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An industry group and individual vendors are working to fix the problem of incompatibility across multiple virtual reality content hosting, distribution and advertising platforms. Currently, advertisers, publishers and brands often have to create native applications for each of the platforms to distribute and monetize content to as large audience asRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids reached a new high of active users, 35,692, an increase of more than 2,000 since this time last month. The 2016 OpenSim Community Conference was responsible for about a quarter of the increase, but many other grids also saw gains. The total number of registered usersRead More →

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If you missed the panels from last weekend’s OpenSim Community Conference, you can now catch up with some of them on YouTube. OpenSimulator Core Developer Panel A discussion of key issues facing OpenSim developers, with Avacon founder Joyce Bettencourt, OpenSimulator core developer Robert Adams, core developer Michael Cerquoni, OpenSim core developer andRead More →

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Kitely Market sales have increased significantly over the past year, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. The market now delivers licensed OpenSim content to 162 grids, with 16,364 product variations grouped under 8,551 listings. Of the variations, 11,394 are sold with the export permission, meaning that they can beRead More →

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It’s not too late to order virtual reality presents for the holidays — and they don’t have to cost a lot of money, either! Once you get your headset, click here for instructions on what to do next. Here are some of my favorites — and I’ve personally tried these,Read More →

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The Great Canadian Grid has launched a new website GCG Pulse that allows users to publish their events to be hosted at the grid, and the website uses Google Calendar to help users include artist biographies, venue information and other details in the event description. The new website will alsoRead More →

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Press release: myVR Launches Social Virtual Reality Platform for iOS myVR – Virtually Everything Brings Together Content Discovery, Social Interactions, Video, Chat and More in a Totally Immersive Experience San Francisco, CA – After a successful launch on Android on October, myVR, a new virtual reality social platform, today launchedRead 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, followed by DigiWorldz and Zetamex Network. There were 40 responses total to this year’s hosting survey, which asks grid owners about their hosting providers. However, many ofRead More →

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According to a new survey by Parks Associates, nearly 50 percent of U.S. broadband households who try a virtual reality headset plan to buy one. In addition, 3.5 percent of broadband households, or about 3.4 million households, already own a virtual reality headset. Despite the recent media attention to virtual reality,Read More →

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Press release: vTime Becomes The Most Widely Available Virtual Reality Social Network As It Launches on iPhone LIVERPOOL, U.K. — vTime, the VR Sociable Network, today brings its flagship mobile VR title to iPhone, making it the most widely-accessible social network in virtual reality. Available to download for free from the AppRead More →

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Virtual reality pioneer Oculus will be releasing Quill, a free virtual reality drawing program when it launches its Touch controllers on December 6. Quill seems to be Oculus’ answer to Google’s award-winning Tilt Brush virtual reality drawing application, currently only available for the rival HTC Vive platform. Quill was first unveiled last January atRead More →

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Verizon has partnered with Lucasfilm Ltd. promote Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission, a Playstation VR game that will released in December. The game released is time to coincide with the holiday release of Rogue One, the first stand-alone Star Wars Anthology film and will be released nationwide on December 16. The RogueRead More →

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AviWorlds has received backups of region files of its residents from a former employee, grid owner Alexandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “Josh has sent me the files for AviWorlds and AviBrasil grids,” he said, referring to former head of technology Josh Boam. AviWorlds, and its sister hosting company, Avi-Labs, sufferedRead More →

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Updated: August 10, 2017 Do want to give a VR headset as a gift to someone with an iPhone — or buy one for yourself? You can. You won’t get the best possible mobile experience, however, since the two best headsets — the Samsung Gear VR and the Daydream ViewRead More →

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Unlike Android VR games, which work reasonably well with standard, off-the-shelf Bluetooth controllers, iPhones are a bit more temperamental. Regular Bluetooth controllers don’t work. What you do get are some work-arounds, but they only work with a a tiny handful of the thousands of VR apps and games in the iPhoneRead More →

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I recently tested the latest version of DreamWorld, a new OpenSim installer that lets you run your own mini-grid on a home computer. If everything goes right, installing the software, setting up a new mini grid, and loading up a pre-built region takes less than ten minutes. At first, being aRead More →

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AviWorlds is coming back, grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business today. The Avi-Labs OpenSim hosting will also return, he said. “People can already order their free regions,” he said, even before the grid is back up. “When they sign in, their regions will be up.” The free region will haveRead More →

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There are a lot of 360-degree videos out there and more arriving all the time. They seem to be a killer application for virtual reality. Even the lowest-cost mobile-based headsets — the kind you get for free in a cereal box — do a good job with 360-videos because they’reRead More →

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Press release: Registration is now open for the 4th annual OpenSimulator Community Conference AvaCon is pleased to announce the third annual OpenSimulator Community Conference, to take place virtually on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid on December 10 and 11, 2016. The OpenSimulator Community Conference is an annual conference that focuses on the developer and user community surroundingRead More →

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Today, most virtual reality avatars are very basic, cartoony figures, with a limited range of motions and expressions. Vendors are working to change this, and make avatars more realistic, with facial expressions that reflect those of that actual users. The technology that makes it possible involves facial, body and eyeRead More →

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Back in early October, I ran out and bought the new Google Pixel phone the day it came out, and immediately put through an order for my free Daydream View VR headset. Last week, as all the other tech journalists were writing their reviews, I had to sit and grindRead More →

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Dacuda, a 3D scanning and room-scale virtual reality company is partnering with  brain technology company MindMaze on a new headset that will offer positional tracing and improve social interactions in virtual environments. The new MMI headset is due out later this year and will work with Android and iOS smartphones. It will useRead More →

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Update: The data and chart have been updated to include the full 2016 calendar year. Almost every month, at least one person complains about why InWorldz is listed in our stats, or included in our surveys. Some people complain that InWorldz is not on the hypergrid, meaning that people can’tRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids added 1,655 new regions this month, registered more than 10,000 new users, and grew active monthly users by 512. Meanwhile, Avination and AviWorlds are still down for the count, Logicamp suffered a devastating loss due to a ransomware attack, and SkyLifeGrid was folded up into Sinful Grid. AtekRead More →

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Finally, in these dark and tumultuous times, some good news — Linda Kellie is back, and creating new content. Outside of the core developers themselves, Linda Kellie is the most valuable member of the OpenSim community. Her collections of free content have long been staples for many users — schools,Read More →

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The Belgium-based Logicamp grid has suffered a catastrophic ransomware attack, and has lost some content due to a lack of current off-line backups. “I know that it is unforgivable but I am alone to manage everything and I can not do more,” grid owner Didier Preudhomme told Hypergrid Business. Logicamp is aRead More →

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SkyLifeGrid, launched after the most recent collapse of AviWorlds, has now merged with the Sinful Grid. However, SkyLife will continue offering hosting services, owner Josh Boam told Hypergrid Business, on the SkyLifeHosting.com website. SkyLifeGrid originally launched as Digitaleisure in late August with a controversial offer to migrate content from the AviWorldsRead More →

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Press release: Space, a new virtual world, launched today with free regions LONDON — Space, a browser-based virtual world platform from Sine Wave Entertainment, opened to the public after two months of private beta and seven years of development with a free region offer. “Space is built for the creative community,” said Sine WaveRead More →

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More big names names are jumping on the 360-degree video bandwagon. This fall, there were announcements from the NFL, the BBC, Sky, USA Today, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. National Football to launch new VR video program on Thanksgiving The National Football League, in partnership with Google and NextVR, announced last week that they are bringing NFLRead More →

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The Orbi  sunglasses, which film 360-degree videos, have just reached their crowdfunding goal. The glasses raised $88,568 from 269 Indiegogo backers in just a week, and there are still three weeks to go if you’re interested in helping the company reach its stretch goals. The light-weight, water-resistant glasses connect wirelessly to aRead More →

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Purdue University has received a patent for putting a picture of a nose at the bottom of a virtual reality display — and is selling the licenses to use this idea through partner Virtualis LLC. We normally all have the tip of our noses in our field of view, thoughRead More →

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Disclosure: This camera was provided free by GeekBuying. After discovering that Chinese manufacturers were making some of the best Google Cardboard-compatible virtual reality headsets in the world, and at super low prices, I was curious if the same was true for 360-degree cameras, as well. So far, the answer seems toRead More →

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AltspaceVR, a pioneering social virtual reality platform, announced today that it will be now offering virtual reality replays of live events. The full virtual reality environment is recorded, as well as the performances, so that future visitors will be able to experience the event as if they were there. “YouRead More →

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Update: My daughter used the camera a couple of times, and then it stopped working. When she turns it on, the display window just says “Error” and it does not connect to WiFi or to its smartphone apps, and no combination of restarting or button pressing seems to make the messageRead More →

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The US virtual reality market revenues will reach $38 billion in annual revenues by 2026, after an “inflection zone” over the next five years, according to Greenlight Insights, Inc. Of that, 62 percent, will be hardware revenues, and a third of total industry reviews will be in the enterprise marketing. On theRead More →

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Thanks to the CoreVR option on the Matterport 3D application, real estate and hospitality companies who have Matterport Pro 3D cameras can now capture 3D models of their locations, upload them, and convert them into virtual reality for free until end of this year. Those spaces will then be ready forRead More →

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Tucson Roadrunners, an American Hockey League affiliate of the Arizona Coyotes, will stream, in 360 degrees, their inaugural home opener against the Stockton Heat at 8:05 p.m. Central Time today. The team has entered into partnership with 360fly to provide viewers with 360 degree experiences of hockey games throughout this season through their videoRead More →

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Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs has given $10 million for a virtual reality project to the Washington Leadership Academy, a public charter school in the heart of Washington, D.C. The prize was one of ten such XQ Super School prizes awarded this year. “The prize money will be used inRead More →

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There’s a battle raging now for who will be the dominant platform of the coming virtual reality metaverse. Facebook, which has been getting a big chunk of the media attention with the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and its $2 billion acquisition, has suffered a few blows lately, even as rival GoogleRead More →

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Headsets Don’t Make or Break a VR Experience (or Why Content is Still King) In 1992 Indie filmmaker Robert Rodriguez made a movie with a budget of just $7,000. In Hollywood terms that’s the equivalent of a cappuccino. El Mariachi went on to gross $2 million at the box office. WhatRead More →

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A number of grids are hosting Halloween themed events, destinations, parties and hunts this month. Halloween Dance at Littlefield Grid Littlefield Grid has dedicated the Halloween Themed region to host the event for the entire month of October. There will also be a costume party and Halloween Dance at 8Read More →

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Nearly 800 responses came in for this year’s Seventh Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and after 31 were deleted as invalid, DigiWorldz came out with the most responses, while AllCity received the highest scores, followed by FrancoGrid, Virtual Highway, DigiWorldz and Lost Paradise. People rated 51 different grids, of which 19 made it pastRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids added more than 4,000 new regions this month, registered more than 4,400 new users, and grew by 735 new active users after maintenance and other outages depressed the numbers last month. ZetaWorlds, an open grid that allows resident to connect regions that they host on their own computers, forRead More →

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Three things that you might not think go together — riding a Harley through the main drag at this year’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, virtual reality, and the American Association of Retired Persons. But here’s the latest sign that virtual reality is rapidly becoming a new medium for all demographics and interest groups. WatchRead More →

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Press release: University of Notre Dame and NextVR Deliver Football in Virtual Reality for the First Time Legendary collegiate football program teams with leading virtual reality content provider to present highlights from Oct. 15 Notre Dame vs. Stanford game NOTRE DAME, Ind. — University of Notre Dame football and NextVR,Read More →

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Press release: VisionZ October issue hits stands on Saturday Halloween is the focus of this month’s issue of VisionZ Hyperverse Magazine due out on Saturday, October 15. Typically, after a few days, the racks can be found all over the Hyperverse, here are a few key locations, including at 3rdlifegrid.com:8002:EyE eMagine, hypergrid.org:8002:yesRead More →

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Three 360 degree films — the Peal, Help and Real — demonstrated that immersive storytelling can pack a big emotional punch. The three films took the top prizes at the FIVARS 2016 Awards last month at the Virtual Reality Toronto event. The Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories featured 30 titlesRead More →

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Press release: IMAX and ODEON & UCI Cinemas to launch first IMAX VR center in Europe Groundbreaking Agreement Ushers in Next-Generation of Immersive Entertainment Experiences to ODEON’s Printworks Multiplex in England LONDON – IMAX Corporation today announced an agreement with leading European exhibitor, ODEON & UCI Cinemas Group, to installRead More →

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It was a busy week for virtual reality announcements this week. Following on Google’s Pixel and Daydream presentation earlier in the week, Oculus showed off new hardware and software at their annual Oculus Connect conference in San Jose. The company showed off new controllers, Watch the official Oculus Connect presentationsRead More →

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NBC is partnering with AltspaceVR to bring viewers virtual reality feel of the U.S. Presidential debates and will be streaming the second debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tonight at the AltSpace VR’s Democracy Plaza at 8.30 p.m eastern time. Users of AltSpaceVR will be able to join theRead More →

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Fox gave away 25,000 virtual reality viewers to fans of The Simpsons to celebrate the show’s 600th episode this week. They went quick. They were Google Cardboard viewers, made of cardboard, and made by Knox Labs, one of the best-known of the companies making Google Cardboards. Fox Broadcasting Company andRead More →

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DigiWorldz and the Great Canadian Grid are back up after a nerve-wracking week when Hurricane Matthew threatened to cut off power to the grids’ Florida data center. “DigiWorldz is back online and no damage at all,” DigiWorldz founder Terry Ford, also known as Butch Arnold in-world, told Hypergrid Business. DigiWorldz alsoRead More →

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DigiWorldz and the Great Canadian Grid have gone off-line as Hurricane Matthew took down power lines in the area, set transformers on fire, caused power surges, and inflicted other damage. That caused unstable power situations for some of the power circuits feeding the data center where those two grids are hosted,Read More →

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Customers will purchase more than 450,000 Google Daydream View headsets by the end of the year, according to SuperData Research. Samsung’s Gear VR, Daydream’s closest competitor, is estimated to sell around 2.3 million units. However, the headset has been on the market for over a year. Daydream View will hitRead More →

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Google officially announced its new Pixel phone and its Daydream View VR headset today. The live stream of the presentation was watched by more than a quarter million people. Watch the full presentation below. (The Daydream VR announcement starts at the 1:04 mark.) According to Clay Bavor, Google’s VP forRead More →

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The U.S. Army’s Moses project is one of the most high-profile users of OpenSim, with a focus on training and simulations rather than on using OpenSim as a platform for a social grid. Last Friday, project leader Douglas Maxwell sent a note to OpenSim developers disclosing four “high priority securityRead More →

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AviWorlds is back, and the company has its original domain back as well. This is the ninth time that the grid has come back up after it had closed. “Since I’m back in New York now I’ve had time to start a smaller project,” grid owner Alexandro Pomposelli — also known asRead More →

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Udacity, an online platform for college courses, is now offering a VR development course — with no previous programming experience necessary. The class costs $199 per month, and runs for six months. Those who complete the program will receive a “nanodegree” certificate from Udacity — and get half of theirRead More →

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  The Kokua Viewer team has released an OpenSim-friendly version of their viewer this week, and 3rd Rock Grid is set as the default grid in the grid manager. Other grids included are Craft, InWorldz, Kitely, FrancoGrid, OSgrid, SirinHGpole, Spellscape, and Tangle. Users can also add their own grids, asRead More →

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Engage, a free multi-user virtual reality social platform that allows educators to create and share virtual environments and take students on virtual field trips is now available in preview edition and will launch early next year. The platform also supports business networking, worker training and collaboration, with private rooms that can accommodate upRead More →

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MyWebRoom will launch a free new social virtual reality platform next month, myVR, which will allow users to create and customize private room, and hold events using mobile-based VR headsets. It could be the first virtual reality platform that allows user-created environments. Two of the big players in the space, AltSpace and vTime, onlyRead More →

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More brands are likely to engage in using 360 degree video advertising, 2D digital billboards, 2D video, and even TV spots inside virtual reality environments over the next two years, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said in a report released Monday. At the same time, heat mapping analytics, emotional and story telling experiences willRead More →

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Kroatan, a new social OpenSim grid, is hosting a Halloween Hunt from October 8 to November 8 at the Silent Meadow region. The hunt features the story of Frank Inglewood, an England citizen who disappeared from his car and mysteriously turned up at the spooky Alchemilla Hospital. The hunt entails finding Inglewood’s writing pads,Read More →

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OpenSim developers are getting ready to release OpenSim 0.9.0, and some grids are already experimenting with the new features by downloading the experimental version of the new release — and they are running into some problems. The problem is specific to grids using the new ubOde physics engine, which is includedRead More →

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Editor: The U.S. Army’s MOSES grid has long been making cutting-edge contributors to OpenSim, building a grid management system, running scalability tests, and donating content to the OpenSim community. Now they are in the process of moving to a branch of OpenSim called Halcyon, open-sourced last year by InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, and areRead More →

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Time Inc., the publisher of the iconic Life magazine that closed in 1972, is relaunching the title — in virtual reality. The new Life VR features immersive storytelling, the company said in its announcement last week, and is available as a free download in the Life VR app for iOS and AndroidRead More →

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The Proto Awards gala will be held in Hollywood on October 8, and the list of nominees has been announced. Categories include Most Transportive Experience, Best Game, Best Music Experience, Best Social Experience, Best Mobile Experience, Best Interaction Design, Most Innovative, Best Original Score, Best Live Action Experience, Best Sound Design, Best Educational Experience, Best Student Experience, Best Narrative Experience, Best Independent Experience, Best UserRead More →

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Sketchfab is calling on 3D creators to re-create iconic scenes from movies and is giving away two Oculus Rifts, among other prizes, to the best creations. The contest deadline is October 13, and the application details are here.   Star Wars – Deliverance of Binks by JCulley3D on SketchfabRead More →

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The community-focused AvatarFest event kicks off on Friday, accessible to all OpenSim hypergrid users. There are about two dozen exhibitors already participating, and more than a dozen performances are scheduled, including those by OpenSim celebrities Truelie Telling, The Fabulous Wailers, Rosie O’Grady, and many others. There is also a performance of “Two GentlemenRead More →

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The first lecture of Harvard’s CS50 introductory programming class, can now be viewed as a 360-degree video. It was filmed using the professional-level Nokia OZO VR camera, which costs around $45,000. This is the first time that the class is available in a format that can be viewed immersively on a virtualRead More →

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Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform is now open to the public. The Daydream software development kit came out of beta, the company announced Thursday. The kit, available here for Android, has native Unity integration and native integration with Unreal Engine 4. Daydream is coming this fall, and is part ofRead More →

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The tenth annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference will be held March 29 through April 1 of next year — and is currently accepting proposals. Conference organizers are looking for presentations about new projects, research, services, or tools that benefit educators, or retrospectives about previously-presented work. Academic papers should beRead More →

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People watching 360-degree videos recalled the brands mentioned 28 times more than in traditional ads, according to a new report by Nielsen. Recall of 360-degree content in general was eight times higher, and consumers were three times as likely to buy after seeing an ad in virtual reality. Nielsen’s researched was conductedRead More →

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Virtual reality ad platforms continue to evolve, with vendors now offering analytics for advertisements placed inside 360-degree videos, virtual reality games, and other virtual experiences. Vendors are also trying to make the ads less annoying for users by experimenting with ad types and placements. VirtualSky Denver-based VirtualSky recently rolled out the ability toRead More →

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The average price of a region on an OpenSim grid is US $20.39 per month for a region with 15,000 or more prims. Hypergrid-enabled grids are a little bit less expensive, with an average price of $18.86 per region. Closed grids tend to cost more, charging on average $30.28 perRead More →

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Camera maker 360fly has partnered with software company RaceRender to allow users to add custom video data displays to their 360-degree videos, the companies announced yesterday. Users can shoot the video with a 360fly camera, edit the video with the RaceRender software, and then share it to YouTube and other social media. The 360fly camera includes aRead More →

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This year’s presidential election will be conducted, in part, in virtual reality. A partnership between NBC News and AltspaceVR is transforming a virtual recreation of New York’s Rockefeller Center Plaza into Democracy Plaza, where AltspaceVR users can attend debate watch parties, live discussions with political experts and political comedy events.Read More →

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The social virtual reality platform AltspaceVR is doubling down on the social aspect, with interface changes designed to make it easier for people to get together. Previously, AltspaceVR — like many virtual environments — was organized around the idea of virtual locations. That doesn’t work well because when people showRead More →

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Alife Virtual reported a dramatic increase in active users this month, to 1,576 unique monthly visitors, but those stats may not be accurate, according to technology expert Magnuz Binder, who has previously submitted patches to OpenSim. In his non-OpenSim life, Binder is a former academic focusing on technology and now works asRead More →

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IMAX will begin its virtual reality roll-out as early as the end of this year, IMAX Entertainment CEO Greg Foster said at a conference in Los Angeles this Wednesday. Moviegoers will be able to purchase bundled ticket that cover both the movie and access to a virtual reality experience located at the sameRead More →

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If you spent the summer enjoying the doors and avoiding the news, then you’re one of the fortunate ones who was able to avoid the mess that is U.S. politics — but you might also have missed the flood of VR-related announcements. The amount of virtual reality news coming outRead More →

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Update: I missed a couple of grids in the first version of the story, AllCity updated their stats, and I removed Alife Virtual’s stats from the report because of questions about their accuracy. Read full story here. Only a small handful of grids had problems this month, while the restRead More →

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Unity Technologies is organizing series of events in US and Canada to talk to young women who are curious about careers in game development. The company behind the popular Unity game platform engine used to develop video games for PC, consoles, mobile devices and websites. Unity is also one of the most popularRead More →

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Update: The folks at GeekBuying sent me a $5-off coupon to share with readers: XIAOMIVR5 So I just received a Xiaomi VR in the mail. The headset has been getting some attention in the media recently because Xiaomi is a giant brand, but the headset itself left me underwhelmed. It hasRead More →

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Press release: Greenlight Insights’ Virtual Reality Strategy Conference 2016 to Address Growth and Monetization Challenges VRS 2016 takes place Nov. 1-2, in San Francisco, and will feature new research findings from Greenlight’s fall 2016 VR Industry Report SAN FRANCISCO — Greenlight Insights’ Virtual Reality Strategy Conference 2016, will take place Nov. 1-2,Read More →