AltspaceVR social platform launches open beta
AltspaceVR’s social virtual reality platform is now open to all, the company announced at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference today. The company offers a proprietary cloud-based platform for holding virtual meetings in which users can meet, talk, wave their hands, and share videos and other Web-based content. There’s aRead More →
Watch early sessions from virtual reality conference
The second annual Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference and Expo started this morning, and the first video footage is up. The presentations start at the 42 minute mark with opening remarks by “Cymatic” Bruce Wooden of AltSpaceVR and conference organizer Karl Krantz, who is also the founder of the escVR virtual realityRead More →
5 tips to spark desire for your products
There’s a well used adage, “sex sells.†It’s a bit of a cliche but true. There are many other sales triggers of course, including fear — used a lot by insurance companies, hope — used by lotteries, and vanity — used by beauty and cosmetics firms. The list is endless. However, theyRead More →
Users, regions grow on the hypergrid
OpenSim’s land area and active users hit new record highs this month. Land area passed 4,000 square kilometers for the first time, and 60,000 regions, while active users crossed the 32,000 mark. At 4,015 square kilometers, OpenSim’s public grids added together are now bigger than the state of Rhode Island.Read More →
5 aspects of education about to be transformed by virtual reality
In response to a Quora question, here are five main ways that education will be affected by virtual reality. 1. The ‘Magic Schoolbus’ Virtual reality will allow teachers to take students on guided virtual field trips to foreign locations, to historic events, or to witnesses processes too small, too big,Read More →
Kitely Market’s hypergrid listings grew 50 times as fast as other items
The Kitely Market gained more than 400 new item listings this month — only seven of which were restricted to local purchasers on the Kitely grid. That means that exportable items grew 57 times faster than non-exportables. The exportable items were available for delivery to any hypergrid-enabled grid except Littlefield, and alsoRead More →
3D pen hits funding goal in one day
A stylus designed to be used as an input device in virtual environments reached its $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal in less than a day this week. The Phree stylus from Tel Aviv-based OTM Technologies Ltd. can be used as a virtual pen that writes on any surface and could potentially beRead More →
Doctors can now practice prostatectomies virtually
3D Systems has released the very first virtual reality robotic prostatectomy simulation training, created to assist in the education and planning of robotic surgical procedures. “Individualized patient-specific soft tissue 3D printing allows surgeons and trainees the opportunity to operate on a model that looks and feels just like their patient’s kidneyRead More →
Virtual Life connects with Kitely Market, Podex currency exchange
Residents on the Virtual Life grid can now make purchases on the Kitely Market, the grid announced today. “Virtual Life users will be able to purchase items on the Kitely Market and have them delivered to any region,” said grid founder and CEO Keith Sparkman. “This means that Virtual LifeRead More →
Vote now in the Mobile VR Jam
More than 300 entrants are competing for more than $1 million in prizes in the Oculus’ Mobile VR Jam 2015 — and voting for the Community Choice prizes began yesterday, and will continue through May 26. Submissions include 184 games and 124 apps or experiences. One of the more visually compellingRead More →
Survey: virtual sex less fun, but more liberated
According to a new survey of 267 Second Life residents, two-thirds found virtual sex to be less fun than real sex. However, despite being less fun, three quarters said that they still wished that their real-life sex was more like that in the virtual world. Some reasons could be thatRead More →
Sony leads virtual reality patent race
Sony is currently leading the virtual reality patent race, according to a new report from Houston-based patent consulting firm LexInnova, According to the firm’s analysis of nearly 12,000 patents or patent applications, Sony has 366 virtual reality patents or patent applications. Microsoft is close behind, with 365, followed by Samsung withRead More →
I’ll be at SVVR next week
The second annual Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference is next week, and I’ll be there, representing both Women in Virtual Reality and Hypergrid Business. If any other readers are coming, I’d love to meet up with you. I’m flying in on Saturday night, and have all of Sunday open. InRead More →
InWorlds reveals community support efforts
Some OpenSim users have complained that closed grids — especially InWorlds, the largest closed grid of them all — do not contribute enough back to the community. Today, InWorldz co-founder and CTO David Daeschler made a strong case that InWorldz does much more than market OpenSim effectively to newcomers. (Though that,Read More →
NextReality, Pillars of Mist closing this month
The owners of the Next Reality and Pillars of Mist OpenSim grids have announced that the two virtual worlds are closing this month. “It pains me to have to say this, but from the 15th May 2015 The Next Reality Grid will be going offline,” said grid owner Mike Hart inRead More →
Oculus announces Q1 2016 shipping date
Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets will begins shipping in the first quarter of 2016, the company announced today. Pre-orders will begin later this year. “In the weeks ahead, we’ll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift,”Read More →
SLGo replacement Bright Canopy supports OpenSim
Bright Canopy, a cloud-based replacement to SLGo, will support OpenSim from day one, according to the founders. SLGo, operated by OnLive, was discontinued at the end of April when the company was acquired by Sony. It was the only service that allowed people to log into Second Life or OpenSim with aRead More →
Adult Metaverse continues growth streak
The Adult Metaverse community on Google Plus was against the fastest-growing OpenSim community last month, gaining 101 new members for a new total of 691 users. OpenSim Virtual was in second place, with 81 new members for a new total of 1,351. This meant that OpenSim Virtual comfortably retained its placeRead More →
New Firestorm release offers fixes, interface improvements
The Firestorm viewer — by far the most popular viewer in both Second Life and OpenSim — has a new release out, with a very long list of bug fixes and interface improvements. After removing the previous version of the viewer from your computer, you can download the new versionRead More →
Time running out on Kitely metered regions
Kitely‘s pricing options have long been a confusing mess for customers, with people having trouble understanding their metered billing in particular. To address this issue, Kitely first rolled out flat-rate regions back in 2012, but the various pricing options just confused customers more. It didn’t help that Kitely was theRead More →
Two shortcuts to a career in virtual fashion
Is there a particular kind of virtual content you need, and can’t find — and are seriously considering making yourself? For example, my time in virtual worlds is all spent working — mostly, attending business meetings, hosting shows, interviewing people. I like to wear skirts when I do this, but most skirtsRead More →
Kitely residents can now change megaregion sizes
Kitely users on a flat-rate plan can now change the size of their megaregions for free via the Web interface. Those on premium plans have a fee of 150 KC, or about $0.75, to resize their megaregions. Kitely offers several flat-rate megaregion plans. For around $50 a month, customers getRead More →
Content in peril at one-man shops
One-man — and one-woman — shops are putting content in danger across the metaverse. Documentation, code, virtual content, even entire grids are at risk when it’s just one person running the project. Radegast, METAbolt and LibOpenMetaverse One of the key foundations of OpenSim is LibOpenMetaverse — originally LibSecondLife — whichRead More →
Fest’Avi participation deadline is in two weeks
Creators have until May 15 to sign up to participate in FrancoGrid‘s second annual Fest’Avi competition. The competition is open to creators, audience, photographers, and machinimists from any grid. The content submitted to the competition will be made available to the public under a Creative Commons license. Read the full rulesRead More →
CasperTech leaves METAbolt
UK-based CasperTech Ltd., has stopped working on the development of the text-only METAbolt viewer, company director Casper Warden announced recently. “We have been asked to cease using the METAbolt brand with immediate effect, due to a political disagreement with the original creator,” he wrote. “With no maintainer, it appears that METAboltRead More →
VizMove a virtual business holodeck
Press release: WorldViz Introduces VizMove: The Industry’s First Out-of-the-Box Virtual Reality Solution for the Enterprise New end-to-end VR solution featuring Vizard 5.1 provides seamless set of tools for portable virtual reality SANTA BARBARA, Calif.  – WorldViz, the company that powers virtual reality, today announced VizMove, the industry’s first out-of-the-box wide-area-walkingRead More →
3 ways VR helps science education
Over the past few years, education—from the elementary to the post-secondary level—has started to put much greater emphasis on the STEM fields, that is, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The reason for this is the growing recognition of the importance of STEM in modern digital society, and the predicted increaseRead More →
Phototools tips for Firestorm
I’ve been taking a lot of snapshots of regions for Hyperica listings and have been experimenting with the Phototools feature in the Firestorm viewer. The Phototools feature allows you to pep up your snapshots and make them look gorgeous. To access some of the Phototools features quickly, at the bottomRead More →
29 fun VR apps for the iPhone
I’m extremely sad that we don’t yet have a virtual reality OpenSim viewer for the iPhone. (If you’re new to this blog, check out What is OpenSim?) But that doesn’t mean that we iPhone users can’t explore virtual reality at all. I recently bought a Google Cardboard headset — one ofRead More →
We apologize for the viewing issues
The pages of this site have been loading up in the mobile style rather than the desktop view . It’s happening for everybody, and I appreciate the problem, and thank people for letting me know. So I know it’s not just me, or just one particular browser or computer setup.Read More →
Kokua update released
An new version of the Kokua viewer was released yesterday, with updates from the Second Life and the Restrained Love viewers. There are also fixes for in-world Flash playback, upload fees, and other bugs. See the release notes for full details. According to a recent analysis of hypergrid traffic, the KokuaRead More →
We pass 2,000 posts milestone
It’s busy week. So busy, that I almost didn’t even notice when post number 2,000 went up – CloudServe shifts to wholesale market. Hypergrid Business first went live in March with the post The future of the Internet is coming on. Since then, we’ve averaged 32 posts per month, or a little bitRead More →
Samsung Gear VR for Galaxy S6 coming next month
You will be able to pre-order the Samsung Gear VR headset for the Galaxy S6 smartphone tomorrow, and it is due in stores on May 15. The Galaxy Note 4 version of Gear VRÂ has been available since December for around $200. Read more about it at PCMag.Read More →
Crooks steal $126,000 from Avination grid
Avination, a closed commercial grid, announced a switch to a new currency yesterday, as a result of a previous theft of $126,000 from the grid. Back in the summer of 2011, crooks stole a bunch of US credit card numbers and used them to buy $126,000 worth of Avination’s C$Read More →
CloudServe shifts to wholesale market
CloudServe, which originally launched as a low-cost OpenSim region hosting provider, has shifted to serving the wholesale market instead. Instead of selling regions to individuals, the company now focuses on serving grid owners and land resellers. “We have been for a while,” said Frank Corsi, the company’s chief technology officer. OneRead More →
5 mistakes of renting cheap OpenSim land
There’s never been a better time to stock up on low-cost OpenSim land. Sure, you can run regions or mini-grids at home for free, but then you’re responsible for all your own tech support, backups, and upgrades — and the number of visitors is limited to what you home connectionRead More →
Researchers study virtual invisibility
In a paper released today, neuroscientists from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet have used virtual reality to find out how people feel when they think their body is invisible. “This experience affects bodily self-perception and social cognition,” the authors wrote. A person was primed to think they’re invisible by wearing a virtual reality headset,Read More →
CyberVille 2.0 enables self-learning networks
Press Release: CyberLightning Charts Path to Intelligent Internet of Everything With New Release of CyberVille Platform CyberVille 2.0 Enhances Smart-Node to Cloud Scalability, Establishes Basis for Self-Learning Industrial IoT Networks Espoo, Finland – CyberLightning Ltd. today announced release 2.0 of the CyberVille software platform, which provides a “see it atRead More →
AltspaceVR solves nausea challenge
I’ve gotten a little wary of trying new virtual reality applications because some of the best ones, graphically, do the nastiest job on my stomach. There was that one swimming-with-sharks simulations that made me seasick, that I still remember well. AltspaceVR has figured out how to put people in aRead More →
Where to get cheap regions now
Since last September, the lowest-price regions in the metaverse were on the Great Canadian Grid. But their $5 region pricing is coming to an end. You can still get a 15,000-prim region, with no limit on visitors, for just CAD $5 — that’s around $4 in US dollars — butRead More →
AviWorlds vs. AviWorlds battle rages
One grid was not enough to hold all the drama that is AviWorlds — so now we have two. And they are at war. In one corner, there’s Alexandro Pomposelli’s AviWorlds grid, at aviworlds.us, with 61 regions and 83 active users. In the other corner, there’s Mike Hart’s AviWorlds grid,Read More →
OSgrid lost new content last month
OSgrid lost a chunk of new inventory items over the course of this past month, but the problem doesn’t affect other grids. “It appears that for the last month or so, the asset server was unable to write assets to the database,” OSgrid administrator Allen Kerensky said in yesterday’s announcement. The grid hasRead More →
5 marketing tips for freebie designers
There are many reasons to go into the freebie business on OpenSim: Create brand-name recognition for yourself as a designer in order to sell premium content Create brand-name recognition in order to do custom work To attract people to your grid, community, role playing group, casino, or event venue To helpRead More →
New destination guide for grids
There is a new destination guide available for any hypergrid-enabled grid: Hyperica Destination Guide. To add the Hyperica Destination Guide as the default guide for your grid, simply edit your Robust.ini or Robust.HG.ini file. In the “[LoginService]” section there is a “DestinationGuide†parameter which can be used to communicate aRead More →
DigiWorldz
$15 a month for a 16,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled DigiWorldz grid, no setup fee. Private grid hosting also available on request.Read More →
Regions, grids hit new record highs
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 →
View OpenSim builds with Google Cardboard
As anyone with experience in OpenSim knows perhaps the biggest barrier to having the general public view your work is the requirement to download a viewer and the complexity of using it once you have it downloaded. Google Cardboard is a device that turns smartphones into stereoscopic, 3D viewers. UsingRead More →
Kitely market passes 8,000 items
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 →
Virtual reality helps patients relax
Press release: Improve Patient Care with Virtual Reality Mindfulness GLEN ELLYN, Ill. – Cubicle Ninjas‘ relaxing virtual reality application for the Oculus Rift, Guided Meditation VR allows patients to experience an exotic vacation, wherever and whenever they choose. The Beta demo app has surpassed 25,000 downloads and is already helping improve the overallRead More →
Clouds, camera puzzle this first-time user
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 →