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The total number of regions and public grids in OpenSim hit new record highs this month but while more than 8,600 new users registered, the total number of active users fell by 909 to just below the 30,000 mark. For those who are new readers, OpenSim is a free, openRead More →

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The Kitely Market has passed the 8,000 item milestone, with a new total of 8,300 different items, grouped into 4,116 product listings. Unlike the Second Life Marketplace, where, say, different colors of a dress would each be listed separately, Kitely Market counts these as variations of a common product listing.Read More →

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My name is Tyler Brabo, and, ten days ago, I was hired to research hypergrid destinations for Hyperica. This required that I create an account in OpenSim, get an avatar, and figure out how to surf the hypergrid. My boss, Maria Korolov, asked me to keep track of what problemsRead More →

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The Firestorm Viewer is the most popular on the hypergrid by a wide margin, according to today’s analysis of Hyperica server logs. More than half of the last 3,600 visitors to Hyperica used the Firestorm Viewer. Less than a third used Singularity, and CtrlAltStudio, Cool LV, and Replex were all aroundRead More →

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Stray Cats — The Game opened its doors to beta testers at the start of this month. It’s an OpenSim grid dedicated to breedable cats. The owners say that users will be able to buy cats, sell them, breed them, train them, and enter them in competitions, and that thereRead More →

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The latest releases virtual world viewers, such as Firestorm, Singularity, and Kokua can provide access to a “Destination Guide” for your OpenSim grid for both local and hypergrid visitors. And this guide can feature both local and hypergrid destinations. But the grid owner first has to enable this feature in their configurationRead More →

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I’ve heard a lot of complaints about Linda Kellie while traveling the hypergrid. Okay, not about her per se — she’s probably done more for OpenSim than any other creator out there. But the fact that Linda Kellie’s content collection is licensed CC0, which is as close to public domainRead More →

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For those interested in learning how to work with mesh objects, there’s a new series of Blender tutorials available online from Ontario-based retired artist Aine Caoimhe — also known as Mata Hari in-world. Blender is a free but powerful 3D modeling and animation program available for download here. It supports theRead More →

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Merrie Schonbach’s new grid’s business model is a mystery. Literally a mystery — Pillars of Mist will offer both self-paced and group murder mystery events. It is the newest example of a trend we’re seeing on the hypergrid, of focused, niche grids that don’t try to be all things to all people,Read More →

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As everyone who has ever tried to set up a hyperport well knows, hypergrid destinations change frequently. Regions move, grids close — staying up to date can be a nightmare. Especially if you’re doing it all by hand. To help people out, and to avoid unnecessary duplication of work, I’veRead More →

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The Adult Metaverse Google Plus community continued to attract members over the past six weeks, growing by 146 members from 444 members last month to 590 members today. At the start of the year, it only had 282 members. Second Life and other Virtual Worlds saw the next-highest growth, with 130Read More →

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DigiWorldz launched this week, a new filtered grid from one of the founders of 3rd Rock Grid and digital worlds hosting and consulting company Digital Worlds Group. There were more than 30 new grids in the latest Hypergrid Business monthly stats report, but DigiWorldz stands out not only in the caliberRead More →

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The new official release of OpenSimulator — OpenSimulator 0.8.1 — came out this week, with only minor changes compared with the preview release. “The most significant being a fix for a regression where script state was being lost for hypergrid transfers,” core developer Justin Clark-Casey said in an announcement. Compared toRead More →

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The exportable content on the Kitely Market grew ten times faster than non-exportables over the past month, continuing a trend that began late last summer. The market added 245 new exportable items, compared to 23 non-exportable ones, for a new total of 7,950 different variations of 3,898 products. A singleRead More →

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Press release: Avination required to stop transfer of Linden Dollars London – Due to recent interaction with Linden Labs, the Avination grid is announcing that the transfer of Linden Dollars to Avination is no longer available, including payment for Avination regions via the Avination ATMs. “Following discussions with Linden Labs they have advised that anyRead More →

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I don’t usually go around telling people what the best grids are. I run surveys, or I punt the question and just say, “What ever grid works best for you” or “Your own private grid” or something like that. The thing is, everybody is looking for something different. Some peopleRead More →

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This week, OpenSimulator released a security fix to protect content on public grids. All public grids should either install the fix, or configure an HTTP proxy to protect important ports, said OpenSim core developer Justin Clark-Casey in the announcement. But the danger goes beyond protecting the data on grid servers, ifRead More →

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The RobStock team have set the date for the 8th annual RobStock Charity Event for the last weekend in March, from Friday, March 27 to Sunday, March 29. “We are asking artists to give an hour of their time free, all tips going to the charity,” the organizers said in a pressRead More →

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Game development studio Epic has just announced that their engine, the infamous Unreal Engine, will be completely free for everyone to use starting immediately. This is a full version of Unreal Engine, and not just a demo or trial version. Those who choose to use Unreal Engine will still beRead More →

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OpenSim core developer Melanie Thielker is donating a new cluster storage solution to the community. Called FSAssets, it is designed to replace the MySQL databases or the RAID storage arrays used by other grids. FSAssets is also the new asset storage for OSgrid, which had previously relied on RAID storage. Any gridRead More →

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An open grid is one that allows outside people to connect their own regions. Those regions could be hosted for free on home computers, or be provided by third-party hosting companies, such as Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex, CloudServe, Oliveira, or any other grid-agnostic vendor on our hosting list. Here is theRead More →

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Inventory exports, or IARs, became a heated topic of discussion in Google Plus communities yesterday, with one grid even disabling its IAR exports temporarily as a result. Much of the debate is due to a misunderstanding of how IAR backups work — and of how thieves steal content. What isRead More →

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OpenSim developer Dahlia Trimble has won a bounty for her work on fixing llLookAt, a function useful in making objects move better. “Fred Beckhusen has tested the code and is happy with the result,” said Talla Adams in an announcement today. Adams, who is the moderator of the OpenSim VirtualRead More →

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OSgrid, the oldest grid running on the OpenSim software, is backup. The news was announced in a tweet a few minutes ago. “OSgrid is opening its gates to direct logins and regions at this very minute,”Melanie Thielker, founder and owner of the Avination grid and an OpenSim core developer, told Hypergrid Business. “It’sRead More →

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Ever since the hardware failure took down OSgrid‘s asset database last August, OSgrid residents have been worrying about whether the grid would ever recover — and, if it did, whether their inventories would be restored as well. The wondering is now over. The asset database has been rebuilt, in aRead More →

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The drama-plagued AviWorlds grid is back up under its previous ownership with a new domain name, and a new business model. “This will not be a commercial grid and you can only enter by invitation or referral,” grid owner and founder Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. He is also known asRead More →

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Given the choice between selling to Kitely‘s 1,003 local active users or to the 14,075 on the hypergrid, it makes sense that more and more Kitely Market merchants have gone the hypergrid route. In fact, exportables have long been growing at a faster rate than non-exportables for the past eightRead More →

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The Adult Metaverse Google Plus group was the fastest-growing OpenSim-related virtual community over the past six weeks. The community, as it sounds, is dedicated to adult content and events on the hypergrid, and has grown from 282 members on January 1 to 444 members today, a growth of 162 members.Read More →

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This was another record-breaking month for OpenSim, with new highs in regions, users, and active users on the 303 active worlds. For those who are new readers, OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills toRead More →

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OSgrid has been able to restore the rest of the assets from the recovery disk, OSgrid grid administrator Allen Kerensky announced today. However, he did not provide an estimated date for when OSgrid will be coming back up. He did say that the grid was now working on setting up the networkingRead More →

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DX Exchange, one of the oldest exchanges trading Linden Dollars, has now entered the OpenSim payments space. The exchange is now providing the currency infrastructure for Sunlight Grid, with four other grids in beta testing. Currently, there are two main exchanges providing currency services to OpenSim grids. Virwox operates theRead More →

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In the past, several grid owners have discussed using Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, for in-world payments but, until now, no grid has done so — Bitcoins are typically too volatile to be used within a grid. To read more about coins and gambling legislation read on https://www.bestuscasinos.org/legal/new-york/ about what mightRead More →

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Are you launching a new grid? I bet you’re looking for some combination of “virtual,” “paradise,” “life,” “world,” and “avatar” that haven’t been used yet. Stop! If you use a grid name that reminds people of other OpenSim grids then you will have triple the branding challenge you would have otherwise.Read More →

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Running your own virtual world? Considering registering a dot-world domain name for it. For example, Sunshine.world is available for $28 from GoDaddy and $25 from NameCheap. The first grid to take advantage of this — ZetaWorlds — has already grabbed the domain Zeta.world, grid owner Timothy Rogers announced today. ICANNRead More →

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OSgrid has been able to restore 25 percent of assets from the recovery disk, OSgrid grid administrator Allen Kerensky announced yesterday. He said that Melanie Thielker, an OpenSim core developer and owner of the Avination grid, has been helping with the recovery effort. “With Melanie’s cluster replication design, the assets are importingRead More →

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The preview release of OpenSim 0.8.1 is out, with improvements to teleports, physics, varregions, scripting, and more. For large commercial grids, this is an opportunity to check out the new release on their beta grids, so that they are ready for the final release when it comes out — andRead More →

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Zandramas — an invitation-only closed grid — will become ZanGrid tomorrow, where anyone is welcome to join. In addition, hypergrid visitors will be able to come in and get a preview of the grid on the hypergrid-enabled Club Zandramas region. According to manager and co-founder Suzan De Koning, the grid decidedRead More →

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Update: More supporters pledged funds to the effort, bringing the total to $2,000. Members of the OpenSim Virtual Google Plus community have pledged $1,550 to improve vehicle scripting by fixing bugs with the way llLookAt and llMoveTo commands are implemented in OpenSim. “Today I’m making a personal pledge of $200Read More →

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All OpenSim stats increased this month but the most dramatic increase was on Atek Grid, which more than quadrupled its land area this month with nearly 400 new regions. There are now a total of 56,011 standard region equivalents on the 217 public OpenSim grids that released their stats, 418,293 registeredRead More →

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A week ago, I asked: Can AviWorlds find stability under new management? We got the answer today, and the answer is, “No.” “After many weeks of thoughtful consideration, as well as viewing the many comments on Google+, Facebook, and in private emails, we’ve decided to end the battle and closeRead More →

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US $19.95 for a 15,000-prim region on the closed, commercial German-language GerGrid. No hypergrid.Read More →

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The name-calling and blame-throwing seems to be settling down, and it looks like AviWorlds is starting to find some stability under new management. Mike Hart is now the owner of the AviWorlds grid, and of the associated domain name AviWorlds.com. “We don’t have any paid staff, but we do haveRead More →

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If 2014 was the year of the hypergrid — and it was — then it should also have been the year of the OMC. After all, the OMC, or Open Metaverse Currency, is the only currency which works on the hypergrid and is backed by a trusted exchange, Austria’s Virwox. IfRead More →

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The “dark metaverse” of private OpenSim grids gained regions at four times the rate of public grids, according to Hypergrid Business projections based on a survey of hosting providers. Last year, private grids accounted for an estimated 60 percent of all grids, adding up to 50,070 regions in the “darkRead More →

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This past year has been a growth year for OpenSim. Over the previous twelve months, 22,409 regions, 71,442 registered users, and 2,189 active users. But some grids did better than others. User growth Metropolis gained the most active users this year in absolute terms. The open grid, based in Germany,Read More →

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Tangle Grid, a mid-sized commercial grid best known for its expos, has launched yet another open grid, WestWorld. Tangle previously launched another open grid, Tangle OS, at the start of October, which was then relaunched as the Atek Grid in partnership with CloudServe. Tangle withdrew from that partnership earlier thisRead More →

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If you’re looking for a world where women are the masters and men are the slaves — and who isn’t? — then you’re in luck this holiday season. Avalonia Estate, the only “femdom” lifestyle community grid in OpenSim is back. Now, running a grid is extremely labor intensive, so, thisRead More →

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Still undecided about which of the 200-plus active grids to use as your primary home base? This announcement should raise Metropolis a few notches on your list. The grid has just announced a Web-based inventory download tool that any grid resident can use. Metropolis inventory backup tool. The Metropolis toolRead More →