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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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So I just got a warning in my email inbox from a “touche@1studi.ru.” 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 →

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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 →

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“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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The total land area of the public OpenSim metaverse shrank by over 2,000 regions over the past month. Nearly all of that loss can be attributed to ZetaWorlds — which lost 2,336 regions due to maintenance on the grids. The total number of both active monthly users and registered usersRead More →

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  Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic we’d expect hybrid teams to regularly meet, work and learn in virtual reality (VR), wouldn’t we? After all, over 10 million high-quality, reality-bending virtual reality (VR) headsets have been sold heavily. But here we are in our video meeting, staring at a webcamRead More →

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Steve Gray, former executive at Tencent Games, the world’s largest gaming studio, is getting into the metaverse. His new company, Meta Music Studios, launched The Apollo Project last week, a blockchain-based gaming platform for music and games, with its first game TAP Stars, an avatar growing game, set to launch next month.Read More →