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Discovery Grid will hold the grand opening of its 2019 Virtual Seattle Winter Market 2019 on Saturday, December 7, 2019. The market will be open until January 7, 2020. The hypergrid address is discoverygrid.net:8002:Seattle. The market’s region coordinates are 503/448/46. This makes the second pop-up market for the grid, butRead More →

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The December issue of HyperGrid Zone magazine is out, and packed with profiles of OpenSim artists and creators, as well as Christmas events and destinations. The cover story is about the Nuna Gallery, which is located on 3rd Rock Grid and is having its grand opening on Dec. 15. To visitRead More →

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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 →