OpenSim stats drop with holidays, reporting issues

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OpenSim land area fell by the equivalent of  8,667 standard regions, and active users dropped by 3,473 due to combination of school holidays and fewer grids reporting stats than in the last couple of months.

In addition to InWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, and The Adult Grid, other grids that did not have complete working stats pages this month included My First Life, Astralia, Atek Grid, 2Worlds2Go, Alife Virtual, AllCity, Kroatan Grid, Alterworld Grid and OpenSim Life.

This month had the lowest total land area since January of 2017 and the lowest active user numbers since last September.

OpenSim land area has been falling since November last year. (Hypergrid Business Data.)

The largest gainer in land mass in the last month was OSGrid whose land increased by 412 standard equivalent regions, followed by HGLuv with 65 more and Adreans-World with 32 additional regions.

OSgrid  is the largest grid in size with 19,333 standard region equivalents, followed by Kitely with 17,325, Metropolis with 6,744, DigiWorldz with 5,182 regions and Lost Paradise with 4,354.

Virtual Worlds Grid, Metropolis and DigiWorldz were the largest losers in land area this month, having lost 842, 199, and 75 standard region equivalents respectively.

Kitely was the most valuable grid this month when it comes to bringing in new users with 1,404 new registrations. It was followed by InWorldz with 1,349, and education-focused grids Emilac with 745, OSgrid with 509 and Virtual Brasil with 448.

There are 1,278 grids in our database in total, with 265 being active and 192 reporting statistics this month, down from 199 grids last month.

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, there are more than 1,139 grids, out of which about 29 percent are mini-grids created with this installer alone so far.

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.

You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz. OutWorldz also provides OpenSim users with free  mesh items, OARs and free seamless textures that you can download and use on your grids.

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.

Sacrarium grid gained the highest number of active users with 270 new actives, followed by Party Destination Grid with 193,  Dynamic Worldz with 130, Neverworld with 99 and Kitely with 84.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 4,180 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. Metropolis: 3,356 active users (HG hypergrid.org:8002)
  3. DigiWorldz: 2,053 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  4. GreekLife: 1,510 active users (HG hg.grid-greeklife.info:8002)
  5. Sacrarium: 1,491 active users (HG sacrarium24.ru:8002)
  6. Eureka World: 1,152 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  7. Kitely: 1,118 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  8. Island Oasis: 1,098 active users (HG islandoasisgrid.biz:8002:island Oasis)
  9. Lost Paradise: 963 active users (HG lpgrid.com:8002)
  10. Craft World: 732 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  11. Exo-Life: 691 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  12. Dorena’s World: 629 active users (HG dorenas-world.de:8002)
  13. Party Destination Grid: 580 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  14. Virtual Brasil: 533 active users (HG mundo.virtualbrasil3d.com.br:8002)
  15. DreamNation: 532 active users
  16. FrancoGrid: 462 active users (HG hg.francogrid.org:80)
  17. Logicamp: 456 active users (HG logicamp.org:8002)
  18. Dynamic Worldz: 449 active users (HG grid.dynamicworldz.com:8002)
  19. Neverworld: 410 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  20. Eros Resort: 358 active users (HG opensim.bci3d.com:8002)
  21. YrGrid: 354 active users (HG grid.yrgrid.com:8002)
  22. Nextlife World: 344 active users (HG nextlife-world.de:8002)
  23. Anettes Welt: 331 active users (HG anettes-welt.de:8002)
  24. ZetaWorlds: 331 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  25. 3rd Rock Grid: 310 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)

GreekLife lost the highest number of active users at 420 followed by the OpenSimulator Community Conference grid with 347, Dorena’s World with 185 and Eureka World with 151.

DreamWorld stats

The Hypergrid Business database currently tracks 1,277 grids, of which 269 were active this month.

OutWorldz has another system for tracking grid counts, and has currently counted a total of 1,139 grids so far with only about 328 being online. The total tally includes 29.6 percent or 97 DreamWorlds or grids created with the DreamWorld software owned by OutWorldz.

The software allows users to easily create and run grids at home as well as to connect to other OpenSim grids.

Out of the total tally by OutWorldz, only about 140 appear to be hypergriddable or having capability to at one time or the other.

The test to determine whether sims are online runs every hour and offline grids tested every four hours.

The details of statistics can be found on Hyperica directory of grids. and the daily summaries here on the OutWorldz website.

Any grid owner can add their grid into the list on the OutWorldz website if OutWorldz is not currently tracking its online status.

Kitely delivers to 245 grids

There are currently 11,124 product listings in  Kitely Market containing 21,176 product variations, of which 16,263 are sold with export permission.

Kitely Market has delivered items to 245 OpenSim grids to date.

Exportable products on Kitely continue to increase. (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 network revenue down

VirTec, a network of vending machines that work on multiple grids and support a variety of currencies, reported that there was a decline in revenue of two percent in December and the number of merchants fell slightly, from 40 to 38.

This is the lowest number of merchants reported on the network.

Value of transactions on VirTec Network started to rise last month since (VirTec Data.)

DigiWorldz bans use of Athena Mesh shapes

DigiWorldz grid last week banned use of Athena Mesh shapes on its grid due to copyright issues.

“Today, we contacted the creator of the Lara body in Second Life and asked them specifically if the Athena mesh bodies found in OpenSim grids was a direct copy of the Lara body,” DigiWorldz grid owner Terry Ford wrote in the explanation. “The answer was yes. We asked if she had given permission for these bodies to be in OpenSim, the answer was no.”

OpenSim users interested in having a mesh body are encouraged to use Shin Ingen‘s female Ruth 2.0, a new mesh avatar shape specifically designed and licensed for OpenSim.

 

“I’ll be honest and say I do not know much about the project as I am not directly involved with it, but it is getting much praise from many users,” Ford told Hypergrid Business.

Mesh bodies can look nicer than the “system” shapes available to OpenSim users, which are modified using sliders. However, mesh bodies also require custom-made clothing and accessories, and costs can add up if the base mesh bodies are proprietary and creators and users have to pay for the models.

Using Ruth 2.0, creators will be able to make clothes, shoes and other apparels and accessories and develop their very own fashion lines supporting their own fashion models. Many people has praised the Ruth 2.0 project because it improves many things

Ford said Shin Ingen has been transparent throughout the whole process of creating Ruth 2.0. The creator previously requested for help from the community as we reported earlier and other people have joined the project.

“I’m hearing users are also using this avatar inside closed grids as well, including Second Life and InWorldz,” Ford said.

There is also a male version of the body, called Roth.

Great Canadian Grid offers free land for 60 day trial

Great Canadian Grid has brought back the 60 day free trial offer on its Free Housing region for anyone who wants to try and check what the grid is all about.

Anyone interested can get land and set up a house for free for trial in 60 days. Email Roddie Macchi for more info at greatcanadiangrid@yahoo.com.

Tangle grid to host Sci-Fi Expo next month

Shores Estates at Tangle grid. (Image courtesy Tangle grid.)

The Sci-Fi themed expo will take place from February 5 to March 5 and invites anyone willing to showcase space-themed regions or products.

“The site will be available to participants, builders and merchants as of next week, so they have time to get things ready until opening,” Elbereth Elentari, the grid’s head of media relations, told Hypergrid Business.
The event will once again be accompanied by a Sci-Fi picture contest which will, from next week, invite entries that can be voted to win a free region at the end of the Sci-Fi Expo.
Participants from other grids are welcome, said Elentari.
“I have reached out to the space or sci-fi themed regions around the hypergrid,” she said.
Meanwhile, the grid has free land offers at the Shores Estates regions of Shores Oasis and Shores Haven. Anyone interested can get free parcels with 478 prims. Anyone who claims the free land will only need to tap the rental box once a month to keep their home plot.

Genesis Metaverse renamed to GeVolution

Genesis Metaverse is being renamed to GeVolution. The grid, whose co-owner Candi Genesis left to form a new grid, moved residents assets including currency balances, friend lists to the new grid.

“Residents have been notified there is been no losses as all assets got sent to new one including inventories friends list,” grid spokesman Vincent Rhys-Owain told Hypergrid Business.

The new loginURI and hypergrid address is grid.gevolutionworld.com:8002. Both the grid and the website may be undergoing some maintenance during the transition.

Rumours of Candi leaving Genesis Metaverse started in October last year when the grid moved from DigiWorldz grid hosting service to set up their own hosting.

Transitions

We added only one grid, Panthera Grid, to our database this month.

The following nine grids were marked as suspended this month: Cuon, SimValley, Anda World, Karmalot, The Hidden Continent of Chaxez, Free World, CyberNexus VW Grid, S&B Airways, and Imperial World.

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 under-counted, 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.

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 1,278 different publicly-accessible grids, 265 of which were active this month, and 192 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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