2014 – The U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, Simulation and Training Technology Center’s Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) and AvaCon are pleased to announce the Federal Consortium of VirtualRead More →

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Tangle Grid, a mid-sized commercial grid known for its hypergrid-enabled Expos, has decided to reduce the number of its 2015 Expos, but to make each Expo longer. “ The committee got together and looked at traffic and participation numbers for the Expos on TanGLe and we decided to make changes,” saidRead More →

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Crista Lopes — you might know her as “Diva Canto,” an OpenSim core developer, inventor of the hypergrid and professor of informatics at UC Irvine — is now also in the viewer development business. And her new viewer, OnLook, is a dramatic departure from other viewers we’ve seen so far forRead More →

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Are you still holding off on getting a Google Cardboard kit and turning your smartphone into a super low-cost virtual reality device? Maybe Volvo will change your mind. On Tuesday, the company is giving away a limited number of Volvo-branded Google Cardboard kits. All you have to do is downloadRead More →

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OSgrid has successfully recovered 1.9 terabytes, out of 3.5 terabytes total, grid president James Stallings II said during a conversation on OSgrid’s Internet Relay Chat channel yesterday. The conversation was reposted on OSgrid’s forums by grid administrator and OpenSim developer Allen Kerensky. Stallings — who was posting under the userRead More →

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The motorsports-focused Next Reality grid has merged with AviWorlds. Next Reality had 125 regions as of mid-October, and was known for its racetrack and for its adults-only Red Light Hotel. Grid owner Mike Hart had been running the grid on his own until a failure with its RAID storage broughtRead More →

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There are plenty of headsets on the market today that are basically shells made out of plastic — or cardboard — that you slide your smartphone into. Higher-end devices such as the Oculus Rift, Sony’s Project Morpheus, GameFace, AntVR, Vrvana Totem, CastAR, and Immersion VRelia, haven’t yet hit the consumer market.Read More →

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Press release: CloudServe announces appointment of Chief Technical Officer AUSTIN, Texas — OpenSim hosting company CloudServe is announcing the addition of  Josh Boam — also known as Josh Piper in-world — to its staff as Chief Technical Officer. As experienced programmer and content creator, Boam assumed his role with the CloudServe teamRead More →

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3DGrid, a small non-profit German grid offering free or nearly free regions to educational institutions, announced today that it is merging with Metropolis, Germany’s largest grid. 3DGrid is a three-year old grid that, at last count, had 14 regions. It did not release its user numbers. “My personal involvement inRead More →

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The Tokyo University of Information Sciences released a new tool this week for converting OpenSim regions to mesh. The new OAR Converter tool takes a region saved as an OAR backup file and converts it to a Collada file, which can then be used inside Unity 3D and other all-mesh environments.Read More →

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Merchants selling products on the Kitely Market can now advertise them. According to today’s announcement, merchants can now put up ads promoting individual products, or their entire stores. The ads will appear on top of search results in a “Featured Products” or “Featured Store” section. Prices start at US $0.10Read More →

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OpenSim Creations, the top site for OpenSim creators sharing original content under Creative Commons licenses, is gone. “In the wee hours of October 20, the entire /home folder of this server got wiped,” said owner Vanish Seriath in a post today. “Why, I don’t know. To make matters worse, I don’tRead More →

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Terry Ford, founder of the commercial 3rd Rock Grid, is spearheading the formation of new association of OpenSim grid owners. “We at 3rd Rock Grid do not see other grids as our enemy,” he told Hypergrid Business. “Instead, we hope all grid are successful as their success is our success,Read More →

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Island Oasis, a closed commercial social grid, released a new viewer for its residents yesterday. The custom viewer — available for download here — is a version of Firestorm configured specifically to work with Island Oasis, including links to the grid’s online marketplace, currency purchases, and full search functionality, said theRead More →

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The Adult Grid became the second major closed grid to connect to the Kitely Market, the grid announced today in a press release. Zandramas, another closed grid, did the same this past April. The Adult Grid — like the name suggests — features adult content. It came in second inRead More →

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There is a new version of the OpenSimulator software, 0.8.0.2, which fixes an inventory permissions bug that appeared in 0.8 and 0.8.0.1. This change fixes a problem with the llGiveInventory and llGiveInventoryList scripting commands, said core developer Justin Clark-Casey in a post. When these script commands are used to give items to anRead More →

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Press Release: First Classes in U.S. to Use Oculus Rift Virtual Reality System at Charlotte Latin School CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The art, engineering and programming students at Charlotte Latin School are the first students in the U.S. to use the Oculus Rift virtual reality system in their classes, announced Arch N.Read More →

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OpenSim hosting company Zetamex is bringing founder Timothy Rogers back as its CEO, a new support partnership with Zandramas, and a limited time region offer to existing customers. This was the news that came out at last night’s public meeting at the Zetamex virtual office on their ZetaWorlds grid, andRead More →

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The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids rose by the equivalent of 1,616 standard regions to 52,180, the grids gained more than 6,000 new registered users, but the number of active users fell by 280 this month on the back of a continued outage at OSgrid. Metropolis was the biggestRead More →

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Press Release:  OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014 Expected to Sell Out, Tickets Still Available October 16, 2014 – Conference organizers expect the OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014 to be a sell out event this year.  The conference will be held on November 8 and 9, 2014 on an OpenSimulator grid designed specifically forRead More →

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A new hosting provider, CloudServe, is offering cloud-based OpenSim regions starting at $7.95, mini-grids starting at $34.95 and full grids starting at $94.95. CloudServe is a service operated by Austin-based 3D Virtual Web, Inc., the company behind Virtual World City. Prices are mid-range — not as low as Zetamex, but aboutRead More →

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Zetamex will not be accepting any new customers for the rest of the month, incoming president Richard Lehman said in an announcement posted today on the company’s website. Lehman became the owner of the company in mid-September, but previous CEO Timothy Rogers was slated to continue to serve as actingRead More →

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OSgrid residents who rent their regions from Dreamland Metaverse and who can no longer wait for OSgrid to come back up can have them moved to a private mini-grid, the company announced yesterday. The offer includes a free month of hosting, plus custom asset retrieval. OSgrid has been down forRead More →

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SkyLifeGrid founder Josh Boam agreed to provide hosting for the much-troubled AviWorlds grid last month. Now, the two grids are merging — and a third grid, QuickLifeGrid, is joining up as well. As of last month, SkyLife had a little over 100 regions and 36 active users. I have no data onRead More →

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Update: Craft was back up earlier than expected, on Monday, October 6. See this post for details. OSgrid went down with RAID problems in late August and still hasn’t recovered. The Next Reality Grid was hit a week later. Now Craft, an open, non-profit European grid popular with artists, hasRead More →

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The folks at Oculus VR have posted videos for all the keynotes and talks from their Oculus Connect conference two weeks ago, so if you weren’t able to get to San Francisco, here’s your change to catch up on what you missed. Watch the Oculus Connect introduction below. Then theRead More →

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In the face of criticism from GLBT groups, Facebook has rebranded its real names policy as an “authentic name” policy and apologized to the community. “In the two weeks since the real-name policy issues surfaced, we’ve had the chance to hear from many of you in these communities and understand theRead More →

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Reddit, a major tech-oriented social network and news site, has revealed plans to launch its own cryptocurrency backed by shares in the company. Reddit recently raised $50 million in financing, which gives the company a valuation of $500 million. “Led by Sam [Altman, president of Y Combinator, which originally launched Reddit],Read More →

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Press release: The Immersive Technology Alliance Announces Metaverse Working Group AvaCon, Cloudhead Games, SiliconArts, Cubicle Ninjas and More Join Alliance October 2, 2014 – The Immersive Technology Alliance (The ITA) is pleased to announce that AvaCon will be leading a working group pertaining to the development and interoperability of the metaverseRead More →

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OSgrid’s files could not be recovered by a simple cloning of the damaged drives as hoped, the grid announced today. Instead, the grid was forced to pay extra for a full recovery — $2,510 extra, to be exact, using up much of OSgrid’s current balance. According to grid administrator Dan Banner, thatRead More →

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Las Vegas-based OpenSim hosting company Zetamex is recovering from a security breach that hit its servers late Sunday night. Hackers attempted to use the Zetamex servers to attack random websites. “All data is safe, and upon further investigation nothing was lost, no data was compromised,” acting CEO Timothy Rogers said inRead More →

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Zetamex is no longer the low-cost hosting leader in OpenSim. As of today, if you are looking for the lowest-host regions in OpenSim, you have to go to Canada — specifically, to The Great Canadian Grid. Land prices start at just CAD $5 for a 15,000 prim region with noRead More →

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The AviWorlds grid is coming back up — this time with help from Josh Boam, founder of SkyLifeGrid. “I am going to offer him paid servers and unlimited help,” Boam told Hypergrid Business. According to AviWorlds owner Alex Pomposelli, the grid will be hypergrid-enabled, have its own virtual currency, and willRead More →

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The new CEO taking over the Zetamex OpenSim hosting company is named Richard Lehman, and prices will only be raised slightly, he said today. In addition, he pledged that 10 percent of the region rental income will go to OSgrid and Metropolis, to support their operations. Zetamex currently offers customersRead More →

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As a result of the recent change in ownership, Zetamex will be raising hosting prices on Nov. 1. “I can’t release how much it’s going up, but it is going to affect all plans,” said acting CEO Timothy Rogers, who will be stepping down from that position on Dec. 1.Read More →

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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 →