Development of Crystal Frost — a mobile-friendly Unity-based Second Life viewer which is now in beta trials — will continue despite Second Life recently announcing its own mobile virtual world viewer. Crystal Frost is currently a downloadable Windows virtual world viewer like Firestorm, but will also be available on Linux andRead More →
Second Life, the popular virtual world platform that has been around for over two decades, is finally releasing a mobile viewer. The new mobile viewer is currently a work in progress, but the Second Life development team has shared a sneak peek at what users can expect. Watch the previewRead More →
Florida-based Avalon Corp. has raised $13 million to build a platform for games capable of taking advantage of the metaverse, featuring a universe of interoperable worlds with various intellectual properties, to be built using technologies including blockchain and game engines. According to the press release, Avalon Corp is uniquely experiencedRead More →
Generative AI is one of the world’s top three geopolitical risks this year — right after Russia and China — according to a report released last month by the Eurasia Group, a US-based risk consultancy. “This year will be a tipping point for disruptive technology’s role in society,” the reportRead More →
OpenSim land area has this month gone up by a significant 6,622 standard region equivalents thanks to new grids and a significant expansion at other grids. All public OpenSim grids now have a total of 110,458 standard-sized regions in virtual land area. Speaking of new grids, the total number ofRead More →
When I first tried out ChatGPT late last year, I noticed that many people were using it to write code. Python. Javascript. Even machine language. So of course I asked it if knew LSL, the Linden Scripting Language used in Second Life and OpenSim. It said no. I was disappointed butRead More →
At Hypergrid Business, we’ve been covering OpenSim and other desktop-based virtual environments since 2009, and began covering virtual reality extensively in 2014. Our goal has been to promote an open-source, distributed metaverse, and to help the little guy and gal with navigating that landscape. Specifically, the people running OpenSim-based virtualRead More →
Hi, everyone. This is me, Maria, your friendly local technology reporter and blog editor. You might know me from such things as my annual OpenSim stats presentations at the OpenSimulator Community Conference, my various attempts to run an OpenSim grid on my home computer, or the fact that, since 2009,Read More →
Hosting4OpenSim, a virtual world hosting company, has announced its grand opening. Founded in December 2022 by three friends from Mexico, the US, and Brazil, the company aims to become the leading provider for OpenSim hosting services. As part of its launch, the company is offering a deal to the nextRead More →
Samsung, in partnership with Qualcomm and Google, has announced plans to develop a new extended reality product. XR is a term that encompasses virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality technologies. I myself switched from Apple to Samsung in 2015 specifically for Samsung’s Gear VR headset. But when Samsung cancelledRead More →
I love building in OpenSim, but I don’t love the process of finding or creating textures. It’s hard to find just the right one, and even harder to figure out its license terms. All those texture packs floating around — are they legitimate? Or are they ripped off from SecondRead More →
Last Friday, AltspaceVR announced that will be shutting down its virtual environment in March. AltspaceVR was a consumer-focused immersive space that could be accessed either via the desktop or through a virtual reality headset. Since its launch in 2016, the platform has hosted big names and quickly became the go-toRead More →
OpenSim virtual land area continued to increase this month, adding 942 new regions since we reported the stats, as well as registering 4,098 new users. However, the number of active users fell by 3,806 this month as the December holidays came to a close. Generally, there are fewer seasonal eventsRead More →
Celebrity Cruises yesterday unveiled Wonderverse, a virtual experience that lets travelers explore a realistic digital recreation of the line’s newest ship, Celebrity Beyond.Read More →
More companies are planning to invest in the new frontier that is the metaverse, but new and old cybersecurity threats are a top concern, according to a study released today by cybersecurity company Tenable.Read More →
Editor’s Note: RezMela is an add-on to OpenSim that allows for easier creation of in-world content — everything from physical environments to animated NPCs. Today, at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time at the OpenSim Community Conference, its creator, Ramesh Ramloll, will talk about how the platform will now be free andRead More →
From AI art galleries in OpenSim to AI-created fully immersive three-dimensional environments, AI is already shaping how we experience virtual worlds. Read More →
A combat veteran suffering from PTSD shares his challenges in traversing the VA’s endeavor to keep up with technology. These institutional failures led to the founding of 2B3D, a first-of-its-kind metaverse for delivering live, free mental health services to vets via web3. The facts are not new. The number ofRead More →
Gaming technology will be the biggest driving force for the evolution of the metaverse in the near term, according to a new report published last week by S&P Global Market Intelligence.Read More →
Relay for Ukraine is having the grand opening of its Kisma in Ukraine art installation in Craft World next Wednesday, November 9, at 1:00 P.M. Pacific time.Read More →
Sushant Chandrasekar, a renowned gaming developer at Second Life, and Gaurav Gupta, a former high-profile consultant at Bain & Company, have completed a seed funding round of $1.5 million with InfoEdge Ventures to develop AvatarLife grid with skill-based play-to-earn games, community content building, marketplace, freebies, and in-world currency. ThatRead More →
There are a variety of businesses that exist only — or at least mainly — inside OpenSim worlds. Those businesses are often run by creative artists who use their talents to make digital art which they market as products to customers in OpenSim.Read More →
In a live – actually, it was prerecorded – keynote address, Zuckerberg announced the Meta Quest Pro, a new, business-focused advanced virtual reality headset the company’s been teasing for the past year.Read More →
There currently is no easy way for OpenSim users to agree to a grid’s privacy policies and terms of service or give data use consent as required by the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.Read More →
The tenth annual OpenSimulator Community Conference is scheduled for December 10 and 11, and the call for proposals is now open. “We’re interested in your wonderful content, insights, and accomplishments. We hope that you can join us for our tenth year celebrating the current and future use of open sourceRead More →
Many companies are following the hype and rushing to invest in the metaverse. According to a July survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 66 percent of 1,000 business executives reported their company is actively engaged in the metaverse — but what these companies are developing and what their customers want to do with theRead More →
A new art installation has its grand opening today, Monday, Sep. 12, at 1 p.m. Pacific time on the Craft World grid, the second contribution to the Ukraine Borderland Art Project. The installation, Ukraine Victory 2025, is by artist Rage Darkstone. The hypergrid address is craft-world.org:8002:Ukraine The installation is a “lyricalRead More →
Shanghai, China’s largest city, is about to invest billions of dollars in the metaverse. Though its exact definition is unclear, the metaverse is basically supposed to be a 3D version of the internet where people can live their digital lives and interact with each other through avatars. The metaverseRead More →
OpenSim added a total land area of 2,436 regions this month, reversing some of last month’s dramatic drop. The active users tally dropped by 579 users and registered users fell by 6,155 but both are much smaller than last month’s drops and are fully accounted for by outages and statRead More →
Ukraine 2025 is having its grand opening on Friday, August 5 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time in Craft World on sim Ukraine. The hypergrid address is craft-world.org:8002:Ukraine The event features an art installation and concert by Terra Merhyem. Ukraine 2025 is the first contribution to the Ukraine Borderland Art project, runRead More →
OSgrid, the largest grid in land area and active user numbers, will celebrate its 15th birthday starting on Monday, July 25. The celebration will run through July 31. “We’ll have live music and DJs to entertain us as we celebrate everything that is OSgrid,” grid president Wizard Atazoth. Former presidentRead More →
OpenSim Fest 2022 still has three days to go, and it’s already breaking attendance records. “Since we opened the OSFest 2022 grid at the beginning of June, there have been a record 763 unique avatars on the grid from 158 hypergrid-enabled grids on the OSFest 2022 Grid,” OSFest 2022 director ShelennRead More →
The public OpenSim grids lost more than 4,000 active users and nearly 2,000 regions since this time last month for a combination of reasons, the biggest being the closure of the Metropolis grid. Metropolis closed at the end of June so that the owners could focus on educational projects. TheRead More →
Griefers can be a real nuisance in OpenSim. Also known as bad faith players, they can fill a world with various self-replicating items to deliberately irritate other users. There are a number of ways to do away with the objects left by griefers, including automatic detection, shutdown, and restarting ofRead More →
OSFest 2022 had a well-attended first weekend with 36 hours of performances in genres ranging from poetry and prose to techno music. “OSFest 2022 kickoff weekend was both a success and a lot of fun,” said OSFest director Shelenn Ayres in a blog post. “Attendance was excellent with no oneRead More →
I’m Snoots Dwagon, head of greeters, exhibitor, and a performer at this year’s OpenSim Fest. It’s my first OpenSim festival, and I’ve got two parcels you might want to check out, Rascal Flats and Replicant City. In the case of both exhibits, the entire purpose is to provide some funRead More →
This year’s OpenSim Fest 2022 kicks off at 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, July 8 with pomp and color and goes until Monday, July 25, 9 p.m. Pacific time. The hypergrid address is grid.opensimfest.com:8022. For further information check out the fest’s Discord community page or the official event website. The firstRead More →
The Metaverse Museum — founded in 2007 and one of the oldest and largest virtual museums in OpenSim and Second Life — has a new Sea-of-Blake-inspired art exhibition named Emerald in Water which opened on June 18 and runs through July 8 at the Summer Sailstice 2022 conference in SecondRead More →
Discovery Grid is celebrating its sixth birthday with an air show and a pyro-musical fireworks display. The event, Thunder over Discovery 2022, takes place this Saturday, July 2, at 2 p.m. Pacific time, with an encore event at 6 p.m. Pacific. The hypergrid address is discoverygrid.net:8002:Lousville. You’ll want to arrive earlyRead More →
The Metropolis grid will shut down on midnight on June 30. But before one of the oldest OpenSim grids closes for good, it will be the site of the premiere performance of a play by Reiner Schneeberger. The play is titled “The Art Giantess Is The Work: Thea von Harbou,”Read More →
OpenSim land area is up by more than 12,000 standard regions this month compared to last month, bringing the total land area to a record high of 113,151 standard region equivalents. The growth happened despite some grid outages and closures. In particular, four French grids have shut down over theRead More →
Last night, Google sent me a message that I could have one of its virtual AI-powered voices record my audiobooks for me. I wrote an article about for MetaStellar here: Google offers free AI-powered audiobook narration. You can edit the finished file to fix pronunciation mistakes and then download theRead More →
All OpenSim stats are up this month. The total land area of the public OpenSim grids increased by more than 1,000 regions, to 100,880, while the active users increased by more than 3,000, to 43,272. Creatrix World, which reported more than 700 regions last month, is currently recovering from aRead More →
The educational play “We Are Going to Lviv” is back for a single performance tonight on the Meta region of the OpenSim Community Conference grid. The trip was originally part of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2022 conference and is an artistic journey that spans the past andRead More →
The 15th annual Virtual World Best Practices in Education conference kicks off on Thursday, March 31 and will run through April 2 at the VWBPE region in Second Life. This year, about 23 exhibitors including universities, non-profits, journals, community organizations, and individuals are set to exhibit at the VWBPE Conference Exhibit Hall,Read More →
So I just got a warning in my email inbox from a “[email protected]” The domain name is associated with a company that runs a couple of Russia-based OpenSim grids. Apparently, the flag of Ukraine is now a “Nazi” flag. Now, I mean sure, there are Nazis in every country —Read More →
You can join the Hypergrid Hoppers — a club for explorers of the OpenSim hypergrid — as they travel to Ukraine. The trip is part of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2022 conference and is an artistic journey that spans the past and future of Ukraine with a focusRead More →
“Metaverse” is a word thrown around a lot lately, and its meaning seems to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. Here’s a breakdown of the most common definitions. Metaverse as virtual reality The term “metaverse” was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. He usedRead More →
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