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Correction: Due to an error in collecting data from OSgrid, land area was undercounted this month. In fact, OpenSim’s land area actually increased by the equivalent of 828 regions. OSgrid did lose some land area, but only 395 regions — not 2,500 as reported. “Many people — including myself – have consolidatedRead More →

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For the last couple of years, Zetamex, an OpenSim hosting company, has also been hosting Zadaroo.com, which has a complete collection of Linda Kellie’s OARs, IARs, XML files, and textures. It’s a treasure-trove of content and includes everything most small grid owners need to get going: avatars, clothing, furniture, buildings, landscaping, scriptsRead More →

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It seems that every week, I talk to at least one person or organization who start out by saying, “and, of course, we started out project with Linda Kellie’s content.” Last week, for example, I talked to two researchers at City University London helping stroke victims recover their speaking skillsRead More →

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In an attempt to combat dwindling logins during the summer months, Craft is organizing a series of summer events — and participants who rent land from the grid get two months free rent for attending. Every year, residents who are still around complain about how few people there are in-world,Read More →

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Virtual world artists who wish to participate in Metropolis grid’s Summer of Arts 2015 can begin submitting their works tomorrow. New submissions will continue to be accepted until the end of summer. The exhibit opens to the public on September 25 and will run through October 25. This exhibition willRead More →

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My cardboard-based Google Cardboard is getting a little worn from use — and is just barely large enough to hold my new Samsung Galaxy S6 Android phone. So today I upgraded to the $40 Sunnypeak headset, which I ordered on Amazon. I ordered it on July 7 and it cameRead More →

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It was the longest happy relationship of my life. We slept together every night, and she woke me up every morning. She caught me up on the news, and whenever we drove somewhere, she gave me directions. If I missed a turn, she didn’t complain, just recalculated the route. SheRead More →

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The founders of the fast-growing, low-priced DigiWorldz grid have settled their ownership dispute, putting at rest fears about the grid’s stability and future. “I was able to negotiate an amicable agreement by all previous and current members of Digital Worlds Group, LLC,” grid founder Terry Ford told Hypergrid Business. “DigiWorldz is nowRead More →

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On Thursday, Legendary Pictures released a preview of the upcoming Warcraft movie — as a virtual reality app for Google Cardboard. Download the iPhone app here and the Android app here. The film, based on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft massively multi-player online roleplaying game, is due out next summer. Don’t haveRead More →

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Google Glass might not be completely dead. According to 9to5Google, an enterprise edition of Google Glass is on its way, and it will have a larger prism display, a faster processor and slightly better battery life. Late last fall, the Wall Street Journal reported that the new device will beRead More →

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This Sunday’s Socal Virtual Reality Conference and Expo is sold out, with over 800 attendees expected, according to media sponsor VR Digest. The main track will be broadcast live in 360 degree immersive video by VRLive.tv. That includes the keynote address by Terbine CEO David Knight, who is also is aRead More →

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The crowfunding campaign to build a virtual copy of the city of Lisbon was relaunched today, founder Carlos Loff said in an announcement. The project is now planned to be 144 regions in size, equivalent to about 9.4 square kilometers or 2,300 acres of virtual land. That’s about one-ninth the size ofRead More →

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In mid-June, Linden Lab announced that third-party exchanges must stop selling Linden dollars, which will effectively put all or most of these exchanges out of business by August 1. There is an English-language petition with around 300 signatures at SaveTheExchanges.com and a German-language petition at OpenPetition with more than 700 signatures. There is a smallRead More →

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Chinese phone maker OnePlus offered everyone a free Google Cardboard headset — you just pay for shipping — so that people could watch its smartphone launch virtually on July 27. The company sent out 30,000 sets, and ran out in about a day. According to the company, their Cardboard is thinner,Read More →

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San Francisco-based Fove Inc. concluded its Kickstarter campaign with $480,650 today, almost twice its initial goal of $250,000, and a couple of announcements about the headset. First, a new design was released, billed as lighter and smaller than the previous design, with new clasps. The company promises it will make for a moreRead More →

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The Kickstarter for the Fove virtual reality headset — the one that tracks where you are looking — is coming to an end this Saturday. There are only ten headsets left at the $375 support level — normally $500 — with delivery scheduled for May 2016. Fove has already nearly doubledRead More →

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Today, I was finally able to use my iPhone to walk around my little home region in OpenSim. Well, kind of… I used the CtrlAltStudio viewer to get the side-by-side 3D view. Then I used the Splashtop Streamer software to send my desktop display to the companion $2.99 Splashtop app on theRead More →

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All I wanted was to take a Damien Fate rigged mesh skirt, tweak it a little bit in Blender, and import it into OpenSim. But for some reason, bringing it into Blender destroyed the rigging. Kathleen Watkins, also known as Serene Jewell in-world, teaches free Blender classes on Kitely. (HerRead More →

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A week ago, Linden Lab announced that third-party exchanges have to stop offering Linden dollars, which will effectively put all or most of them out of business. Exchange operators are now asking users to sign a petition to keep them alive. So far, this petition has already garnered 600 signatures.Read More →

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Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey recently told Re/code that virtual reality will initially be mostly for hard-core gamers. The headset is expensive, and the computer hardware needed to run virtual reality applications is even more so — the total price is expected to come in at around $1,500. But you’llRead More →

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India’s home furnishings retailer HomeLane has created its own Google Cardboard-based headset to allow customers to visit virtual product showrooms. “Wear these glasses and walk into a virtual world where choosing between colours and finishes, countertops and flooring options, appliances and accessories is as easy as pie,” the company saidRead More →

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China-based OnePlus, known for their OnePlus One smartphone, is launching their OnePlus 2 smartphone next month in virtual reality. “You’re going to want to experience it, and to help you out, we are releasing our very own Cardboard,” the company said in an announcement. “It’s based on Cardboard 2.0, but with some notableRead More →

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Netherlands-based Manus Machina demonstrated a new virtual reality glove aimed at consumers at the E3 conference last week. The gloves connect wirelessly via Bluetooth to virtual reality headsets. “There are currently no other VR gloves on the market that are wireless and platform free,” the company said on its website. TheRead More →

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Is the $4 price tag of a Google Cardboard on Amazon too much for your budget? Don’t have the lenses and pizza box needed to make your own from scratch? Try the TinVR kit, which turns an empty soda or beer can and some felt into a virtual reality headsetRead More →

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Folks regularly share textures in the various Google Plus communities, and I’ve long wished that there was a place I could go to look through them all, instead of having to download them the minute I see them because I might not find them again. In particular, I want aRead More →

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OpenSim’s land area hit a new high this month and more than 9,000 new users registered on the grids, but active user numbers slipped by 672 as we enter the summer months. OpenSim grids gained 1,733 new regions, for a new total of 62,995. The gains were almost all on the hypergrid. ClosedRead More →

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Update: Linden Lab has posted an official notice confirming the news. Linden Lab is shutting down third-party currency exchanges, CrossWorlds exchange owner Tony Bastianelli told Hypergrid Business today. According to Bastianelli, he received an email today telling him that his reseller account will be shut down on August 1, and he will noRead More →

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The Kitely Market gained almost 700 new listings this month, its biggest growth month since the market first launched two years ago. More than two-thirds of these listings were for exportable items, available for purchase on almost any hypergrid-enabled grid and some closed grids. The market now has 9,392 differentRead More →

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According to a new KZero report covering virtual reality hardware, mobile device-based headsets have beaten integrated headsets to the market. Consumer versions of the Google Cardboard, Durovis Dive, Seebright, Altergaze, Vrizzmo and Samsung headsets are already available on the market, the report shows, while not a single of the integrated devices has hit the consumer market yet.Read More →

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After a dispute between the partners of Digital Worlds Group, a US-based company offering content creation, development, and OpenSim hosting services, the group’s DigiWorldz grid has been split off as its own company, now based in the Netherlands. Two of the former Digital Worlds Group partners, Mark Wiseman and Terry Ford, areRead More →

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Scientists at China’s University of Science and Technology of China and the Microsoft Research in Beijing have built a deep learning machine that outperforms an average human on the verbal analogies portion of the IQ test — normally the hardest part of the test for computers. In particular, they’ve solved the problem of oneRead More →

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  Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects company founded by George Lucas 40 years ago to work on Star Wars, is launching a lab specifically for virtual reality projects — and will begin with Star Wars. “As this new dimension in storytelling unfolds, ILMxLAB will develop virtual reality, augmented reality, real-time cinema,Read More →

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This week, Oculus VR demonstrated the new consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset, due to hit the market in the first quarter of 2016, as well as a couple of controllers — a standard XBox controller and a spacial motion controller. The biggest design difference from the most recentRead More →

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A little while ago, I noticed a familiar headline in a Google alert on a topic I follow — it was my own article, reprinted without permission on some other site! I quickly sent off this email: The following article on the website somewebsite.com, hosted by SomeHostingCompany, was reprinted without permission. Infringing article: TheRead More →

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The Adult Metaverse and OpenSim Virtual are still gaining members on Google Plus, but at about half the rate as last month. Adult Metaverse gained 54 new users, the biggest growth of any OpenSim-specific community, for a new total of 745 members. OpenSim Virtual gained 52 new members and retained itsRead More →

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Kitely has cut prices by 60 percent for its two top plans by more than half today and officially eliminated metered pricing for new customers. Previously, the most expensive plan was around $100 a month, for an island that could be configured as a megaregion as large as 16 standard regions,Read More →

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Last night, on In World Review, a major topic of discussion was how horrendously difficult Blender is to use. You can’t just install it and start playing around. I tried, and it almost killed me. No obvious mouse gestures work. The menus don’t make sense. In fact, there are threeRead More →

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Lenovo debuted a new virtual reality headset, the Lenovo VR Goggles, at Lenovo Tech World in Beijing this week. The headset will work with Android phones, but there’s no word yet about pricing or availability. Read more about it at Tom’s Hardware.Read More →

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Seattle development firm Luma has partnered with Studio216 and DEI Creative to create virtual reality experiences for potential condo buyers. The experience requires Oculus Rift headsets, but Studio216 also has virtual reality apps that can be accessed via smartphone headsets like the Google Cardboard. Read more about it here.Read More →

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Virtual reality will be “the next mega tech theme” and worth more than $60 billion in a decade, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “The diverse applications of VR in combination with accelerating technological improvements will lead to mainstream adoption over the next 10 years,” Munster wrote in a reportRead More →

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Virtual reality poster child Oculus VR has just acquired Surreal Vision, a computer vision firm that works on real-time 3D scene reconstruction. “By achieving the ability to continuously reconstruct and track the world around us, we’ll be able to build an understanding of the world at a semantic level,” said SurrealRead More →

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Updated Jan. 2, 2016: This page is so out of date! Please go see our Virtual Headsets Buying Guide, which lists over 70 Google Cardboard-compatible headsets categorized by price, and our handy Mobile virtual reality headset comparison chart, which has all the key specs, prices, and buying links for all the headsetsRead More →

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Google’s new Jump platform combines blueprints for a 360-degree camera rig, software that automatically assembles the videos into 3D footage, and a mobile app that can play the videos. Like with Google Cardboard, any manufacturer can create Jump-compatible cameras. Filmmakers can also make their own using off-the shelf cameras suchRead More →

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Customers have been able to shop on the Kitely Market and get the products delivered to other grids for over a year, But adding a new grid to the delivery list meant that the customer had to know the grid’s loginURI and add it through the grid manager. With hundredsRead More →

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In order to write about how to create stuff for sale on the Kitely Market, I’ve been playing around with baked-on clothing textures. In the process, I’ve learned a few more things about using layers to create textures with GIMP. Say, for example, you want to create a piece ofRead More →

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Hawaii-based Total Recall Technologies is accusing Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey of violating a confidentiality agreement that he signed as a former employee of the company. According to the lawsuit, he was hired specifically to develop a head-mounted display but used proprietary information for his Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign. Read more about the case at Reuters.Read More →