Record number of OpenSim grids this month

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All stats — area, registered users, active users — went up this month on the public OpenSim grids. In addition, we have hit the highest number of active grids in the history of this report, 365, as well as the highest number of grids reporting stats, at 293. Many of the new grids are smaller grids running on the free DreamGrid platform.

These numbers are particularly surprising given that the largest closed commercial grid — Tag — did not release its active user numbers this month.

Part the reason may have to do with the fact that people are stuck at home due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Another reason could be that Second Life ran out of land this past week.

Total land area increased by the equivalent of 1,376 standard regions, led by OSgrid which added 824 regions, followed by ZetaWorlds which added 351, and AviWorlds with 97 new regions. All three of these grids are hypergrid-enabled, meaning a user does not need to create account on every grid to be able to access other hypergrid-enabled regions, but requires an account with only one hypergrid-accessible grid. In fact, hypergrid-enabled grids currently account for 97 percent of all OpenSim land area and 96 percent of all active users.

OSgrid was also the grid that registered the most new users this month, at 1,314, followed by Kitely’s 689 new registrations, and 367 at AvatarLife, which launched last summer.

The top gainers for land area in the last 30 days are OSGrid which added 824 regions, followed by ZetaWorlds which added 351, and AviWorlds with 97 regions.

However, OSGrid is still the largest grid this month going by the number of total regions with 24,002 regions, followed by Kitely which has 18,035, and Discovery grid at third position with 9,020 regions.

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.

As of last month, OutWorldz has counted a total of 1,699 grids, of which 607 are still online and 419 are Dreamworlds, meaning they are created with the Dreamworld software owned by OutWorldz. Of those, 414 of are accessible via hypergrid teleport. Over 90 percent of those use an OutWorldz subdomain, and the rest have their own website address, or just use an IP address instead of a URL.

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.

OSgrid saw the most growth in active users this past month, a total of 788 new active users. With all the drama at AviWorlds and Virtual Ville, these two grids were second and third in active numbers growth in the last 30 days adding 585 and 460 active users respectively.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 5,446 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. DigiWorldz: 1,820 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  3. Metropolis: 1,709 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  4. ZetaWorlds: 1,587 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  5. Kitely: 1,357 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  6. Foundation Grid: 1,072 active users (HG gridfoundation.ddns.net:8002)
  7. Discovery Grid: 8,56 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  8. Party Destination Grid: 8,56 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  9. Exo-Life: 836 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  10. RAKis World: 812 active users (HG yeali.outworldz.net:8002)
  11. Virtual Dream Grid: 687 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
  12. AviWorlds: 656 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  13. Craft World: 628 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  14. Virtual Ville: 562 active users (HG login.virtual-ville.com:8002)
  15. Free Life: 557 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002)
  16. Arkham Grid: 514 active users (HG arkhamcity.hopto.org:8002)
  17. DreamNation: 506 active users
  18. 3rd Rock Grid: 434 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
  19. Tranquility: 430 active users (HG tranquility-life.info:8002)
  20. Freedom Grid: 400 active users (HG freedomgrid.world:8002)
  21. Eureka World: 397 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  22. Neverworld: 337 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  23. Astralia: 330 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  24. Virtual Reload: 323 active users (HG grid.virtualreload.cloud:8002)
  25. Littlefield: 316 active users (HG lfgrid.com: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.

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.

Kitely Market

The Kitely Market, which is the largest collection of legal content available, has delivered orders to more than 420 OpenSim grids to date, both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. (Instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.)

Kitely Market Data May

There are currently 16,739 products listed in Kitely Market containing 33,833 product variations, of which 28,757 are sold with the Export permission.

Kitely recently surpassed $250,000 in total sales since opening to the public in August 2013. The market is now the main marketplace serving the OpenSim metaverse or the hypergrid. The marketplace started when Kitely was a closed grid allowing only Kitely users to buy from it, but opened to hypergrid in March 2014. So far, the top merchant on the market has sold virtual goods worth a total of $20,000 with the top 10 merchants each selling at least $4,000 worth of virtual goods.

Coronavirus coming to in 3D on Kitely

SARS-CoV-2 Resource Unit within the BioChamber of my Virtual Laboratory Training and Career Center (VLTCC) on the Opensimulator-generated grid, Kitely. (Image Courtesy Cherry Consulting Network.)

The Virtual Laboratory Training and Career Centre, located on Kitely, announced plans to showcase a 3D model of the coronavirus and a host human cell in its recently built SARS-CoV-2 Resource Unit to the public next month, in a bid to help clinical researchers, laboratories and educators and the general public to understand the virus and how it attacks the human body.

“The nine-region VLTCC complex will be opened as part of the June celebration for my 45th year as an ASCP-certified medical technologist,” Cherry Consulting Network and VLTCC owner and founder Sally Cherry said in a Facebook post.

The Cherry Consulting Network’s main welcome region is located at grid.kitely.com:8002:Cherry Network Centre.

Free virtual education at Virtual Ville Grid

Online Campus Class. (Image Courtesy Virtual Ville grid.)

Virtual Ville is starting a free virtual learning campus. As part of the project, it is offering free land parcels of 2,802 prims and 4,096 square meters on four regions for both residents and hypergrid visitors, in support for virtual education during this pandemic lockdowns. Students and teachers can meet to study, learning and mingling with others on these regions, which can also be searched on the map search.

Alexsandro Pomposelli

“Remote learning and meeting is going to be the way to meet and teach in a more streamlined manner,” grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “Cheaper and easier. No commuting, no time wasted.”

Pomposelli is the former owner of the AviWorlds grid, which has repeatedly gone out of business, so users are urged to make plenty of backups to be careful before investing time and money in the new project.

“The motivation is to help,” said Pomposelli. “I have a daughter and son who both were in school and I think that it is the way now since the COVID-19 situation started. I think it is a great way to learn and teach plus it is fun.”

The two regions, namely Campus Online and Campus Online Classroom, can also host virtual meetings for companies and groups. These regions have total privacy and privacy settings.

Online Couch Room. (Image Courtesy Virtual Ville grid.)

Enjoy your time off dancing at Littlefield

Sweethearts region. (Image Courtesy Littlefield.)

Littlefield is your place to hang out for dances and stay entertained during lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sweethearts region hosts a dance at 1 p.m. Pacific Time every Thursday.  And just like the name suggests, it is for lovers and couples or anyone who enjoys listening to soft easy love songs and rock ballads.

The hypergrid address is hg:lfgrid:8002:Sweethearts.

Speakeasy region hosts the longest-running Saturday dance from 4.00 pm PST to 8.00 pm PST every Saturday featuring DJ Essensual and from 8.00 pm PST featuring DJ Walter Balazic.

The hypergrid address is hg:lfgrid:8002:Speakeasy

The Latex Lounge is now re-opened at the Battersea region on the Littlefield grid and will host a dance from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific Time every Sunday.

The hypergrid URI is hg:lfgrid:8002:Battersea

Fire and Ice grid launches free Wiki for region owners

Fire and Ice landowners are now able to advertise their services through free pages that can be found on search engines after they are created and added to Places To Visit. (Image Courtesy Fire and Ice grid.)

Fire and Ice grid has a free Wiki for all landowners Landowners at the Fire and Ice grid can now create a free page for their regions, and these pages can be found on Google and search engines. Once a landowner registers an account with the grid, he or she simply needs to put the name of the page they wish to create into the search box in the top right-hand corner of the wiki.

If the page doesn’t exist already the landowner will be given the option to create a page. After creation of the page, the landowner can use the edit button to edit their pages.

“We encourage landowners and creators to link to each other’s pages and to add their own pages to the Places To Visit,” Fire and Ice grid owner Sara Payne told Hypergrid Business. “To the best of my knowledge, the Fire And Ice Grid is currently the only OpenSim grid offering this service. ”

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: A Dimension Beyond, Adroaniel, AilsaDream, AlariaLand, All Star Kids, Almost Heaven, AmunRiseN, Angel Grid, Araollan, Bernicia, BluAngel Grid, Bowenford, BudLand Grid, Caelum Alpha, Celadriede, ConcertVenue, Dormiamoci Su, Eenhgrid, Escape, EscapeGrid, EthanWorld, Etuvia, Fiethiel, FuoriGrid, Gabngio, GayMansDream, Gem, Hogwarts Fantastic Beasts, Holes, iMaginaWorld, Kohime, Lucifers Place, Marishka, Matt’s Grid, Midway, Nightwalker Services, NukoGrid, Open Mind Grid, Outlanders, Power Angels, Raynna, Rennoc World, Reserected Worlds, Saint World, Shasiyadynasty, SimWorkx, The Etheria Net, Threeworld, Virtual Ville, Virtual World Solutions, and Worldwide.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database?

Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,555 different publicly-accessible grids, 365 of which were active this month, and 293 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.

Top 40 by land area:

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