OpenSim land area and active users up

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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 256 additional standard regions. Discovery Grid, currently migrating to new servers, lost the most land area this month, 4,341 standard region equivalents, followed by OpenSim Life, which lost 280, and Genesis MetaVerse, which lost 225 regions.

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

The public grids have also reported that they signed up 6,149 new residents this month.

Kitely led in new registrations with 1,962 signups, followed by InWorldz with 1,478, Emilac with 1,323, OSgrid with 623 and Island Oasis with 430.

These stats do not include most of the mini-grids running on the DreamWorld distribution of OpenSim, or private company or school grids. According to the latest DreamWorld stats, more than 1,900 mini-grids have been created with this installer alone, 694 of which were on the hypergrid.

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.

GreekLife gained 537 new active users becoming the grid that gained most active users in the month, followed by DigiWorldz with 206, OSgrid with 158, then FrancoGrid with 129 and Craft World with 107.

OpenSim Life lost the highest number of active users, at 624, followed by Anettes Welt which lost 308 active users, while Discovery Grid lost 90 active users in the last month.

Metropolis was, however, the most active grid attracting 3,753 active users during the month, followed by OSgrid with 3,741 and AllCity with 1,931 to close the top three spots.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. Metropolis: 3,753 active users (HG hypergrid.org:8002)
  2. OSgrid: 3,741 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  3. AllCity: 1,931 active users (HG login.allcity.com.br:8002)
  4. DigiWorldz: 1,720 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  5. Island Oasis: 1,223 active users (HG islandoasisgrid.biz:8002:island Oasis)
  6. Kitely: 1,181 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  7. GreekLife: 1,076 active users (HG hg.grid-greeklife.info:8002)
  8. Lost Paradise: 928 active users (HG lpgrid.com:8002)
  9. Dorena’s World: 856 active users (HG dorenas-world.de:8002)
  10. Craft World: 744 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  11. Genesis MetaVerse: 702 active users (HG grid.genesismetaverse.com:8002)
  12. Virtual-EPI: 670 active users (HG 209.126.208.163:9024:virtual event planners int)
  13. Exo-Life: 670 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  14. Sacrarium: 597 active users (HG sacrarium24.ru:8002)
  15. DreamNation: 580 active users
  16. Virtual Brasil: 558 active users (HG mundo.virtualbrasil3d.com.br:8002)
  17. Logicamp: 465 active users (HG logicamp.org:8002)
  18. FrancoGrid: 449 active users (HG hg.francogrid.org:80)
  19. YrGrid: 429 active users (HG grid.yrgrid.com:8002)
  20. Eros Resort: 380 active users (HG opensim.bci3d.com:8002)
  21. Party Destination Grid: 355 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  22. ZanGrid: 351 active users (HG login.zangrid.ch:8002)
  23. 3rd Rock Grid: 329 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
  24. Dynamic Worldz: 324 active users (HG grid.dynamicworldz.com:8002)
  25. Genesis Global Journey: 304 active users (HG ggj.world:8002)

Kitely Market delivers to a record 215 grids

Kitely currently has 10,502 product listings containing 19,880 product variations, 15,095 of which are exportable.

Only 4,785 of the variations of Kitely Market listings are non-exportable, meaning that they can only be used on the Kitely grid. That’s less than 25 percent of all variations. This is a drop from the peak of 4,970 at the end of 2016, and a sign that merchants are increasingly embracing the hypergrid business model.

Kitely Market has delivered items to 215 OpenSim grids to date, an increase of 12 from last month’s tally.

Exportable items on the Kitely Market, in green, rise steadily. (Kitely Market Data.)

Ever since Kitely turned on the hypergrid export functionality, exportable content has been growing at a much faster rate than non-exportables, as merchants increasingly become comfortable to selling to the hypergrid.

However, non-hypergrid grids can also accept Kitely Market deliveries, giving their residents ready access to a wide, legal, and ever-growing collection of content.

VirTec sales show slight increase

The VirTec vending machine network recorded about the same number of merchants, transactions and revenues in the last month compared to the previous month, with 44 merchants and 642 transactions in total.

But the total volume of transactions, was $365 in August, up from $300 in July. That’s still down quite a bit from its high of $690 in March.

Virtec was acquired by DigiWorldz in April.

The most active grid on the network, InWorldz, recorded the equivalent of $192 in transactions.

Merchant and revenue data at VirTec network. (VirTec data.)

GerGrid now hypergrid-enabled

Gergrid is back to the hypergrid space. (Image courtesy Gergrid.)

GerGrid is now hypergrid-enabled, after a long time as a closed grid. This will help users who want to travel to other OpenSim grids and those who want to visit but do not want to immediately create an account with GerGrid.

The GerGrid Sandbox is also available on the grid for testing by creators.

“We are currently working with the OpenSim 0.9.1.x on Unix with Mono and ubODE, that brings considerable advantages with moving physical objects,” grid owner Thomas Goetz told Hypergrid Business.

GerGrid’s decision to turn on hypergrid connectivity leaves just 37 closed grids on our list. The largest, by reported active user counts, are DreamNation with 580 actives, and Virtual Highway with 118. The next four most-active closed grids are all educational projects — Islands of Enlightenment, Emilac, TeCoLa, and Cineca.

When a grid is not hypergrid-enabled, any new visitors first have to create new avatar accounts. This reduces the number of new people who can come attend events or go shopping. Some grids, however, prefer a more private, secure experience — and many school grids require it.

However, as multi-grid communities like OpenSim Virtual have proliferated and event organizers and merchants have become comfortable with the hypergrid, the number of closed grids has been shrinking dramatically over the past few years.

Discovery grid updates servers

Discovery grid has upgraded its servers, according to an announcement.

The company has shifted from Zetamex hosting to its own management and said the new servers have twice the power of their old servers.

However, the company said it was in the process of restoring a third server which had crashed when adding software.

The money server is also currently down, but will be up shortly.

“Your money is safe,” said grid representative Angel Legendary in a Facebook post. “We haven’t applied the money server yet until we can settle some of the more basic issues but I have a full list of avatars and their money. It is not lost.”

Discovery Grid. (Image courtesy Discovery Grid via Facebook.)

The grid has also posted a land sales page, with region prices starting at a dramatic $30 for an a varregion anywhere from four to 64 standard region in size. The total number of prims is limited to 45,000, so for the eight-by-eight varregion that translates to about 50 cents per month per 700-prim standard-sized region.

You can follow the grid on Facebook and Google Plus for all the latest news.

Moonglow offering free land, more speed

You can now enjoy faster speeds at Moonglow grid because the grid has is now using a faster server according to a post.

You can also sign up for free land on the hypergrid-enabled grid. Those interested in freebies can check out the many freebies shops on the many sims at the grid.

The new hypergrid address is dreamworld.home.kg:8002.

Neverworld has a new Halloween hunt area

Neverworld will launch a new Halloweeen-themed region called Requiem on Sunday, October 1.

“It is hypergrid-enabled,” grid owner Penny Otte told Hypergrid Business. “Anyone can play and collect skulls and then redeem them for prizes. Prizes include seasonal Halloween decorations and jewelry.”

Halooween-themed region at Neverworld grid. (Image courtesy Neverworld.)

Halloween Hunt 2017 on Kroatan

Kroatan grid will host the Halloween Hunt at the Abbandonato region on October 14 and 15.

Hunters will get rewards and gifts given by some residents at the end of the hunt.

“Each hunter will get a free HUD at landing point, which shows 11 posters of missing people. By asking the residents of Abbandonato, hunters should find out what happened to the missing persons and will get rewarded at the end of the hunt game,” grid owner Bink Draconia told Hypergrid Business.

The hypergrid address is kroatan.de:8002:Abbandonato.

3rdLife Grid starts monthly car races, offers free shops

Interested in virtual car racing? 3rd Life Grid will have monthly races, starting on Saturday, September 23 at noon Pacific time on the Raceway region.

“This race is open to everyone from any grid,” 3rdLife grid co-manager Gary Justus told Hypergrid Business. “The winners get a trophy, bragging rights and a lot of fun.”

(Image courtesy 3rd Life Grid.)

There will also be two races on October. One is the regularly-scheduled monthly race at noon Pacific time on Wednesday, October 14.

There will also be a special Halloween race, with custom Halloween-themed cars, at noon Pacific time on Wednesday, October 28.

For more information on grid events, follow it on Facebook and on Google Plus.

Merchants can now also sell content on the grid to both local residents and hypergrid visitors, at 3rd Life Grid’s Gloebits mall.

Merchants don’t even need an account on the grid, said Justus, and just need to contact him in-world via his avatar DJTommy Seetan, in order to get a free store.

The hypergrid address of the mall is 3rdlifegrid.com:8002.

Diva Distro updated

The Diva Distro version of OpenSim, which was lastly updated in 2015, has released a new, updated version, but it comes with some challenges for users.

It’s good to see people are still working behind the scenes to improve the platform,” one user told Hypergrid Business. “But it has different physics so [some] mesh and scripts do not work that were created using Bullet.”

Some mesh objects will need to have their faces reversed in order for them to work, the user said.

The Diva Distro is a favorite option for users running self-hosted mini-grids, and is the base for the popular DreamWorld installer. DreamWorld currently supports both the previous version of the Diva Distro, version 0.8.2.1, and the new 0.9 version.

According to DreamWorldz stats, more than 200 mini-grids are already running on the new version, while more than 1,600 mini-grids are still running on 0.8.2.1.

Metropolis grid seeking donations

Metropolis grid, which does not charge any money for anyone using the grid even for profit, is calling on all well-wishers to donate to enable the grid continue funding its services including grid services, added data security and backups.

The grid said the money would also be used to extend its storage capacity.

The grid is was the most popular this moth with 3,753 active users. It has 16,112 registered avatars in total and 4,213 regions in total.

AvatarFest to exhibit builds from next week

AvatarFest will open to the general public on Saturday, September 23 or 24 and will remain open until Monday, October 30 for anyone on the hypergrid to visit and see the avatars created by the OpenSim community.

It will be third year the event is held and they have received different topics from creators on many different grids. The event promotes personal creativity, hobbies, interests and group activity.

There will also be music from various artists during the opening weekend.

The hypergrid address is avatarfest.net:6000:Avatarfest.

You can keep up with all events on the AvatarFest Google Plus community.

Watch the video below from last year’s AvatarFest:

Sacrarium launches from Kazakhstan

We haven’t had many Russian-language grids on our lists, and none from Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic located in Central Asia — until now.

Sacrarium currently has 11 regions and 81 registered residents, but reported more than 500 active users this past month. It’s on the hypergrid, so visitors can teleport in from other grids without registering for a local account.

However, the owner could not point to any particular events or promotions that took place this past month and could account for those numbers.

The grid’s main social media presence is on VKontake, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook.

“All people have secret wishes and passions. Sacrarium has to become a place for relies of wishes without any conditions,” grid owner Whiteangel Deed told Hypergrid Business. “In a manner, Sacrarium is a local experiment on a human nature with its wishes, good and bad sides of the personality.”

The hypergrid address is sacrarium24.ru:8002:sacrarium.

Transitions

The following grids were added to our lists this month: Mimic Life, Lupopas Welt, Eros Resort, Kinky Grid which also rents land, Argofantasy, Virtual Eden and Sacrarium.

The following 18 grids were marked as suspended this month: Adventure Bay, Brillyunt, Gnosis Grid, IMA Test World, Infinite Metaverse Alliance, Iti Motu Resort, Konk Combat Grid, Lighthouse Point, Marble Isle, Meet Instantly, Ocean Grid, Old Fuddy, Origins, Outworldz Pirateland HG, Outworldz.lnk, Paradwys, Play Grid BR, and That Place.

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.

In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be undercounted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.

September 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 1,255 different publicly-accessible grids, 259 of which were active this month, and 183 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, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.

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