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OpenSim land area has passed 130,000 standard region equivalents this month, for a new all-time high. This is the second month in a row that OpenSim has set a land record. The total number of regions grew by over 2,000 over the past month. Registered users also increased, by moreRead More →

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The annual OpenSimulator Festival, known as OSFest, takes place September 15 through September 30 inside the OSFest virtual world grid. The sixteen-day event features live music, exhibits, talks, tours, social spaces, and shopping for attendees across the Hypergrid metaverse. This year’s OSFest offers 94 hours of non-music events at free,Read More →

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StoryLink Radio and Seanchai Library will host a series of Halloween-themed live voice, streamed, and in-world storytelling sessions during the month of October, which is high story-telling season. Virtual world citizens are welcome to listen to the stories at the Halloween Merchant Mall in Kitely. There will also be aRead More →

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The Metaverse Spectrum Business Conference, Expo, and Pitch Fest will highlight expanding business applications for the metaverse at its virtual conference this coming December.  The event, which will be held in the metaverse, will include sessions on marketing, product development, training, and recruiting applications of the metaverse. Speakers will hailRead More →

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OpenSim’s public grids hit a record high this month with its largest land area ever, the equivalent of 127,958 standard regions. This was an increase of 2,252 regions compared to last month. Meanwhile, the total number of registered users on public OpenSim grids increased by 7,440 and the total number ofRead More →

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  AviTron owner Alexander Pomposelli has a long history of closing grids without warning. Back when he ran AviWorlds, I counted more than a dozen times that he closed that grid, often without any warning. Residents complained of losing access to regions, inventories, and in world-currency balances. At one point,Read More →

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AvatarLife is launching its Wild Poker game today, based on Texas Hold’em poker. But it’s more skill-based, said AvatarLife CEO Sushant Chandrasekar. There is also a starting jackpot of 1 million AV$, the grid’s local currency — which translates to about US $4,000. “The launch event will be a threeRead More →

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The Discovery Grid will host its seventh anniversary party on Saturday, July 1 at the Louisville region, featuring a virtual Thunder Over Discovery 2023 aviation event which will coincide with the real-life Thunder Over Louisville aircraft event, showcasing vintage and modern aircraft in action. Both grid residents and hypergrid visitorsRead More →

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AvatarLife grid will host a virtual Pride Week for residents and visitors from other grids starting at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, June 24, with events running through Friday, June 30. The Pride Week, which coincides with and has events that match those held during the United Nation’s PrideRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids gained nearly 2,000 regions this past month, and more than 1,300 new registrations, but continued to bleed active users as the weather improves and people spend less time inside at their computers. However, the total number of active public grids has reached a new record highRead More →

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Littlefield grid turns ten on Saturday, April 1, and will host a week-long birthday party on its Anniversary region. There will be a live performance by OpenSim renowned artist Rogue Galaxy at 5 p.m. Pacific time on April 1, followed by a live DJ dance party with Littlefield’s own DJRead More →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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  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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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  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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →