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I may have been premature when I announced that immersive movies were the killer app for virtual reality. What was I thinking? Who wants to spend two hours in a bulky headset? Obviously, the killer app for virtual reality is going to be music videos. The length of a songRead 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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Update: The survey is now closed, and part one of the results is up. Part two of the results is here. It’s almost the end of the year, time for the annual Hypergrid Business OpenSim Hosting Providers Survey. Please note that this is a not a survey about individual grids —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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There’s been quite a bit of debate about whether violent video games can make people more violent in real life — though no conclusive research. With the advent of virtual reality — immersive, interactive experiences in which users feel as though they are actually characters inside a different world — thisRead 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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You may have seen the recent flood of announcements from companies jumping on the virtual reality bandwagon. Movie studios, hotel chains, car companies are releasing virtual experiences at a furious pace. Most people are either excited or confused by all the attention, but a few have been upset at theRead 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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OpenSim-based virtual networking company SimB2B was recognized as a top-five startup at the CoInvent NY Startup Showcase on Thursday, one of over twenty companies presenting. “SimB2B is the first grid to offer business to business networking and events such as trade shows,” SimB2B vice president Jack Mamiye told Hypergrid Business.  IndividualRead 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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Virtual reality’s success or failure will depend on interface design, Oculus Rift chief scientist Steve LaValle told a packed virtual conference hall last weekend at the OpenSimulator Community Conference. “If we do fail, it’ll be because human comfort hasn’t been given the respect it needs,” he told the attendees onRead More →

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Full immersion virtual reality might be here sooner than you think — for movies, at least. Palo Alto-based Jaunt VR is developing a suite of hardware and software tools for creating 360-degree virtual reality videos. The use of 16-camera contraptions and 3-D sound-field microphones, which capture the sounds coming from variousRead More →

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With OSgrid down for three months and no news from its managers about when it is expected to come back up, other grids have been stepping up to serve its users. Most recently, Tangle Grid launched the open Tangle OS grid at the beginning of October. That grid is nowRead 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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If you live, like me, in a northern climate, then you might be starting to suffer from the lack of sunlight, and from the cold November winds. Fortunately, there’s plenty to do in on OpenSim grids, where the sun shines bright whenever you want it to and the temperature is alwaysRead More →

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Over the years, OpenSimulator has grown to be a widely used platform, serving as the virtual world server for many communities ranging in size, specialization and languages. due to the platforms open source nature, community contribution to its code base over the years has made OpenSimulator a formidable choice forRead More →

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Seems that there’s a mania for mergers going on. Next Reality and SkyLife Grid merged with AviWorlds. 3D Grid merged with Metropolis. And now Lost World grid is merging with AviWorlds, too. Is there a merger in your grid’s future? Take this quiz to find out!Read 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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On November 1, for the first time, avatars and the people behind them are going to run the American Cancer Society Relay for Life, for real, virtually. What in the world does that mean? Using the InWorldz InShape system, beta testers from the virtual world will get together on aRead 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 3dcolab.com crew has built a simulation of the historic Michigan Central Station, a railway depot which is one of the best known iconic ruins of Detroit. We showed our magnificant as it used-to-be re-creation last month at the Detroit Design Festival dElectricity event. The location was a friendly art gallery and coffeeRead 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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Love them or hate them — and many people do love them — but there are now breedables on the hypergrid. Previously, breedables in OpenSim were limited to closed grids like InWorldz, with Oyo Breedables, Fussels Breedables, and, of course, Amaretto Breedables. As of this week, however, breedable turtles have arrivedRead 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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I just noticed that KZero has an excellent new design. Perfect timing, too — as interest in virtual reality is exploding, so is the need for virtual worlds consultants of all kind. Arch Virtual also has an excellent new site, as does Designing Digitally. Of course, lots of vendors in ourRead 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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This is a follow-up to yesterday’s article about the rules of grid competition. So you’ve decided to avoid self-sabotaging, unproductive, negative types of marketing and competition. What’s left? Lots of stuff! 1. Market your cool new features Don’t expect people to notice it when you add a major improvement toRead 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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As OpenSim grows bigger and bigger, some grids might think that an easy way to gain customers would be to bash other grids. For example, AviWorlds grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli said in a recent comment, “For me a competitor is my mortal enemy.” Now, I’m all in favor of competitionRead More →

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Now that the Hyperica hyperport is starting to get into shape, I’ve set out some free hypergates for people. Just teleport over to hg.hyperica.com:8022 and pick them up. I’ve got some all-in-one gates, like the one from The Hypergates, and a Blamgate from Pathfinder, and Diva Canto’s teleporter. The gate fromRead More →

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The Hyperica hyperport gets a decent amount of traffic, and has a few scripts running on it. Plus, I recently rearranged the grid, and my hosting company updated our software. Let’s just say that region restarts are common place. And my gate scripts kept breaking. It’s turns out, this wasn’tRead 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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Are you already preparing your smartphone to be your doorway to virtual reality? If no, it’s high time you did so. While virtual reality hardware keeps going three different paths, mobile platform is taking shape as the one with a huge potential to dominate eventually. So don’t wait for the consumerRead 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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Piquant. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, at the epicenter of tech, opined last week about women in tech, suggesting they not ask for raises but instead trust “the system” to recognize performance with pay increases when appropriate, earning “good karma” along the way. At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. FiveRead More →

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The Museo del Metaverso — Metaverse Museum — is starting back up again on the Craft grid after two years of inactivity. The Museum was originally created in Second Life in 2007 and in 2010 it moved permanently to Craft. The museum offers a new way of presenting and promoting art through workshops,Read 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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3rd Rock Grid, a mid-sized closed, commercial grid won’t be closed for too much longer. The next grid upgrade will bring hypergrid functionality in the next two or three weeks, grid founder Terry Ford, also known as Butch Arnold in-world, told Hypergrid Business. “We will have some safeguards in place to notRead More →