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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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US$9.95 for a 20,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Panthera Grid. Larger sizes also available.

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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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US $8.95 a month for a 20,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Virtuality Grid.

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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 →

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If you’ve been keeping up with media based content marketing — and hopefully you have — then you know the current trend is to publish and share immersive, 360-degree videos. While a 360-degree video is playing, you can pan the camera view to see the entire area, hence the “360-degree”Read More →

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Several OpenSim grids using a Florida-based data center for their hosting have been able to stay up during Hurricane Irma with the help of backup generators. The grids include DigiWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, Genesis Metaverse, The Encore Escape, 3rd Rock Grid and Baller Nation, DigiWorldz founder Terry Ford said in anRead More →

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Franco grid is calling on as many OpenSim creators as possible to submit their avatar creations for the fourth annual Festi’Avi 2017 event before the deadline at the end of September. The event is hypergrid-enabled and open to residents of all grids. Creators willing to participate can send an in-world noteRead More →

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Virtual reality can breathe new life into old games, says video game expert Patrick Soulliere. And Soulliere knows about games — he’s organized more than 100 online e-sports tournaments for Micron Technology that feature many professional gamers and has managed a full time professional gaming team at Stellar Lotus forRead More →

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[Editor’s note: In this opinion column, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner is responding to High Fidelity’s content protection plan, which uses the same blockchain technology as that which powers Bitcoin. Tochner previously managed an identity rights protection company, IDChoice, and worked in Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the NSA.] First, I’d likeRead More →

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Educators are using virtual worlds, but not in the way they had used them in the past, and not in the same numbers. What you see now is a more selective and targeted use by a smaller subset of the educational community, primarily higher education. Those groups that still useRead More →

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OpenSim’s public grids gained nearly 1,500 regions this month despite the summer season, but total active numbers were down by just over 1,700. The 257 currently active grids reported a record high area, totaling the equivalent of 83,190 standard regions. The biggest land gainer this month was Atek Grid withRead More →

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AltspaceVR, a social virtual reality platform, has come back from the dead. A couple of weeks ago, the company announced that it was shutting down because it ran out of funding. Today, it announced that it’s not closing down after all, thanks to overwhelming support from the public. “Thanks toRead More →

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Educators are souring on virtual worlds, as evidenced by declining participation in online forums, in virtual conference attendances and education-related destinations on the Second Life grid. For example, Second Life Educators, the forum for educational organizations and educational use of Second Life, shows a dramatic decline in the number ofRead More →

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SineSpace — formerly known as just Space — will hold a summer festival this coming weekend, August 19 and 20. The festival will include contests, live music, carnival games, a roller-coaster, movies, fireworks, and tours of the platform. SineSpace is a browser-based virtual world created by Adam Frisby, one ofRead More →

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As you folks know, I’ve been struggling with collecting all the stats from all the grids every month, and, earlier this year, have almost fully automated the process, using an extremely jury-rigged Filemaker script. Today, I accidentally stumbled on the fact that Google Spread can be used to do theRead More →

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Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform is currently my favorite. It’s built into the next generation of the Android operating system, and headsets cost under $100, making it widely accessible. And the platform’s motion controller is fun to use. Plus, the apps are a lot cheaper than those for higher-end platformsRead More →

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The Island Oasis grid now has a new owner, and has been offline since Monday while the servers are being moved to their new location. The grid is expected to be back up on Friday, according to the official announcement. The new owner’s name has not yet been announced. Former owner andRead More →

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It can be hard to keep up with all the new virtual reality apps coming out. But, if you’re just starting out, it can be equally hard to find good ones to start with. Here are my favorite resources. Best review website: WeArVR Every tech pub, including Hypergrid Business, willRead More →

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Last night, I wanted to try out the  VR Spaceship VR app for Android on my Pixel phone with my Daydream View headset. Unfortunately, VR Spaceship is an older, Cardboard-compatible app, not a Daydream app, and I kept getting a warning message: I got the warning message as soon as I startedRead More →

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If you’re using a default avatar that comes with some versions of OpenSim, your name might wind up on copybotted content without you knowing about it. That’s just what happened to a user known as “Gemini Fullmoon,” a resident of the Great Canadian Grid. Fullmoon is also the owner of the FullRead More →

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AvatarFest, which will showcase and celebrate non-commercial builds from talented OpenSim creators, will take place on September 23 and 24. Many exhibitors have submitted their applications but those who have not and are still willing to exhibit are invited to submit the applications by filling a form on or byRead More →

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Eight year ago, when I first launched Hypergrid Business, virtual worlds offered a unique set of compelling features. There was presence, and immersion, and the ability to create your own virtual environments. Plus, they also had other benefits that, combined with the unique features, created a potentially world-changing technology platform.Read More →

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Starting your own grid isn’t easy. You need your own servers, membership website, plus, of course, residents. Plus, if you want an in-world economy, you have to put payments in place. There are hosting providers, like DigiWorldz and Dreamland Metaverse, that will do all of this, but it takes quiteRead More →

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AltspaceVR will close its doors next Thursday, August 3, because it ran out of money. “We can’t afford to keep the virtual lights on anymore,” the company said in a note posted last night. I’ve been writing about the company since it released its first closed beta in early 2015,Read More →

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The first set of Daydream View clones have hit the market, and I just got one of them in the mail – the BoboVR Z5. Disclosure: I received the BoboVR Z5 free from GeekBuying, where it currently sells for $60. Bottom line: The big pluses are that the field of viewRead More →

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The total reported land area of OpenSim’s public grids has passed 80,000 regions — a record high. This is despite the fact that InWorldz, the most popular OpenSim grid, did not report its land area this month. The total number of registered users went up by 9,764, and even the numberRead More →

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If you have a unused balance in your ZanGrid virtual currency account, the grid is suggesting that you donate it for War Child charity to help children and people affected by war. The grid is conducting a fundraising campaign for the charity, which will last through September 1, and has created aRead More →

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  3rdLife grid will be hosting it is first year birthday on Friday, July 14 on its Amusement Park region, featuring live music and DJs. The following is the schedule for the day. 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.: DJ Shayna Wulluf (The wolf Lady) 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.: DJRead More →

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On Tuesday, David Kariuki’s article about a freebie store that distributed content that was “found and collected” on other grids — without any checks that the content was legal — drew some comments from people who defended the practice. Let’s put aside the main issue, that infringing content opens theRead More →

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The first meeting of the Hypergrid Chamber of Commerce will be at 11 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, July 21 and several major players in the OpenSim economy have officially joined as members, including Gloebit, Podex, and Kitely. Another early supporter is GamesCredit, which offers cryptocurrency-based in-game payments. The group plans to work on standards forRead More →

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Lost World grid is offering avatar make over freebies such as custom shapes, skins, hairs and clothes that have been collected from around OpenSim, all for free. However, the grid cannot confirm the origins or the license terms of some of this content. The items are available at Body ShopRead More →

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Amazon is going all out today with deals on virtual reality products, running the whole gamut of headset options, computers, and accessories. If you’ve been waiting to get into VR until you see a good deal, this is a good day for you. For extra bang for your buck, makeRead More →

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After trying several business models with fail and shutting down and reopening several times thus earning the name “the yo-yo grid,” AviWorlds is back online. This time, it’s a closed grid, meaning people will not be able to teleport to other grids or easily take their content to other grids —Read More →

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WorldViz virtual reality solutions are being used in a variety of ways in learning institutions, from enhancing virtual learning and collaboration, boosting academic research, studying human and behavioral interactions, to enhancing student language and culture. The company provides motion tracking virtual reality systems and custom virtual reality application development forRead More →

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It’s taken me a while to write this review, because I’ve been out of town and caught up with various other issues. So, my apologies to HelloPro, who sent me this headset more than two months ago. Sorry, guys! Now, I personally don’t like viewers with built-in headphones, and wasRead More →

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Public OpenSim grids gained the equivalent of 1,257 regions this month, while the number of active users rose by 511, after falling for the past three months in a row. Great Canadian Grid, InWorldz and The Adult Grid did not provide full data this data, as was the case theRead More →

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Low-cost virtual reality viewers — some made out of cardboard — are a minimal investment from consumer standpoint or from a company who would like to distribute their virtual reality experiences themselves. A user already has the hardware in the pocket, because the only other thing you need to doRead More →

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Last September, I looked at the land prices on all the public OpenSim grids, and the average price was $20.39 per standard region. Today, I reviewed the prices of all 55 grids that I know of that post their prices, and the average has fallen slightly to $19.22. The medianRead More →

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US $11 (10 Euro) per month for a 15,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled ZetaWorlds grid.

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US $45 (40 Euros) for a 15,000-prim region on the Rev World grid that can hold up to 100 visitors. No hypergrid.

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US $11 (CAD $15) with no setup fee for a 15,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Great Canadian Grid.

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I occasionally get emails from people starting new OpenSim grids, and wondering how they’re going to pay for them. Here are the top five ways that OpenSim grids find success. 1. Commercial grids These are the best-known grids, typically because they put the most time and resources into sales andRead More →

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Last week’s lawsuit against UploadVR is a reminder to the emerging virtual reality industry that it needs to pay more attention to being more inclusive and welcoming to women. This is an issue endemic to the entire tech industry, but is particularly critical in VR because this sector is inRead More →

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OpenSim lost land area and active users this month — on paper, at least — as one large commercial grid did not report its stats this month, and another grid suffered an outage. The total OpenSim land area fell by 442 regions this month, to reach 72,978 standard region equivalents. ThisRead More →

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AviWorlds is coming back — again — with a brand-new business model and a brand-new technology partner. Since early 2011, owner Alexsandro Pomposelli has experimented with being the most expensive grid, and with offering land for free. He tried to have the grid hosted with Dreamland Metaverse, with Zetamex, with Kitely, and, most recently, withRead More →

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Neverworld Grid has opened a fashion center, a group of hypergrid-enabled regions for avatar fashion and fashion shows where designers can showcase and sell items to both local residents and hypergrid visitors. There are also freebies available. The name of the main region is Design Couture, and it offers aRead More →

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Genesis Metaverse, a commercial grid that emerged last fall from the collapse of Avi-Labs, has been having problems with its currency vendor, Podex, and took the dispute public today. For residents, this means that they will now buy and sell their currency directly from the grid and not from Podex,Read More →

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Today, I got another submission for a free ad that was basically just the grid’s name. And I regularly talk to grid owners who try to tell me that their grid is special because of its community, and to attract residents they offer low-cost land and free user accounts. HavingRead More →

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The Great Canadian Grid will host its first annual Art Fest at 10:00 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, April 29 and Sunday, April 30 at the RR Estates regions. It will feature display of art, photography, poetry and stories from talented artists around OpenSim, and the grid hopes to have the showRead More →

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The Google Plus community OpenSim Everything gained 131 new members since last September, bringing it to a total of 506 members. It was the single biggest gainer of the OpenSim-specific communities we follow. However, more people could be visiting the community without becoming official members. OpenSim Virtual remains the largestRead More →

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All approved Gloebits merchants can now, from Saturday, withdraw their in-world proceeds through PayPal. The cash-out limit of 5,000 Gloebits is also going up, based on the merchant’s transaction history and level of identity verification. Cash-out limits will continue to rise in the future, Gloebits CEO Christopher Colosi told Hypergrid Business.  “As timeRead More →

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Key OpenSim stats fell this month, as two popular grids — InWorldz and The Adult Grid — opted not to report their total land area or their active users. InWorldz has been the most popular grid every month from 2012 on, and had 5,276 active users last month. However, bothRead More →

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If you’re a fan of Torben Asp — and you probably are, as he’s one of OpenSim’s favorite performers — and you live or visit the US east coast, you might now be able to catch him performing live, in person. “The move to the USA is to pursue a real lifeRead More →

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On the back of a new free land offer marketing campaign, Island Oasis gained 603 new registered users this past month, nearly twice as many as in March. This was the highest number of new registrations since the grid first launched in 2011. The grid offers free parcels of 4,896 square meters each withRead More →

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DigiWorldz has bought VirTec this week and will resume normal business in two weeks when the vending machines will be running on DigiWorldz  servers and be deployed to other grids. This comes after VirTec’s previous owner Virtouse Lilienthal announced last week that he would stop selling new products to new gridsRead More →