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Augmented reality endorsement picks up pace, according to a recent market forecast. The AR market volume is expected to hit $30 billion by 2023, growing at 39 percent CAGR. This growth is rooted in AR’s utility. Augmented reality proves itself a multi-purpose technology, being eagerly adopted across different domains, such asRead More →

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As the November 1 opening of the Santorini 1st Digital Bienniale art festival approaches, organizers have made available the 28-page preview book free exclusively for Hypergrid Business readers: download it here. Read the original festival announcement here. #Neighbourhood: Art is a political act Digital and real worlds will handshake at Santorini onRead More →

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Earlier this year, I wrote about how I’m ready to start winding down Hypergrid Business and move on to the next part of my life. My kids are out of the house, I’ve rented a new office, and I’ve been disentangling myself from old commitments. At my day job, covering technologyRead More →

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Since Google announced that they were shutting down their Google Plus social platform by end of next summer, organizers of OpenSim-related communities on that platform have begun searching for an alternative. Google Plus was particularly attractive for OpenSim users since it allowed avatar names, a welcome alternative to Facebook’s realRead More →

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Google has announced today that it is shutting down the Google Plus social network for consumers. The platform has been popular for OpenSim users to share news about the hypergrid. OpenSim Virtual has more than 2,000 subscribed members and there are many other communities serving different cross-grid communities as well as individualRead More →

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The Second Life-based Community Virtual Library is opening two branches in OpenSim next summer, on the Kitely and Avacon grids. The two new library branches will be CVL Hypergrid Resource Libraries with content designed to help people navigate virtual worlds across grids with various viewers. How to help Many peopleRead More →

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Kristopher Therrien, known as Quill Littlefeather to the OpenSim community, passed away this month. His family will be holding a memorial service on Saturday, September 29 at 11 a.m. at People’s United Methodist Church in Fremont, NH. Littlefeather has been involved in a number of OpenSim grid projects, including SkyLife GridRead More →

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  High Fidelity, the new virtual world platform started by Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale, now allows its users to convert its virtual currency to real-world cash. “This opens the possibility for people to earn real money creating and selling virtual goods and services within High Fidelity,” Rosedale said inRead More →

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Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference to Return to San Francisco on November 9-10, 2018 SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Annual Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference ‘The Future Present’ is happening November 9-10, 2018 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California. Educators registering for the conference can expect hands-on and networking opportunities,Read More →

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Survey: Enterprise Companies Seeing Strong Return on Investment in VR & AR LONDON – Businesses working in areas such as automotive, construction, manufacturing and retail are seeing a good return on their investment in virtual and augmented reality, according to an industry survey by VR Intelligence. The survey targeted senior-levelRead More →

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Breadables creator oYo, formerly based on the now-defunct InWorldz grid, has found a new home — the Tag Grid. The True to Life horses have concluded a successful beta test and will be officially released this Friday, Sept. 14. “We will gather at 8 a.m. for a party and countRead More →

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Elf Clan, one of the largest themed communities in OpenSim, has found a new home after the collapse of InWorldz. It will now be headquartered on OSgrid, with hypergrid linked locations on DigiWorlds, Kitely, and other hypergrid-enabled grids. Full list of affiliated locations is here. “After our experience with SecondRead More →

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  OSgrid, the largest grid in the OpenSim metaverse, will hold a donation carnival this month, staring on Friday, Sep. 21 and running through Sep. 28. “We are hoping to raise enough this year to do some much needed upgrades,” Koni Lanzius, OSGrid’s donation drive coordinator, told Hypergrid Business. “The wholeRead More →

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Pornhub Awards Show to bring Virtual Reality to the Masses Combining live VR streaming and a massively multiuser VR virtual world will deliver two breakthroughs for the premier of the Pornhub Awards Show on September 6, 2018 Vancouver, B.C. – In the latest example of the power of porn to launchRead More →

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Beth Reischl, founder and owner of the now-defunct InWorldz grid, is starting a new grid, called Islandz, she told New World Notes yesterday. The new URL has been purchased, islandzvw.com, though there is nothing up on the site just yet. Some filtered content from the old InWorldz grid will be movedRead More →

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One of the more novel shows of this summer has been NBC’s “Reverie,” which grapples with the potentials and risks of realistic virtual reality. The show stars Sarah Sashi (Person of Interest) as Mara Kint, a former negotiator for the police who left after she failed to prevent her brother-in-lawRead More →

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Citing changes in the social fabric of the hypergrid, Han Held announced in the official AvatarFest Google Plus group that 2018 would be the last year of AvatarFest, the annual OpenSim festival celebrating end user creativity. “VisionZ has folded, Hypergrid Business is decreasing focus on OpenSim, the HG Safari hasRead More →

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The 1st Digital Bienniale immersive interactive art exhibit will open to the public on September 20 on the Metropolis Grid. There is also companion physical world event organized by Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art on September 17 for press and contributing artists. There will also be a OpenSim basics workshopRead More →

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Editor: This is a contributed announcement from Tag Grid. The Adult Grid has changed its name to Tag Grid. We can still be reached on our old URL and we are in the process of changing the whole site to reflect the new name. We have changed the name asRead More →

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In the comments section on one of the several InWorldz-related articles these past few days, I saw some people talking about whether OpenSim is safe for content. The idea being that InWorldz was somehow safer because it’s not OpenSim. First, InWorldz IS OpenSim. It’s just another fork off the OpenSimRead More →

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DigiWorldz and Discovery Grid were the two top destinations of former InWorldz residents looking for a new home, with respondents almost evenly split at 38 and 36 percent, respectively. Kitely was in third place, with 18 percent of respondents. InWorldz, one of OpenSim’s oldest and most successful grids shut downRead More →

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OpenSim grids are welcoming former InWorldz residents with open arms, offering technical support to get their OARs uploaded, discounts on region rentals, and even free homes and stores. Scroll down for details about special offers. Where to go For people looking for a closed, commercial grid — no hypergrid travelRead More →

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Editor: This is a contributed comment from hypergrid entrepreneur Frank Corsi. The Atek Grid has been a long running open to connect grid, supporting many residents who enjoy the abilty to connect land regions from home PC or rented servers. As the sole owner of the grid, I have been busyRead More →

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The lights went out at midnight. InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful OpenSim grids, shut down last night. And it ended in a way fitting for a social grid — with a party. “Tonight we were lucky enough to have the ability to log in and have aRead More →

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Editor: InWorldz cofounder and former CTO David Daeschler just asked us to publish this statement about the current situation with the grid’s crowdfunding campaign. For all those that have been asking me what is going on with InWorldz, I’d like to make a public statement. I have not been involved inRead More →

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Update: As of July 25, the GoFundMe campaign has been halted, after having raised more than $16,000 — just shy of the $17,000 goal. It’s unclear what is happening now. The official InWorldz announcement page about the issue seems to be the best place for updates. There’s also some discussionRead More →

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InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful commercial grids, is shutting down this week, owner Beth Reisch announced today, citing financial difficulties. According to Reischl, travel-related communication problems, bureaucratic mistakes and other issues resulted in the shutdown of the grid’s PayPal accounts and the calling in of the company’sRead More →

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Kitely will soon offer the option of hosting Virtual Private Grids on top of the Kitely grid, the company announced this week. According to the company, this new offering will enable groups and organizations to benefit from Kitely’s stability, performance and ease of use while gaining a new level ofRead More →

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Tranquility has unveiled their newest addition, Halcyon, a Gloebit-enabled region with a hypergrid shopping mall. It has more than 20 stores available for creators who wish to sell to the whole OpenSim community. Three different size stores are in place to accommodate small or large needs. There are also larger stores availableRead More →

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After Europe’s new data privacy regulations, GDPR, went into effect on May 25, OpenSim users saw a flurry of requests from grid owners asking them to agree to new privacy policies. Sometimes, those messages would pop up in the middle of a hypergrid trip, hindering travel. DigiWorldz, for example, hasRead More →

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My new Oculus Go headset arrived today ($199 on Amazon) and I wasn’t originally planning to get it because I’m not a big fan of standalone headsets. That’s a headset that has the computer and screen built right in, so you don’t need to plug in a phone, computer orRead More →

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The gambling-focused, Bitcoin-friendly YrGrid has been down and out lately — and it’s looking like that might be permanent. We did see it online last month, so it’s still on our active grids list, but readers have been emailing us complaining that they can’t get it in, and can’t getRead More →

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Earlier today, I posted an article about what we here at Hypergrid Business are doing to comply with GDPR. Fines are up to 20 million Euros or 4 percent of total annual global revenues — whichever is higher, and GDPR applies to every company that has European users or customers —Read More →

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You might have noticed a flood of emails lately and website popups asking you to consent to new privacy policies. That’s because a major new European privacy regulation, GDPR, goes into effect today. Fines are up to 20 million Euros or 4 percent of total annual global revenues — whicheverRead More →

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Twice as many grids now use Gloebit-powered payments compared to an older service, Podex, due to Gloebit’s easier set up and overall lower costs. Gloebits reports that it now has close to 2,000 account users and is on more than 50 grids, and the cumulative value of transactions reached more thanRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids lost the equivalent of nearly 4,000 regions, for a new total land area of 80,671 standard region equivalents. The number of active monthly users dropped by 2,580, to reach a total of 35,399. Most of the land area losses were due to a regular cleanup on OSgrid,Read More →

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Interested in taking a flight without worrying about the engine blowing out? You can now fly virtually, on an airplane filled with other passengers, on the Kea Nation enclave on the DigiWorldz grid. Kea Nation has brought in several airplanes recently, including the KNVV Douglas DC, which can carry up to 12Read More →

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The GreekLife grid has been around for eight years, but it has really started to take off in the last two, now reporting thousands of regions and active users. Now the grid owners are turning their experience running their own successful commercial grid into a service for other would-be gridRead More →

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OpenSim land area and users rose slightly this month, despite outages and maintenance on several grids. Atek was down for a while before later resuming, as was Virtuality Grid, while Kinky Grid also went under construction temporarily. Tangle Grid is currently still down for maintenance. And Gevolution was doing loadRead More →

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With sexism still strong in the gaming industry, a Europe-based 3D model marketplace is looking to create a welcoming place for women developers in the surging virtual reality industry. With almost as many women using virtual reality as men — 14 percent versus 20 percent, according to a study byRead More →

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Child avatars are a sensitive topic in virtual worlds. For some users, the presence of child avatars opens the possibility of inappropriate sexual roleplay, which is at best extremely creepy and, at worst, illegal. For other users, child avatars are a necessity for grids with an educational focus. And forRead More →

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This year’s Virtual World Best Practices in Education 2018 conference, which ended last week in Second Life, was shorter than last year — three days, instead of four — and attracted about 1,100 attendees, down from a high of around 4,500 in previous years. Attendance was up slightly over lastRead More →

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Blockchain — the technology powering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — is coming to virtual reality. Today, High Fidelity, the new VR platform from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, announced the launch of the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance, which is dedicated to using the blockchain to create an independent identity systemRead More →

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The Atek Grid has launched a new cryptocurrency, which will become the primary in-world currency, grid owner Frank Corsi told Hypergrid Business. The new currency, Dosh Coins, is based on blockchain technology. This is similar to the way Bitcoin works, except that its based on a slightly different cryptocurrency technology, EtheriumRead More →

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OpenSim land area continued to increase gaining a total of 3,400 standard region equivalents this month — after gaining more than 9,000 regions last month. The number of active users also increased by 1,300. OSgrid is still the biggest grid with a total of 20,203 standard region equivalents, followed byRead More →

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Sinespace, a virtual world platform from OpenSim co-founder Adam Frisby, launched its virtual reality beta last week for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.Read More →

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LSL Editor, software that helps users write scripts more easily for Second Life and OpenSim objects, has been updated with more support for OpenSim functions. With the new version 2.56, users can also create scripts that run other scripts, LSL Editor developer Frank Rulof told Hypergrid Business, and the testingRead More →

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US $8.50 for a 20,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled GeVolution grid, with a 14-day free trial. Private grids also available, at $150 for the first month and $125 a month after that.Read More →

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US $10 per month for a 20,000-prim residential region on the hypergrid-enabled Tranquility Virtual Grid. Varegions available, as well as Vivox voice and Gloebits currency.Read More →

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OpenSim active user numbers hit a new high of 34,908 users this month. Land area also went up and is now at the equivalent of 80,175 standard regions, reversing a couple of months of declines. However, it still falls short of the 88,225 regions last November. Much of the movement isRead More →

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The Sacrarium grid has taken down illegal content after receiving complains from users through emails and forums, and removed users who allegedly engaged in illegal behavior with child avatars. Neustadt, a region in Sacrarium grid and which was selling naked child avatars and had children avatars moving around naked, wearing BDSMRead More →

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[Editor’s note: Timothy Rogers has been a valued member of the OpenSim community since he launched SoftPaw Estates back in 2012. That evolved into the Zetamex OpenSim hosting company, which has been ranked as one of the top hosting providers since 2013 in our annual reader surveys and is the companyRead More →

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About a week ago, a social media post accused a region on the Kitely grid of distributing infringing content. Strictly speaking, any infringement complaint needs to be made by the original content creator, through official channels. That wasn’t the case here. It was a pseudonymous user, DMCA GridSkipper, claiming that the FashionistasRead More →

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Keng City will open a new museum on Wednesday, February 1 on the DigiWorldz grid to celebrate Black History Month. The museum will showcase African-American accomplishments and events throughout history starting with the slave trade to present day inventors and innovators. Although they will not exhibit everything owing to space limitationsRead More →

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OpenSim’s longest-running live music venue — Maritime Club Belfast — is celebrating its tenth anniversary this weekend. The party starts at the club location on OSgrid on Sunday, January 28, at 1 p.m. Pacific Time. The club is a virtual recreation of a blues club opened and run by Van Morrison in 1964 inRead More →

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OpenSim land area fell by the equivalent of  8,667 standard regions, and active users dropped by 3,473 due to combination of school holidays and fewer grids reporting stats than in the last couple of months. In addition to InWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, and The Adult Grid, other grids that did notRead More →

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This May, a major new regulation goes into effect — the European General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. It affects any company anywhere in the world that collects data on Europeans. And yes, that includes emails and IP addresses, and there’s no minimum company size required. If you’re an organized grid,Read More →

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The results of the 2018 OpenSim sentiment survey are in, and the responses are, in general more optimistic than pessimistic about OpenSim’s future, and in general planned to more active this year. Readers were nearly twice as optimistic as pessimistic about OpenSim — 48 percent said that they were optimisticRead More →

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Update: The Chamber of Commerce group mentioned in this article has been shut down, according to a source. Merchants on the closed, commercial InWorldz grid are concerned about perceived drop in users and commercial activity, and worry that the grid owners are no longer committed to the success of theRead More →

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One of my top sources of OpenSim-related news this year has been OpenSim Virtual and similar Google Plus communities. Many grids also have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but I find that Google Plus offers a really convenient way to keep track of what’s going on across the metaverse. So,Read More →

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One of the most important numbers in OpenSim is how many new people sign up for accounts each month. New people means new customers for merchants, new creators and performers who help improve quality of life on the grid, new people to interact with, and, of course, potential new landRead More →

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  YrGrid denies allegations that it is refusing redemptions in order to profit from the recent spike in Bitcoin prices. Instead, the problem is caused by their Bitcoin wallet service provider, said the grid, which is a Hong Kong-based commercial gambling-oriented grid with a Bitcoin-based virtual currency. Residents and users haveRead More →

Hypergrid Business Data December

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OpenSim’s public grids reached a new high in active users this month, as traffic went up more than 7 percent, or nearly 2,500 actives. There are now 34,881 active monthly users on the grids that report these figures. The OpenSim Community Conference last weekend accounted for 335 of the new actives,Read More →

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Second Life, with a much bigger economy than that of OpenSim, also has a much bigger problem with copyright infringement than OpenSim. For instance, copybotters have long been using specialized third party viewers to duplicate creators’ content and offer them for sale, lowering demand for the legitimate versions of theRead More →

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OpenSimulator’s core developers said that they’ve gone pretty much as far as they can with the server code, and what the project needs is new people — and a new viewer. “My own kids say that it looks ancient,” core developer Melanie Thielker said at the developer panel that kickedRead More →

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The OpenSimulator Community Conference opened this morning. This is the fifth year that AvaCon is running the conference, celebrating ten years of OpenSim. It is being live streamed on YouTube. From 7 to 8 a.m., Pacific time, the developers will discuss the latest 0.9 release of OpenSim. Panel members includeRead More →

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OpenSim hosting company Dreamland Metaverse received the highest scores for performance, support, stability and its user interface in this year’s hosting providers survey for the fourth year in a row, followed by  Zetamex Network, DigiWorldz and 3DLES. There were 36 responses total to this year’s hosting survey, which asks grid ownersRead More →

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The submission deadline for Tangle Grid‘s Winter Picture Contest has been extended to Sunday, December 17 following an outage that saw the grid offline for more than a week. The previous deadline was December 1. The grid came back up yesterday after a series of technical issues that included aRead More →

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If you are a 360-degree photographer, or want to become one, then working with Google Street View and becoming one of their Trusted Photographers will definitely help establish credibility in the industry. In fact, Google actually helps their contributors get hired to create virtual tours. According to Google, market research conductedRead More →

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First, I’d like to apologize. I first noticed that Zetamex had posted its OpenSim hosting prices over the summer, and meant to do a story then, even contacting the company and some of its customers for quotes. But then a family medical emergency happened, and I’ve spent much of theRead More →

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Apple has lagged behind in the virtual and augmented reality race so far. Their phones can be used for some low-end VR, via the Cardboard platform from Google, but they haven’t had anything of their own to match the higher-end Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream View headsets. Its latestRead More →

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Phantom limb pain can be debilitating but is often treatable with mirror therapy, which tricks the brain into thinking the amputated limb is still there. Now the same treatment is available as a virtual reality app, which offers a more efficient, effective, and engaging way to get the therapy, accordingRead More →

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Millions of people have already played Sea Hero Quest on the mobile phones — and helped scientists learn how people find their way around in order to better treat dementia patients. Now the game is also available in virtual reality, for Samsung Gear VR users. Sea Hero Quest VR wasRead More →

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Oncomfort, a startup based in Houston, Texas is helping patients diagnosed with cancer manage their anxiety through virtual reality. Oncomfort helps patients deal not only with their anxiety, pain management and stress but also provide information about their medical journey. To pursue its goal, the company has already launched fiveRead More →

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Grids are getting an early start on the holidays this year, with a number of winter-themed regions already up and ready to visit, and a full calendar of events planned across the hypergrid. Skiing and Winter Expo in Tangle Grid This year’s Tangle Winter Expo will run from December 1 toRead More →

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OpenSim land area grew by the equivalent of 3,905 standard regions last month, a new record high of 88,225 regions. This was despite the fact that several large grids have stopped publishing land area stats, including InWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, and The Adult Grid. The biggest gainer was OSgrid which addedRead More →

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Although many creators do not speak up, theft and illegal distribution of their content is hurting their morale and creativity, and may even be driving some out of OpenSim altogether. One creator of mesh avatars, who did not want to be named, saw her products distributed full perms across multipleRead More →

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With all the latest news headlines about sexual harassment, Los Angeles based startup Vantage Point thinks it can make a difference with virtual reality. The company has developed a training program aimed at universities and corporations, and is now looking for funding to build a virtual reality experience around it. The crowdfundingRead More →

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More than 400 responses came in for this year’s Eighth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and Littlefield received the highest overall scores, followed by AllCity, Virtual Brasil, and DigiWorldz. DigiWorldz also had the largest number of readers who said it was their primary grid, followed by Kitely. This is the second year inRead More →

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The total land area of the public OpenSim grids fell by more than 1,000 regions this month as ZanGrid shut down and Genesis Metaverse moved its hosting. Total active users numbers continued to rise, however, with about 2,000 new actives. Zangrid, which had 439 regions as of last month, is closingRead More →

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There is a lot you can do or a lot of places you can travel to in-world during this Halloween festive period, with many OpenSim grids running Halloween-related events such as hunts and parties, some grids having Halloween related islands and regions where they are celebrating OpenSim builds and hostingRead More →

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Tangle Grid is hosting the Halloween Expo starting this Sunday, October 15 at the Expo Isle region where different creators from all around OpenSim will come show off, sell and promote their Halloween-related items to visitors. It will be the fourth time that the grid is running the event, whichRead More →

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As anyone with an innovative idea has probably discovered, a great idea can only go so far without support, and when it comes to creating music content in the virtual reality space two key questions often arise: How to convince the music industry to support productions and how to keepRead More →

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One of  oldest commercial OpenSim grids is shutting down at the end of this month. ZanGrid was founded five years ago as Zandramas grid, and is one of the top 25 grids by both popularity and land area. Last month, the grid reported 351 active users and the land area equivalentRead More →

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Barely a year after Genesis Metaverse stopped hosting its own grid infrastructure and moved to hosting services from DigiWorldz, the grid has decided to go it on its own again, according to a post. The move was not due to financial problems with DigiWorldz because it has paid for the service inRead More →

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Gloebit has built, tested and proposed to Firestorm viewer team, a patch that, if implemented, will bring multi-currency support in OpenSim and eliminate the need for Gloebit users to do complicated coding and configuration for their grids and regions to support various money modules. With the current viewer implementation, theRead More →

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OSgrid, OpenSim’s largest and oldest virtual world, launched a fundraising campaign today. The OSgrid Carnival Fundraiser kicked off today at 10 a.m. Pacific and will run until 10 p.m. Pacific today on the grid’s Event Plaza region. It will continue from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific on Saturday at the same venue andRead More →

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AviWorlds is back online after owner Alexsandro Pomposelli put aside his differences with SkyLife owner Josh Boam. The two had an acrimonious dispute last year after AviWorlds went down due to server issues and other problems. “I always found Josh to be a very smart person and never doubted his knowledge andRead More →

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This year’s AvatarFest, an annual celebration of OpenSim creativity, opens its doors this Saturday, September 23, at noon Pacific time. The third annual festival begins with two days of entertainment this weekend, followed by a 30-day-long exhibition. The event is hypergrid-accessible, at avatarfest.net:6000, and will features singers, poets and DJs fromRead More →

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This year’s OpenSimulator Community Conference will be held on Dec. 9 and 10, and applications for volunteers and presenters are now open. Organized as a joint production by core developers of OpenSimulator and AvaCon, this year’s conference will focus on the latest software release, visions for the future, and technologies or contentRead More →

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OpenSim’s public grids gained 2,546 active users this month, and land area increased as well, by the equivalent of 2,475 standard region. OSgrid gained the largest land area — 4,440 new standard region equivalents, followed by DigiWorldz with 848, Virtual Worlds Grid with 441, Kitely with 411 and Atek Grid with 256Read More →