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Engage, a free multi-user virtual reality social platform that allows educators to create and share virtual environments and take students on virtual field trips is now available in preview edition and will launch early next year. The platform also supports business networking, worker training and collaboration, with private rooms that can accommodate upRead More →

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MyWebRoom will launch a free new social virtual reality platform next month, myVR, which will allow users to create and customize private room, and hold events using mobile-based VR headsets. It could be the first virtual reality platform that allows user-created environments. Two of the big players in the space, AltSpace and vTime, onlyRead More →

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Kroatan, a new social OpenSim grid, is hosting a Halloween Hunt from October 8 to November 8 at the Silent Meadow region. The hunt features the story of Frank Inglewood, an England citizen who disappeared from his car and mysteriously turned up at the spooky Alchemilla Hospital. The hunt entails finding Inglewood’s writing pads,Read More →

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OpenSim developers are getting ready to release OpenSim 0.9.0, and some grids are already experimenting with the new features by downloading the experimental version of the new release — and they are running into some problems. The problem is specific to grids using the new ubOde physics engine, which is includedRead More →

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Editor: The U.S. Army’s MOSES grid has long been making cutting-edge contributors to OpenSim, building a grid management system, running scalability tests, and donating content to the OpenSim community. Now they are in the process of moving to a branch of OpenSim called Halcyon, open-sourced last year by InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, and areRead More →

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Time Inc., the publisher of the iconic Life magazine that closed in 1972, is relaunching the title — in virtual reality. The new Life VR features immersive storytelling, the company said in its announcement last week, and is available as a free download in the Life VR app for iOS and AndroidRead More →

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The community-focused AvatarFest event kicks off on Friday, accessible to all OpenSim hypergrid users. There are about two dozen exhibitors already participating, and more than a dozen performances are scheduled, including those by OpenSim celebrities Truelie Telling, The Fabulous Wailers, Rosie O’Grady, and many others. There is also a performance of “Two GentlemenRead More →

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Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform is now open to the public. The Daydream software development kit came out of beta, the company announced Thursday. The kit, available here for Android, has native Unity integration and native integration with Unreal Engine 4. Daydream is coming this fall, and is part ofRead More →

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The tenth annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference will be held March 29 through April 1 of next year — and is currently accepting proposals. Conference organizers are looking for presentations about new projects, research, services, or tools that benefit educators, or retrospectives about previously-presented work. Academic papers should beRead More →

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People watching 360-degree videos recalled the brands mentioned 28 times more than in traditional ads, according to a new report by Nielsen. Recall of 360-degree content in general was eight times higher, and consumers were three times as likely to buy after seeing an ad in virtual reality. Nielsen’s researched was conductedRead More →

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Virtual reality ad platforms continue to evolve, with vendors now offering analytics for advertisements placed inside 360-degree videos, virtual reality games, and other virtual experiences. Vendors are also trying to make the ads less annoying for users by experimenting with ad types and placements. VirtualSky Denver-based VirtualSky recently rolled out the ability toRead More →

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The average price of a region on an OpenSim grid is US $20.39 per month for a region with 15,000 or more prims. Hypergrid-enabled grids are a little bit less expensive, with an average price of $18.86 per region. Closed grids tend to cost more, charging on average $30.28 perRead More →

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This year’s presidential election will be conducted, in part, in virtual reality. A partnership between NBC News and AltspaceVR is transforming a virtual recreation of New York’s Rockefeller Center Plaza into Democracy Plaza, where AltspaceVR users can attend debate watch parties, live discussions with political experts and political comedy events.Read More →

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The social virtual reality platform AltspaceVR is doubling down on the social aspect, with interface changes designed to make it easier for people to get together. Previously, AltspaceVR — like many virtual environments — was organized around the idea of virtual locations. That doesn’t work well because when people showRead More →

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Alife Virtual reported a dramatic increase in active users this month, to 1,576 unique monthly visitors, but those stats may not be accurate, according to technology expert Magnuz Binder, who has previously submitted patches to OpenSim. In his non-OpenSim life, Binder is a former academic focusing on technology and now works asRead More →

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IMAX will begin its virtual reality roll-out as early as the end of this year, IMAX Entertainment CEO Greg Foster said at a conference in Los Angeles this Wednesday. Moviegoers will be able to purchase bundled ticket that cover both the movie and access to a virtual reality experience located at the sameRead More →

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If you spent the summer enjoying the doors and avoiding the news, then you’re one of the fortunate ones who was able to avoid the mess that is U.S. politics — but you might also have missed the flood of VR-related announcements. The amount of virtual reality news coming outRead More →

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Update: I missed a couple of grids in the first version of the story, AllCity updated their stats, and I removed Alife Virtual’s stats from the report because of questions about their accuracy. Read full story here. Only a small handful of grids had problems this month, while the restRead More →

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Update: The folks at GeekBuying sent me a $5-off coupon to share with readers: XIAOMIVR5 So I just received a Xiaomi VR in the mail. The headset has been getting some attention in the media recently because Xiaomi is a giant brand, but the headset itself left me underwhelmed. It hasRead More →

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The 2016 OpenSimulator Community Conference, to be held in December, is now accepting proposals for presentations and activities. “We are particularly interested in speakers that can dramatically tell the story of their work and employ great props and graphics,” the organizers said in the announcement. This year’s conference is organizedRead More →

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The car industry has long been at the forefront in introducing new technology and has often developed new technologies from within, putting them quickly into production mostly with huge safety and ecology benefits. Sceptics might argue that much of this progress has been at the hard-fought insistence of regulators, toRead More →

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In getting ready for my monthly stats report, I’m checking to see whether the grids I’m listing in my directory are up and running, and collecting their terms of service pages and other links. And I just came across the land sales page of Genesis Global Journey, a small commercial gridRead More →

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Carlos Loff has moved his Virtual Lisbon and Space Life projects to DigiWorldz, with plot rentals available for interested residents. He was previously hosted by AviLabs, the hosting company behind AviWorlds, which imploded messily and publicly last month. Even before AviLabs fell apart, Loff said he was having trouble attracting residents.Read More →

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The next OpenSim Treasure Hunt has been scheduled, and it will rum from October 3 to November 7. The hunt, the fourth so far this year, is an opportunity for grids and venues to promote their destinations to hypergrid travelers, and for designers and other content creators to promote theirRead More →

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Due to user feedback, Las Vegas VR has moved beyond 360-degree videos with animated graphics and video overlays, as well as new interactive features to its application to improve navigation and user immersion. Since the app was first released this past March, it has been downloaded more than 10,000 times — andRead More →

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Editor’s note: This article was updated on 1/27/2023 to remove dead links and  links to malicious sites. An OpenSim viewer that runs in a regular web browser has long been at the top of most-wanted lists for OpenSim users. And the U.S. Army is stepping up. This fall, the U.S. Army’sRead More →

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Digitaleisure, one of the new grids created in the wake of AviWorlds’ latest flame-out, has been forced to rebrand as SkyLifeGrid due to legal issues. The original name and domain was too close to that of Digital Leisure, an online gaming company. Digital Leisure paid for the domain transfers, said SkyLifeGrid owner JoshRead More →

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The 2016 Fest’Avi event begins today, the third year that FrancoGrid is hosting the avatar exhibit. The event begins at 6 p.m. Paris time, or 9 a.m. Pacific, at hg.francogrid.org:80:FestAvi 2016. The event features an exhibit of 19 new creative avatar designs, theMorlitaM live concert, and the FestAvi party. The theme of thisRead More →

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Google Plus continues to be the social media destination of choice for OpenSim users, due its usability, sharing features, and support for identities based on avatar names. I currently track 175 virtual communities that have some relation to OpenSim, and just collected the members counts of each group. See theRead More →

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Adapting OpenSim to work on virtual reality headsets will require a substantial amount of work on both server and viewer code. Is this something that OpenSim users want to see happen? According to a survey conducted on this site this week, 79 percent of OpenSim users think that VR isRead More →

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Disclosure: The folks at Vox VR just sent me a free review copy of their Vox+ Z3 headset, which is a rebranded version of the BoboVR Z3 but with a larger field of view. Thanks, guys! The purchase links at the bottom of this article are to all the major sites I knowRead More →

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CoSpaces, a platform that allows users to create, explore and share virtual reality spaces, is now being used by educators, teachers and students to create virtual learning environments and enhance learning. The platform now includes a creation tool that can be used by teachers to customize learning environments, allows teachers toRead More →

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OutWorldz founder Fred Beckhusen has posted his collection of 1,000 OpenSim scripts on the open source collaboration site GitHub, as well as the code for his one-click OpenSim installer, called DreamWorld. Like New World Studio before, DreamWorld makes it easy to install a mini-grid on a personal computer, together with the FirestormRead More →

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Have you ever though that wearing your VR headset didn’t make you look dorky enough? I have a solution for you! The Virtual Vizor is a clip-on device that fits on the bill of your baseball cap and lets you enjoy VR experiences hands-free. To be fair, given the techieRead More →

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Filming a 360-degree video of a model train set isn’t like filming life-sized events and requires special techniques and equipment, according to a team of Norwegian entrepreneurs. Special cameras are needed to film in extreme close-ups, and extra work is required to compensate for the parallax effect. The filmmakers – PointMediaRead More →

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I really liked the first FiiT VR headset that I tried, and when the FiiT VR 2S came out, I had to order it. It has the same field of view, but weighs a little less, and is better for augmented reality since the outside cover is almost completely open. Disclosure:Read More →

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I got into writing about OpenSim back in 2009 because it seemed to be, at the time, the best path to an open-source, peer-to-peer metaverse. I want to see a future where anyone could put up a virtual environment, and have people teleport in and out from other people’s environments. ARead More →

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The White House released a virtual reality video of President Barack Obama touring Yosemite National Park yesterday. Read the full announcement here. But the experience is only available on Facebook and on the Samsung Gear VR headset, with Oculus Rift support coming soon. Facebook owns Oculus VR which also provides contentRead More →

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Intel has announced a new all-in-one virtual reality headset, Project Alloy,  at the Intel Developer Forum 2016 earlier this month. The headset has its own brain, so not does not need to be connected to a computer or smartphone in order to work. There is no word yet on when the headsetRead More →

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A complex mesh object can significantly slow down the loading of a region — as much as ten minutes, in some cases, according to Oren Hurvitz, co-founder and VP of R&D at Kitely. That’s a significant problem for Kitely in particular because the grid’s regions are all loaded on demand. TheyRead More →

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Lifeliqe, a platform for 3D, VR and AR educational content, has launched a content creator tool that will allow educators to create intuitive and immersive educational content that integrate interactive 3D models in order to make lessons, presentations and e-books more engaging. The creator tool will also be brought into VRRead More →

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Press release: THE IMMERSE SUMMIT RETURNS ON TUES. OCT. 11TH AS THE LARGEST IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE & EXPO IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST Now in its 3rd year, IMMERSE (Formerly SEA-VR) will bring together all of the latest Learnings, Companies and Innovations in the Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality Industry BELLEVUE,Read More →

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For the first time in history, virtual reality technology was used in the Olympic games to allow users to view events in virtual reality. We’re not quite at the point yet where sports fan can put on a headset and enter the Olympics stadiums and virtually attend all events. Instead, what we gotRead More →

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So your grid has been hit by a denial-of-service attack, or a server has crashed, or a hacker got in, or things just mysteriously stopped working. Or maybe you’ve had a customer service disaster, or your owner said something horrible on social media, or you’ve got management or partner problemsRead More →

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Despite the the absence of the Virtual Life grid and Avination in this month’s statistics, region counts, registered users, and active users all increased this month. Virtual Life grid shut down without notice, and Avination is in the process of moving to a new hosting provider and could be downRead More →

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Press release: IDC Expects Blossoming Gaming Market in China Including VR Systems and Consoles BEIJING – According to the IDC China Gaming Market Forecast Analysis 2016-2020, the number of gamers in China reached 530 million in 2015, which is 1.7 times that of the entire U.S. population. IDC expects thisRead More →

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Editor’s note: This article was updated on 1/27/2023 to remove dead links and links to malicious sites. Editor: The team behind U.S. Army’s MOSES grid have long been cutting-edge contributors to OpenSim, building a grid management system, running scalability tests, and donating content to the OpenSim community. Now they are inRead More →