OpenSim grids off to a solid start this year

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Public OpenSim grids gained land area, registered users, and active users this month, with active users reaching a new all-time high.

Grids reported a net increase of 638 active users, for a new total of 36,330 actives, despite the end of the OpenSimulator Community Conference. That event accounted for a one-time addition of over 500 active users to the stats last month.

The number of registered users grew by 9,471, for a new total of 521,030. There was also an increase of 3,896 regions, for a new land area of 70,352 standard region equivalents.

Land area of OpenSim’s public grids, in standard region equivalents. (Hypergrid Business data.)

OSGrid was the biggest land gainer this month, with 1,323 new regions for a new total of 20,467, comfortably keeping its place as the largest grid in OpenSim. Kitely gained 330 new regions and has the second largest number of regions at 14,433.

For those who are new readers, OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.

A list of hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here. And find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Popularity

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is: the busier, the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience… you get the idea.

Most of the major grids reported active user gains this month.

Metropolis gained 229 active users, Genesis Metaverse gained 182, and OSgrid gained 147. InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, started off the new year on a positive note with a gain of 151 new active users, after losing more than 500 actives last year.

Below is a list of 25 most popular grids this month based on active user numbers.
Top 25 most popular grids:

  1. InWorldz: 6,098 active users
  2. OSgrid: 3,878 active users
  3. Metropolis: 3,666 active users
  4. DigiWorldz: 1,618 active users
  5. Island Oasis: 1,392 active users
  6. Kitely: 1,314 active users
  7. AllCity: 1,232 active users
  8. Lost Paradise: 1,141 active users
  9. Craft World: 1,076 active users
  10. Great Canadian Grid: 1,057 active users
  11. Eureka World: 672 active users
  12. Virtual-EPI: 614 active users
  13. Exo-Life: 613 active users
  14. YrGrid: 607 active users
  15. Genesis MetaVerse: 544 active users
  16. DreamNation: 542 active users
  17. Sinful Grid: 524 active users
  18. Encore Escape: 393 active users
  19. EdMondo: 382 active users
  20. FrancoGrid: 365 active users
  21. Anettes Welt: 344 active users
  22. 3rd Rock Grid: 343 active users
  23. The Adult Grid: 323 active users
  24. Littlefield: 308 active users
  25. The Public World: 308 active users

Meanwhile, the hypergrid as a whole is beginning to function more and more like one large grid, with an increasing number of multi-grid events, communities, and groups.

(Hypergrid Business data.)

Hypergrid-enabled grids, where users can teleport freely to other grids, are now home to 79 percent of OpenSim’s active users. They accounted for 68 percent of actives at the beginning of 2016, and just 52 percent at the start of 2015.

Looking at land area, the numbers are even more dramatic, since the hypergrid offers more renting options for users, and some grids even allow users to connect their own home-based regions for free. Hypergrid-enabled grids currently account for 94 percent of all OpenSim land area.

The full list of all hypergrid-enabled grids, ranked by traffic numbers, can be found here.

Kitely Market statistics

The Kitely Market now delivers to a record-high 165 grids.

Customers from any hypergrid-enabled grid, and from many closed grids, can order from a selection of 8,784 products, also a record high, which are available in 16,870 variations.

On the Kitely Market, like on Amazon, different versions of the same product — different colors of a dress, for example, or different permission options — are grouped together into one listing.

Of particular interest is the export permission, which allows content to be delivered to other grids, or delivered to Kitely then taken to other grids via exports or hypergrid travels. This month, 11,900 of the variations were exportable, or 71 percent of the total.

(Kitely data.)

All hypergrid-enabled grids, by default, can accept Kitely Market deliveries unless they specifically configure their grid settings to keep these deliveries out. Grids that are not accessible via the hypergrid can still accept Kitely Market deliveries, if they choose, by following these instructions.

Craft, Dorena’s World both turn seven this month

Two of the oldest OpenSim grids, both European, are turning seven years old this month.

Craft, which is based in Italy, is celebrating with a party and building competition.

(Image courtesy Craft.)

Craft’s party will be held on January 27 and will feature the grid’s sixth annual Building Competition, which is open to residents of both Craft and other OpenSim worlds, Craft spokesman Raffaele Macis told Hypergrid Business. The winner in the building competition will receive a full region in Craft for one year, the second runners up a 10,000-prim region for one year and all entries should be given to Licu Rau or Tao Quan, in-world, by January 21.

(Image courtesy Dorenas World.)

Germany-based Dorena’s World, however, is postponing its celebration until the summer, grid owner Dorena Verne told Hypergrid Business, to coincide with the seventh anniversary of GridTalk, a German-language discussion forum for the OpenSim community.

“Much has happened to it, sometimes times off, laugh, cry, just everything that makes a together,” she said. “I would like to thank all the inhabitants and guests for this time, which I have been able to spend together with you until today.”

Transitions

The Encore Escape is a new grid that launched this past weekend with a big opening party.

(Image courtesy Encore Entertainment.)

You can follow it on Facebook or Twitter.

The following 23 grids were marked as suspended this month: 3dcolabStandAlone, Ascension Grid, Astria Porta, AviRealms, Blight’s Beach Grid, Celtic Grid, Crystal’s World, Dovangel, Ipsofacto, Kingdom of Creation, Maze Matrix, NewWorld, Oligo, Osirus, Proyecto Alebri, Revo Grid, Saltwaterbay, SkyLife, Sunlight, Twilight Grid, UFGQ Grid, Virtworld, Your2Live

Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.

And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.

By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.

January Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,200 different publicly-accessible grids, 257 of which were active this month, and 191 of which published their statistics.

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here — dating all the way back to 2009. Including polls and surveys.

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