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A week ago, I asked: Can AviWorlds find stability under new management? We got the answer today, and the answer is, “No.” “After many weeks of thoughtful consideration, as well as viewing the many comments on Google+, Facebook, and in private emails, we’ve decided to end the battle and closeRead More →

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The number of exportable items sold on the Kitely Market has exceeded non-exportables for the first time since the company enabled delivery to other grids early last spring. When Kitely Market merchants add products to their online stores, they can sell those products in a number of variations — differentRead More →

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GE has created a virtual experience that uses the Oculus Rift headset to provide an immersive 3D trip to an oil factory on the seabed one mile down off the coast of Brazil, as seen from the pilot’s seat of the virtual Nautilus 1 submersible. Watch the video below, and readRead More →

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US $19.95 for a 15,000-prim region on the closed, commercial German-language GerGrid. No hypergrid.Read More →

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Virtuix Omni, the leading omni-directional treadmill for the Oculus Rift and similar virtual reality devices, unveiled its sleek final design this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Virtuix Omni raised over $1,000,000 in a Kickstarter campaign last July, and then raised another $2.7 million in fundingRead More →

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The name-calling and blame-throwing seems to be settling down, and it looks like AviWorlds is starting to find some stability under new management. Mike Hart is now the owner of the AviWorlds grid, and of the associated domain name AviWorlds.com. “We don’t have any paid staff, but we do haveRead More →

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If 2014 was the year of the hypergrid — and it was — then it should also have been the year of the OMC. After all, the OMC, or Open Metaverse Currency, is the only currency which works on the hypergrid and is backed by a trusted exchange, Austria’s Virwox. IfRead More →

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A new data replication has successfully passed its first round of testing, OSgrid grid administrator Allen Kerensky announced on Monday. However, there was still no word as to when the grid will be coming back up. In addition, the grid still hasn’t received its recovered data drives from the companyRead More →

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The “dark metaverse” of private OpenSim grids gained regions at four times the rate of public grids, according to Hypergrid Business projections based on a survey of hosting providers. Last year, private grids accounted for an estimated 60 percent of all grids, adding up to 50,070 regions in the “darkRead More →

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Zetamex, a Las Vegas-based OpenSim hosting company, has opened its doors to new customers yesterday, and published their new price schedule for region rentals. The regions are available on ZetaWorlds, Atek, WestWorld, Metropolis or any other open grid. Prices start at $15 a month for a single region capable ofRead More →

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Samsung has launched a new website, Milk VR, a dedicated portal for 360 degree virtual reality videos that people can view using the new Gear VR virtual reality headsets. For those without Gear VR headsets, they can still watch the videos on the website.Read More →

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Someday soon, we will have a virtual reality metaverse. A fantastical place, limited only by our imaginations, where time and space mean nothing and experiences are shared as easily as bit and bytes are today. What technology will form the basis of this metaverse? Will it be created by Facebook?Read More →

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I think, looking back, we’ll see 2014 as a pivotal year in the growth of the metaverse. This was the year that early adopters realized that virtual reality was on its way, the hypergrid came into its own, Google Plus became the social platform of choice for metaverse residents, theRead More →

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This past year has been a growth year for OpenSim. Over the previous twelve months, 22,409 regions, 71,442 registered users, and 2,189 active users. But some grids did better than others. User growth Metropolis gained the most active users this year in absolute terms. The open grid, based in Germany,Read More →

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First of all, if you despise Kim Kardashian and all that she stands for and have no appreciation for her business model, I’m telling you right up front you’re not going to appreciate this article. Also, if you don’t like it when people look at you, point their fingers andRead More →

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A third grid also offers the ability to upload and download avatar inventories — the Atek Grid, backed by  3D Virtual Web, Inc. and CloudServe, an OpenSim hosting company. The other two grids are the UK-based magic-themed grid Spellscape and Metropolis, an open grid based in Germany. An inventory backup, also knownRead More →

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We all know that qualified tech staffers cost money. But how much money, exactly? It’s not like you can look up the going rate for an OpenSim grid administrator … or can you? A grid admin is a lot like the webmasters we used to have back in the earlyRead More →

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Tangle Grid, a mid-sized commercial grid best known for its expos, has launched yet another open grid, WestWorld. Tangle previously launched another open grid, Tangle OS, at the start of October, which was then relaunched as the Atek Grid in partnership with CloudServe. Tangle withdrew from that partnership earlier thisRead More →

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Hammond, Ind. — Purdue University Calumet will introduce two graduate engineering degree programs in January. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education recently granted Purdue Calumet approval to offer Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and in Electrical and Computer Engineering effective with the upcoming spring semester. Classes begin Jan.Read More →

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If you’re looking for a world where women are the masters and men are the slaves — and who isn’t? — then you’re in luck this holiday season. Avalonia Estate, the only “femdom” lifestyle community grid in OpenSim is back. Now, running a grid is extremely labor intensive, so, thisRead More →

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Still undecided about which of the 200-plus active grids to use as your primary home base? This announcement should raise Metropolis a few notches on your list. The grid has just announced a Web-based inventory download tool that any grid resident can use. Metropolis inventory backup tool. The Metropolis toolRead More →

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I’ve been following the drama surrounding AviWorlds much, much closer than I would have liked — because I keep getting emails from the folks involved, and also because it’s my job. And I can honestly say that I don’t know who owns AviWorlds anymore, who runs it, and why peopleRead More →

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It’s shaping out to be a busy holiday season in OpenSim, with many grids holding holiday-themed events this year. A moment for quiet reflection If you’re looking to get away from all the crowds, and experience a quiet moment of reflection, visit the Norderhov church on the Xmir grid, atRead More →

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For the past couple of months, people have been submitting their favorite freebie destinations. After removing duplicates and offline destinations, here’s the final list. To travel the hypergrid, open your favorite viewer, log into any hypergrid-enabled grid — such as Kitely, Metropolis, Craft, or 3rd Rock Grid — and pull upRead More →

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OSgrid has posted an update about the data recovery process this week, but there was no information about when the grid will actually be coming back up — or whether all the data will be usable. “OSgrid cannot verify restored data can be used for asset service due to conversionsRead More →

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After turning on hypergrid connectivity in mid November, 3rd Rock Grid saw a dramatic spike in both active users and in region purchases. “Growth has been exploding the last few weeks,” grid owner and founder Terry Ford — also known as Butch Arnold in-world — told Hypergrid Business. The gridRead More →

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Growth in the Kitely Market‘s exportable products continued to exceed that of non-exportables this month, as Kitely rolled out several new features for merchants in recent weeks. The Kitely Market currently contains 7,213 different items or “variations,” grouped into 3,449 product listings. On the Kitely Market, like on Amazon andRead More →

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Rothenberg Ventures, a venture capital group that invests in early-stage startups, has announced its River program, a three-month virtual reality camp for startups. The entrepreneurs get mentoring, San Francisco office space, other support — and $100,000. The cost? Just a small chunk of your company’s equity. The deadline for applicationsRead More →

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Update: VR Focus and TechRadar have both confirmed that Microsoft has actually released its prototype virtual reality headset to a group of early developers. Microsoft is rumored to be planning to mass produce a head-worn virtual gaming device in 2015 and is expected to showcase the product at the E3Read More →

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The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids reached a new high this month, with the equivalent of 54,867 standard-sized regions, an increase of 744 regions compared to the same time last month. OpenSim also gained 6,492 new registered users. However, the total number of active users fell by 1,699, mostly due to theRead More →

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So you’re walking along on your virtual treadmill, wearing your virtual reality goggles, and you come to a door. You stretch out your hand to push it open and feel … nothing. Because there’s no physical door actually there. One way to fake a sense of touch is to attachRead More →

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AviWorlds, a commercial social grid with a history of experimenting with business models, is putting a stop to its latest experiment with the hypergrid. This is the fourth time, by our count, that AviWorlds has turned hypergrid connectivity on and off. The last time was this spring. Hypergrid is theRead More →

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What do OpenSim users want for most of all? Content. According to this year’s OpenSim  Hosting Survey, 35 percent of respondents most wanted an online marketplace, and 30 percent wanted a bigger selection of content — and 53 percent picked one or the other, or both. In third place was a web-basedRead More →

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Zetamex, the second highest-rated OpenSim hosting company, has been repeatedly criticized for changing things up too much — price plans, offerings, management panels, even CEOs — all have changed repeatedly in the past few months, leaving users struggling to keep up. Some of the changes have been for the better,Read More →

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More than half a million Google Cardboard kits are in user hands, Google Cardboard product manager Andrew Nartker announced in a blog post yesterday. Google Cardboard is a smartphone headset, typically made out of yes, cardboard, that often ships as an assemble-it-yourself kit. It comes with lenses, an NFC chip to tell virtualRead More →

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It was a three-way competition between Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex and CloudServe in this year’s hosting providers survey, since the OSgrid outage took a lot of the smaller hosting providers out of the running. Despite the outage, the total number of responses was up by 62 percent compared to last year.Read More →

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I may have been premature when I announced that immersive movies were the killer app for virtual reality. What was I thinking? Who wants to spend two hours in a bulky headset? Obviously, the killer app for virtual reality is going to be music videos. The length of a songRead More →

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Toronto-based Cordon Media, Inc. has raised more than $21,000 Canadian dollars on a $50,000 Indiegogo campaign for a new virtual reality smartphone headset that works with both iPhones and Android devices, folds up into a slim 15mm phone case, and comes with an innovative multi-touch gesture interface. The Pinć– pronounced “pinch” —Read More →

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Update: The survey is now closed, and part one of the results is up. Part two of the results is here. It’s almost the end of the year, time for the annual Hypergrid Business OpenSim Hosting Providers Survey. Please note that this is a not a survey about individual grids —Read More →

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VRChat — an application that adds multi-user support, directional audio and gestures to 3D environments — is now available through the Oculus Rift app store. Unlike OpenSim, it doesn’t support in-world content creation. Instead, it requires that the environments and avatars be created inside the Unity 3D engine. And whileRead More →

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3rd Rock Grid, one of the oldest social OpenSim grids, has joined the hypergrid. As a result, the number of active users on hypergrid-enabled grids has just crossed the 12,000 mark, to 12,416. 3rd Rock reported 470 active users last month. And, with the addition of 3rd Rock’s 443 regions,Read More →

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Winter Silvermith and Karima Hoisan joined Mal Burns, Maria Korolov, Tara Yeats and Petlove Petshop this week for a discussion of all things metaverse. Karima Hoisan is a well-known poet in Second Life and OpenSim, and part of the machinima duo Randt & Hoisan. Silversmith is the editor of the Corran Journal,Read More →

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Virtual reality artists can now paint in 3D, with a new painting app, Tilt Brush, released for the Oculus Rift. You can paint thick, three-dimensional brush strokes, smoke, stars, and even light, according to development studio Skillman & Hackett. Watch a preview video below. Read more about it on Wired.Read More →

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Android smartphone users can now watch Paul McCartney’s recent Candlestick Part concert in virtual reality by downloading this app and using it in conjunction with Google Cardboard or similar smartphone-phone based headset. “ It was a spectacular show, one we think everyone should be able to experience,” said Vaunt VR, theRead More →

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Gear VR manufacturer Samsung has posted two new virtual reality-related videos from its recent Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco. The video below demonstrates the Gear VR headset. In addition, Samsung lead designer Alex Cho talks about review research pertaining to virtual reality experience design. In the second video, below, Oculus Rift scientistRead More →

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Fidelity Labs, the R&D think-tank inside Fidelity Investments, created StockCity for Oculus Rift and the Web. Stock City is a 3D visualization tool that uses virtual reality to transform an investor’s stock portfolio into a city that conveys information about stocks without a single number or percentage. It is an immersiveRead More →

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The rock band The Who has released a free virtual reality app for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets and plan to add support for the Oculus Rift as well, when that device comes out. Watch the trailer for the app below. The app was created by UK-based design studioRead More →