OpenSim land, actives increased this month

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OpenSim land area went up by 3,300 regions this month, with the largest growth recorded on OSgrid, which gained more than 1,500 regions.

OSgrid conducted a major clean-up last month, and some of this increase may have been due to region owners reconnecting their regions to the grid. OSgrid also held a fundraiser last month, which may have also encouraged new connections. You can still donate to OSgrid here.

Total OpenSim land area this month was the equivalent of 81,866 standard regions. The public grids also reported a total of 394,885 registered users and 35,716 active users.

The active numbers reflect an increase of more than 800 compared to last month.

Total regions, in standard region equivalents, on public OpenSim grids. (Hypergrid Business data.)

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid distribution of OpenSim, or private company or school grids who used other installers. OutWorldz, in particular, reports more than 17,000 private grids set up with their installer.

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.

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.

Top 25 grids by active users

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 3,840 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. GreekLife: 2,544 active users (HG hg.grid-greeklife.info:8002)
  3. DigiWorldz: 1,822 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  4. Sacrarium: 1,767 active users (HG sacrarium24.ru:8002)
  5. Tag Grid: 1,608 active users
  6. Metropolis: 1,544 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  7. ZetaWorlds: 1,343 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  8. Virtualife: 1,293 active users (HG hg2.virtualife.cloud:8002)
  9. Foundation Grid: 1,144 active users (HG gridfoundation.ddns.net:8002)
  10. Kitely: 1,082 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  11. VartownGrid: 934 active users (HG vartown-grid.ddns.net:8002)
  12. Party Destination Grid: 846 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  13. Exo-Life: 806 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  14. Discovery Grid: 771 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  15. Eureka World: 633 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  16. Breath in Freedom: 569 active users (HG breath-grid.info:8002)
  17. Craft World: 515 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  18. Neverworld: 501 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  19. Dorena’s World: 498 active users (HG dorenas-world.de:8002)
  20. DreamNation: 480 active users
  21. Free Life: 478 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002)
  22. Tranquility: 464 active users (HG tranquility-grid.info:8002)
  23. Dynamic Worldz: 415 active users (HG grid.dynamicworldz.com:8002)
  24. 92 Miles Grid: 402 active users (HG 92MilesGrid.com:8002)
  25. Anettes Welt: 388 active users (HG anettes-welt.de:8002)

The actives list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know. The active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids, or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory.

This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

I measure active users by counting both local residents and hypergrid visitors. After all, hypergrid visitors attend events and spend money just like anybody else. If I’m looking for a happening grid, I want one with a lot of people on it — and I don’t really care where their home avatar is based. In fact, several grids are encouraging users to have their avatars on other grids, such as Kitely or OSgrid, in order to reduce the load on their own servers. Many grid owners are also increasingly willing to rent land to visitors, and even give free store space and homes to visitors as well. Their money, after all, is just as good.

Yes, this means that people are double-counted, based on all the grids they visit. But they’d also be double-counted if they created new avatars on each grid. So it comes out even in the end, as far as I’m concerned.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, not all grids need a stats page, especially grids that aren’t open to the public, like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this “dark metaverse” of OpenSim grids might actually be bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Tangle Grid’s Halloween expo

Expo Center at the Tangle Grid Halloween Expo. (Image courtesy Tangle Grid.)

The sixth annual Tangle Grid Halloween Expo is live now after having its grand opening on Tuesday, Oct. 15. It will run until November 19.

The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.)

Visitors can get freebie items, and also purchase content using the Gloebit currency. (Learn how to use Gloebits for hypergrid shopping here.)

Landing area at the Tangle Grid Halloween Expo. (Image courtesy Tangle Grid.)

This year, Tangle is adding a competition, where visitors can vote for their favorite displays, grid owner Leslie Kling told Hypergrid Business.

Read our full article on the expo for more information.

Tranquility’s Halloween offerings

Tranquility has two new regions up for the coming holiday season.

First, there’s Spooksville.

Spooksville region on Tranquility Grid. (Image courtesy Tranquility Grid.)

“This region is ready for Halloween and will be used for our parties,” said Steve Stewart, also known in-world as Chris Tranquility. “After Halloween, the region will remain for those who like spooky places.”

Hypergrid teleport to tranquility-grid.info:8002:Tranquility Spooksville.

The parties are scheduled for 4 to 6 p.m. Pacific time the week of Halloween.

Winter Magic region on Tranquility Grid. (Image courtesy Tranquility Grid.)

The grid is also getting a head start on Christmas, with a region called Winter Magic, filled with snow and other winter things. Come for the ice skating, stay for the holiday parties.

Hypergrid teleport to tranquility-grid.info:8002:Winter Magic.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,451 different publicly-accessible grids, 303 of which were active this month, and 233 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.

Am I missing anything? Did I get anything wrong? Email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Maria Korolov
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