Covering virtual reality, immersive worlds, and other emerging technologies
YouTube has updated its Android app, the company announced yesterday, with better support for virtual reality. The app first added an option to watch videos in immersive 3D with the Google Cardboard-compatible headset back...
Press release: Virtual reality specialist Daden awarded £230,000 by Innovate UK Daden Limited – a virtual reality specialist based at the Innovation Birmingham Campus – has been awarded nearly £230,000 by Innovate UK for its...
UK supermarket Asda has launched a virtual reality Halloween experience on its YouTube channel, and the video quickly became the second-most-watched video on the supermarket’s channel, with more than a million views in just a...
According to Virtual Reality Brand Power Index released this morning by YouVisit, 75 percent of the Forbes World’s Most Valuable Brands have created some form of virtual or augmented reality experience for customers or employees,...
Many grids, especially those with unique or specialized content, struggle with content protection issues. Both closed and open grids have problems with copybotters, while hypergrid-enabled grids also have the additional risk to scripts. Grids...
Press release: Kaleidoscope VR Film Festival awards jury prize to Tomas Mariancik for Sightline: The Chair San Francisco, CA –Virtual reality agency Kaleidoscope in partnership with Broad Green Pictures, today unveiled the Jury Prize...
Framingham, Mass.-based research firm International Data Corp. announced today that augmented and virtual reality is one of six key “innovation accelerators” the company will be devoting additional research focus to. “Innovation accelerators are the...
UK-based AuraVisor launched a Kickstarter campaign Wednesday to raise $153,000 for a new all-in-one virtual reality headset that requires neither a PC nor a smartphone, and already raised more than $100,000. The headset is expected to...
Sunnyvale, California startup LucidCam promises to make virtual reality filming accessible to anyone with a $600 hand-sized camera that films in 180 degrees. And the company just launched a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo offering the...
Press release: Next Galaxy Corp and EON Reality Join Forces to Expand CEEK The Partners will Share Technical Expertise and Combine Sales and Marketing Efforts Miami Beach, FL. – Next Galaxy Corp., a leading...
3rd Rock Grid is proud to announce the hand-over of its management to the Stichting 3rd Rock Grid Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation registered in the Netherlands. The foundation’s six-member board of unpaid directors, comprised of involved citizens, includes previous owners, together with dedicated volunteers.
The Army’s Research Laboratory Simulation and Training Technology Center has begun work on a browser-based viewer for OpenSim that uses WebGL, HTML 5 and Javascript technology. “The initial work was done using our MOSES Grid Manager that...
Games, immersive videos, and branded marketing experiences will drive adoption in virtual reality next year, according to a panel of experts hosted by We are Wearables last week in Toronto. Gaming markets will lead other markets in...
HTC will be holding demos of its Vive headset tonight and tomorrow in fifteen cities across the United States as a promotion for the new Paranormal Activity movie. I have tried the Vive headset,...
The 2015 OpenSimulator Community Conference, scheduled for Saturday, December 5, has been extended into Sunday. “On the second day the OSCC grid will be open,” said Crista Lopes, hypergrid inventor and OpenSim core developer. “There...
Press Release: Kennesaw State Students Release Virtual World Production Kennesaw, Ga. – An experiment in journalism storytelling debuts today with the public release of the virtual world machinima “The Kid, The Cop, The Punch.”...
SAN ANTONIO — Merge VR has announced that its soft, foam goggles are available for pre-order through Amazon, and will ship before holidays. The Merge VR Goggles are among the top tech products debuting in the...
New Zealand-based virtual reality startup 8i has received $20 million from Samsung and other investors to enable virtual reality users to immersively engage with realistic 3D video captures, or holograms, of people. “Wellington is the perfect place to scale...
Press release: Emergent VR Raises $2.2 Million To Build The First Mobile Experience Sharing Platform San Francisco, California – Emergent VR announced it has raised $2.2 million in funding from Accel Partners, Google Ventures,...
Cowboys and Indians captivated the country when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West rolled through America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. More than a century later, Ball State digital artists have re-created the legendary showman’s outdoor exhibition.
WeMakeVR.com and Tommy Hilfiger launch VR Runway Show Experience Hosted in select ‘Tommy Hilfiger’ stores and wholesale partners globally, consumers can watch WeMakeVR’s “Fall 2015 ‘Hilfiger Collection’ VR experience” from a VIP seat in 360...
The New York Times announced the launch of NYT VR and the distribution of more than one million Google Cardboard viewers to home delivery subscribers with their copy of The New York Times the weekend of November 7 and 8.
AvaCon announced the third annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2015, to take place virtually on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid on December 5, 2015. The OpenSimulator Community Conference is an annual conference that focuses on the...
The casino-themed YrGrid, also known for its Bitcoin-based currency, announced today that it has opened its doors to the wider metaverse by granting hypergrid access to around forty other virtual worlds. Those grids include 3rd Rock...
Starting October 9 on the Japan Open Grid, the Planet Treasure Hunt, which is apart of the Bunkasai Festival, begins. The Planet Treasure hunt is a scavenger hunt for solar systems scattered around the school...
Epic Games has released a new video, Sense of Presence, that tries to explain why virtual reality is so compelling and inevitable. The video, which is the first episode of a series that will seek to...
It’s been another record-breaking month for OpenSim, with new heights reached in land area, registered users, and active users. OSgrid, Kitely and DigiWorldz were the biggest gainers in land area, with 678, 340 and...
San Antonio, Texas-based Merge VR has announced that it’s purple virtual reality goggles, made out of soft foam, will be available at 320 UK retail outlets in time for the holidays. The Google Cardboard-compatible...
The Google Cardboard virtual reality application has been installed 15 million times, Google said in an announcement yesterday. The app, typically one of the first installed when a customer buys a smartphone-based virtual reality...
Impression Pi, a headset that combines virtual and augmented reality with gesture recognition, announced this month that it received $5.5 million in funding in addition to its successful $300,000 Kickstarter earlier this year. The company...
SlotsMillion, an online casino company, has released a virtual reality app for the Oculus Rift and announced that it is giving away ten Oculus Rift headsets to players. For every 100 Euro bet, players get...
Tangle Grid‘s Halloween Expo opened for business today and will run through November 15. But the grid is still accepting exhibitors. “We are looking for creators that would like to show their creation in...
The Las Vegas-themed Neon Grid is having a grand-opening party tonight at 8 p.m. Pacific at the Landing Strip Club on its Welcome Center region. The grid is among the few — possibly, the only–...
The OpenSim community has come together for a user-focused event next month, AvatarFest 2015. The event will run from November 13 through 16, with the exhibit and performance submission deadline on November 7. See the...
Starship, the UK-based innovation studio, unveiled a first glimpse of mobile social virtual reality network, vTime, with the release of a new video and screenshots. Set for launch in November, vTime offers friends and family a compelling new way to spend quality time together in virtual reality.
Sierra Club, America’s largest grassroots environmental organization, and virtual reality production studio RYOT today announced the release of the world’s first virtual reality climate change public service announcement. The video, which is being released just...
Immersive storytelling takes center stage at first-ever annual event featuring innovators from across the virtual reality landscape, including, HTC, Google, USA TODAY, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Framestore on October 23.
This Christmas shopping season promises to be a good one for virtual reality, with a $30 View-Master virtual reality headset hitting the market just about now. This is brightly-colored headset from Mattel that is...
Press release: Wargaming Unveils its First Virtual Reality Tank Battle Reenactment Wargaming released 1941 Battle: 360° Reenactment, a unique 360° virtual reality video that teleports the viewer into the heart of battle with four tanks, 40...
CNN has teamed up with virtual reality video company NextVR to stream October 13’s US Democratic presidential primary debate in virtual reality, the world’s first live stream of a news event in this new...
Trying to find new virtual reality apps? Check out WearVR, which catalogs nearly 1,000 virtual reality applications for all major platforms. Apps can be sorted by newest, highest rated and most popular, and can...
Press release: Virtual Reality Adoption in Enterprise and Industrial Markets Will Be Driven by Training, Simulation, Virtual Prototyping, and 3D Modeling Applications According to a new report from Tractica, commercial sector revenue from virtual...
Three virtual reality hardware products were the focus of attention at the Oculus Connect 2 conference in Hollywood last week. The products included the Gear VR headset, produced in partnership with Samsung, a new Touch control device,...
If you don’t have your hands on a Google Cardboard headset yet, you might be able to get one from Air New Zealand if you hurry. The company is giving away 1,000 headsets so...
Virtual reality cameras cost hundreds — or thousands — of dollars. But Shot, a startup based in Spain, hopes to bring the price down to under $100 with a new Kickstarter campaign by combining fisheye...
High Fidelity’s alpha users with access to the eye tracking hardware can now experience real eye contact with another person on the platform’s virtual spaces.
The Adult Metaverse community on Google Plus has just crossed the 1,000 member mark. With 135 new members since the start of August, it is the fastest-growing OpenSim-specific community on the platform. DigiWorldz was...
With around 2 million Google Cardboard devices already in user hands, and Taobao and AliBaba alone selling 300,000 additional units a month, mobile-based virtual reality is going gangbusters. The iOS app store and Google...
Press release: New open source platform turns iOS, Android devices into Vr controllers Navi is an app that transforms your smartphone or tablet into a controller by sending your device’s rotations and touch gestures to your...
This past week, Atlanta-based Trick 3D announced an application that will allow architects, home builders, real estate marketers and developers to generate 3D virtual environments using just 2D floor plans. The Floorplan Revolution app will also allow...
DigitalFood launches a historic promotion providing consumers with a free, mobile virtual reality viewing of Pope Francis’ monumental visit to the United States and his canonization of Fr. Junipero Serra in Washington, D.C.
According to a report released earlier this month by Shanghai-based Interface News, China’s two leading online commerce platform, Taobao and AliBaba, together sell more than 300,000 virtual reality headsets every month, with lower-cost headsets...
Bright Canopy, the browser-based streaming access service for Second Life and OpenSim, is coming back on Wednesday after a three-week outage. The service launched at the end of August to great reviews but was hit...
Want to attend the TechCrunch Disrupt conference but can’t make it in person? Being there in virtual reality might be the next best thing. Today, YouVisit is livestreaming the conference via its free virtual...
Tangle Grid’s 2015 Steam Expo has been drawing both local residents and hypergrid visitors, grid owner grid owner Leslie Kling told Hypergrid Business. And each event seems to draw more and more people, she added,...
Press release: 23 million America adults already experimenting with virtual reality according to new study NEW YORK — As the technology world braces for major virtual reality product releases, many millions of Americans have...
AviWorlds now has a Facebook app that allows people to take pictures in-world and post them to Facebook. Many other grids have Facebook pages, but the only other commercial grids with Facebook apps are Island...
Virtual city recreation project Digital Lisbon, currently a part of the AviWorlds grid, has launched a crowd-funding campaign on IndieGoGo to set up its own, dedicated world. Founder Carlos Loff is looking to raise $2,000,...
OpenSim grids saw continued steady growth this month, with total region counts, user numbers, and monthly actives all reaching new record highs. There are now the equivalent of 65,122 standard regions on OpenSim’s 317 active public...
Pirate’s Atoll announced today that the grid is moving to DigiWorldz. The Atoll has been a small, hypergrid-enabled standalone minigrid hosted with Oliveira Virtual Lands. Grid owner John Simmons, also known as Strannik Zipper in-world, said that...
Mini USA, the company behind the iconic Mini Cooper, has just jumped on the free Google Cardboard bandwagon. They’re following in the footsteps of several other companies that have been giving away virtual reality...
DigiWorldz has announced a referral and affiliate program for residents, bloggers, and anyone else who would like to bring new users to the grid and earn a commission on all future land payments. This...
On Saturday night, Mal Burns joked that virtual reality headsets are now like the AOL disks — they’re everywhere. All we need now is to see them in cereal boxes. With prices of $5 or...
The DigiWorldz grid has rolled out a new viewer for its residents, based on the Alchemy Viewer, and included Qarl’s mesh deformer functionality. The mesh deformer is a crowd-funded project that successfully raised more than...
Dahlia Trimble, an OpenSim core developer who’s been with the project since the summer of 2008, announced today that she is leaving. “I am sad to announce that I will be leaving OpenSimulator Core,”...
Press release: OSVR Confirms Pre-order Date for Hacker Development Kit; Launches Content Discovery Platform Software platform reveals 65 new supporting companies including Legendary VR and NVIDIA’s Gameworks VR BERLIN – Organizers of Open Source...
Update 2: The community meeting transcript is here, and the Bright Canopy service will probably be coming back only for a limited number of users until the Amazon price fluctuations are dealt with. Update:...
The world’s first full-length feature film to be shot completely in 360 degrees, “Career Opportunities in Organized Crime,” has begun filming in Baltimore. A documentary-style comedy about the Russian mafia, the movie is helmed by...
Press release: ReelTime Revolutionizes Virtual Reality – Launches ReelTime VR Mobile App Worldwide Featuring Megs McLean SPRING HILL, FL — ReelTime announces the release of the ReelTime VR app and production suite, and a virtual reality...
Press release: Starship Announces vTime – The Mobile Social VR Network LIVERPOOL, England — Starship, the UK-based innovation studio, today announces vTime, a new mobile social virtual reality network. Fusing breath-taking virtual locations with instinctive, hands-free...
Press release: Scienverse creates virtual reality world that combines VR apps and social network; Kickstarter campaign starts in 2 weeks THE HAGUE – Scienverse officially announces its project of creating a virtual reality world...
Kitely, the largest commercial OpenSim grid, has rolled out a new region monitoring tool for its users, and published a new guide for detecting and fixing world performance problems. The grid has also added a...
Press release: Linden Lab Invites First Virtual Experience Creators to Project Sansar Testing SAN FRANCISCO – Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, today announced that a small number of creators have been exclusively...
Bright Canopy will come out of invitation-only pre-release phase on August 29 and will make its Second Life cloud-based streaming service available globally for $17 a month. The Texas-based company allows users of the globally popular virtual...
Despite the August heat — at least, here in the northern hemisphere — total region counts, user numbers, and monthly actives were all up in OpenSim. Or perhaps it was because of the heat,...
The Kitely Market hit another milestone this month, with a new total of 10,162 different item listings grouped into 5,030 different products. This is up from 9,971 different listings a month ago. Of the listings,...
There are many reasons why a region might be slow to load, but one of the hardest to address has been that of slow scripts. OpenSim doesn’t make it easy to discover which particular...
Press release: 3rd Rock Grid to transition to Podex 3rd Rock Grid is going through a number of changes as part of a transition to a new ownership model. One of the changes will...
Most people who’ve traveled the hypergrid have had the experience of not being able to bring stuff back home, or of mysteriously not being able to take content to other grids. Recently, a number...
I’ve never sat through an entire presentation dedicated to the launch of a new phone before, and I probably never will again. But the OnePlus 2 launch last night, from Chinese firm OnePlus, was...
Combined revenue for head mounted displays, and virtual reality accessories and content will increase from $108.8 million in 2014 to $21.8 billion worldwide by 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 142 percent, according...
The Immersive Education Initiative today announced the official IMMERSION 2015 speakers, exhibits, presentations, and workshops. Featuring nearly 100 sessions about virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D printing, wearable computing, brain interfaces, and more, IMMERSION 2015...
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Nokia today announced OZO, the first commercially available virtual reality camera designed and built for professional content creators and the first in a planned portfolio of digital media solutions from...
BRIGHTON, ENGLAND – Epic Games, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, a biomedical research charity based in London, has concluded the Big Data VR Challenge, awarding $20,000 to LumaPie. This international team created a...
The Adult Metaverse community on Google Plus was the fastest-growing OpenSim community over the last two months, gaining 121 new members for a new total of 866 users. OpenSim Virtual was in second place, with 108 new...
AviWorlds, a grid best known for closing repeatedly with no warning, is on a mission to rehabilitate its public image as a member of the OpenSim community. The grid has hired OpenSim developer Quill...
Always known for its vibrant music scene, and charitable efforts, 3rd Rock Grid announced a day of music and literature in an effort to raise funds for the charity Doctors Without Borders. For...
A new virtual reality treadmill, Kat Walk, uses a parachute-style harness instead of a waist-high ring to keep people in place — and is already 84 percent of the way to its $100,000 fundraising...
CHICAGO–SIGGRAPH 2015, the annual interdisciplinary education experience and conference on the latest computer graphics and interactive techniques, will debut a new program this August. The 2015 VR Village will feature real-time immersion in the...
AT&T has partnered with Google Cardboard headset maker Knox Labs to offer a $10 white cardboard virtual reality headset, based on last year’s model. These older-style headsets, normally $15 each, have the magnetic button...
OSgrid has received legal recognition as a non-profit, the grid’s administrators announced earlier this month, just in time for the grid’s 8th birthday celebrations this weekend. OSgrid is the oldest grid running on the...
Adult content has long been a driver for new media. Early cave paintings, sculptures, etchings, poetry, books and photographs typically featured either sex or violence. Adult content played a role in the video tape...
The Kitely Market has successfully delivered purchases to customers on 96 different grids, including both hypergrid-enabled grids and closed grids. “Our marketplace’s reach is continuing to grow,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tocher told Hypergrid Business....
Correction: Due to an error in collecting data from OSgrid, land area was undercounted this month. In fact, OpenSim’s land area actually increased by the equivalent of 828 regions. OSgrid did lose some land...
For the last couple of years, Zetamex, an OpenSim hosting company, has also been hosting Zadaroo.com, which has a complete collection of Linda Kellie’s OARs, IARs, XML files, and textures. It’s a treasure-trove of...
According to researchers at Stanford University, one of reasons people get motion sickness while wearing virtual reality headsets is that in real life, our eyes get more light bouncing back from near-by objects than...
In an attempt to combat dwindling logins during the summer months, Craft is organizing a series of summer events — and participants who rent land from the grid get two months free rent for...
Virtual world artists who wish to participate in Metropolis grid’s Summer of Arts 2015 can begin submitting their works tomorrow. New submissions will continue to be accepted until the end of summer. The exhibit...
The founders of the fast-growing, low-priced DigiWorldz grid have settled their ownership dispute, putting at rest fears about the grid’s stability and future. “I was able to negotiate an amicable agreement by all previous...
Press release: Syfy Launches Virtual Reality App with Google Cardboard for Highly-Anticipated Series “The Expanse” San Diego, CA — Syfy has announced the launch of a virtual reality app for The Expanse, the network’s...
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