Mal, Maria and Tara are joined by Petlove Petshop and Cinders Vale for wide ranging discussion, including reflections on Relay for Life in Second Life, changes in the Terms of Service, the eighth closing of AviWorldz, the falling price of land in OpenSim and the latest improvements in OpenSim metrics.Read More →

The biggest choice every new grid makes is whether to enable hypergrid or not. Every single grid up until now has opted for either yes, no, or sometimes. Newly-launched Exo-Life, however, has picked a different path. It is on the hypergrid, but connects only to eight other grids. Currently, of theRead More →

The total number of regions on OpenSim’s 40 largest grids fell for the second month in a row, only the second time this has happened since we started keeping track in mid 2009. The major reason for the loss is the closure of ScienceSim, an Intel-backed research grid that hadRead More →

There are many reasons why I believe that virtual worlds are not dead, dying or disappearing. In fact, I believe that they are gaining momentum and are becoming more and more impactful as the technology gets better and more real world business cases are indicating the value of these environments,Read More →

Zoe, a prototype AI bot, lives in her own house on OpenSim. (Image courtesy David Burden.)

[Editor: Recent OpenSim upgrades have substantially expanded support for NPCs — non-player characters — also known as bots or AIs. NPCs are typically used in games, as enemies for players to defeat, or characters who help the players in their quests. However, they are also increasingly being used for business.]Read More →

Press Release: PPD and ProtonMedia Win 2011 Microsoft Life Sciences Innovation Award Microsoft recognizes ProtonMedia for the second consecutive year for its innovation in life sciences with its ProtoSphere virtual collaboration technology LANSDALE, Pa. – Microsoft Corp. has named PPD, Inc. and ProtonMedia winners of a Microsoft 2011 Life Sciences Innovation Award, recognizing their innovative useRead More →

I’m ending it. Beset by criticism on all sides — okay, just one side — I am officially going cold turkey on “real life.” The phrase, that is, not the living itself. I’ve never been a big fan of the wording “in real life,” but haven’t noticed to what extentRead More →

A nice starting collection of free skins, hair and textures for OpenSim and Second Life users, all original creations.Read More →

Jon Brouchoud designs virtual environments, 3D experiences and serious game applications in Unity3D, Second Life and OpenSim.Read More →

Manpower Inc., a world leader in the employment services industry, will host a provocative hourlong discussion, “The Evolution of the Virtual Workforce” on Tuesday, September 1 at 11am ET in the virtual world of Second Life.Read More →

The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 133,076 standard regions this month, an all-time high — and the third month in a row that OpenSim land area has broken records. There was an increase of 1,196 standard region equivalents compared to last month. Meanwhile, theRead More →

The seventeenth annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference, beginning on Thursday, March 14, 2024, will be an online distributed conference happening in multiple virtual spaces. This conference focuses on the use of immersive virtual environments for educational purposes including virtual and augmented reality. This year we are returningRead More →

The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 131,880 standard regions this month, an all-time high, with an increase of 369 standard regions compared to last month. Meanwhile, the total number of registered users went up by more than 2,100 and the number of active usersRead More →

The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 131,511 standard regions this month, an all-time high, on an increase of more than 1,000 standard regions compared to last month. However, the total number of active users went down by over 3,500. Part of the decrease wasRead More →

As usual this time of year, activity on OpenSim grids is up as people spend more time inside on the computer, and grids ramp up for holiday events. Compared to last month, the number of active users is up by nearly 1,700. The total land area is down, however, byRead More →

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

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

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

OpenSim grid stats decreased by 1,347  active users and 131 regions this month compared to last month’s tally due to several grids suffering outages or not publishing their statistics this month. For example, New Life Italy did not report its active user stats this month — it had over 400Read More →

New research reports and surveys released this month show that interest in virtual and augmented reality is continuing to drop. According to an EY Consulting survey released earlier this month, only 24 percent of people said their company has started using VR and AR technologies, putting it in last placeRead More →

The public OpenSim grids reported over 2,600 new active users this month, the biggest increase since last fall. The total land area also hit a record high, of 125,841 standard region equivalents. All of the growth has been on hypergrid-enabled grids. In fact, there were only 499 active users reported byRead More →

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

The size of OpenSim virtual land just got bigger this month by an additional 996 standard-size regions even as the number of active users dropped by 991, mostly likely due to normal seasonal variations. OpenSim also added close to 3,000 new registered users this month, reversing the hefty loss ofRead More →

Florida-based Avalon Corp. has raised $13 million to build a platform for games capable of taking advantage of the metaverse, featuring a universe of interoperable worlds with various intellectual properties, to be built using technologies including blockchain and game engines. According to the press release, Avalon Corp is uniquely experiencedRead More →

Hi, everyone. This is me, Maria, your friendly local technology reporter and blog editor. You might know me from such things as my annual OpenSim stats presentations at the OpenSimulator Community Conference, my various attempts to run an OpenSim grid on my home computer, or the fact that, since 2009,Read More →

OpenSim added 2,061 active users this past month, hitting a new record high of 47,169 unique monthly users. Some of the increase could be due to the recently-concluded OpenSimulator Community Conference , or due to the fact that people are home from work or school for the holidays, and haveRead More →

On Nov. 30, OpenAI released a beta of its ChatGPT chatbot to the public — for free. It is currently, hands-down, the best text and code generator out there. Within the first six days, more than a million people signed up to use it. They’re using it to write workingRead More →