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Over 40,000 orders for the Oculus Rift’s Development Kit 2 have already come in, bringing the total number of headsets sold to over 100,000. The DK2 became available for pre-order in mid-March, and shipping is scheduled to begin next month. “We’ll ship 20 to 30,000 in July,” said Nate Mitchell,Read More →

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The BBC is experimenting with immersive virtual reality, according to today’s blog post by Cyrus Saihan, head of business development for BBC Future Media. “When the BBC started making the world’s first regular public television broadcasts in 1936, there were only about 20,000 TV sets capable of receiving the programming,”Read More →

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Update 2: The 200-plus-user drop on Zandramas, is due to a similar problem as at Metropolis, a glitch in the database during the recent upgrades. Update: The 700-user drop on Metropolis is a result of a glitch caused by some regions updating from OpenSim 0.7.6 to 0.8.0. The grid is working on fixingRead More →

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According to a new study by a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Business, patent trolls cost startups $21.772 billion in lost venture capital funding over the past five years. The study specifically focuses on actual patent trolls — companies that file 20 or more patent lawsuits — not onRead More →

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Framestore, the company behind the “Game of Thrones” virtual reality simulations at SXSWi 2014, has opened what it says is the world’s first virtual reality and immersive content studio. “We’re already building a state-of-the-art space in our New York office to accommodate a variety of cutting-edge equipment that will guideRead More →

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It was more than a year ago when developers from the Avination grid and the Singularity viewer got together and created a new permission for OpenSim, the export permission. Since then, no major grid has adopted it, not even Avination itself. Until now. But it’s not Avination rolling out the exportRead More →

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Expedia will now accept Bitcoin as payment for hotel reservations, the company announced in a press release Wednesday. The company will be using Coinbase to process the Bitcoin payments, converting them immediately into US dollars. This is the same vendor used by Overstock and Dish to process their Bitcoin payments.Read More →

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Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale offered insights into his new company’s business model and technical architecture yesterday in a talk and question-and-answer session about High Fidelity on the MOSES OpenSim grid yesterday. Of particular interest from a business perspective is that the High Fidelity software will be open source, similar toRead More →

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London-based Cmoar Ltd. unveiled a new smartphone-based virtual reality headset at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week. The company is planning a Kickstarter for the project, but no date has yet been set. The headset is designed for watching traditional movies on a virtual movie screen, for watching 3DRead More →

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Update: Simvalley, one of the grids mentioned in the below article, is no longer active. Folks who rent regions from Swondo, Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex and Sasso can now upgrade them to super-sized varregions at no additional costs. Swondo, a Dutch hosting company offering regions on OSgrid and Metropolis, has beenRead More →

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Control VR, the glove-based controller system that got half-way to its $250,000 Kickstarter goal after just one day, has now passed that goal with 23 days left to go. The Los Angles-based company is promising delivery by Christmas of this year, with a two-glove development kit priced at the $600 pledge level.Read More →

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As of today, the only Kitely users who can create new metered regions are those with premium accounts. As part of this change, the metered regions will also be renamed to “Premium” regions. In addition, all existing metered regions owned by free users will no longer be accessible by their ownersRead More →

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Do you think your design for a virtual Mars base is good enough to live in? Then you’ve got three days left to submit it to NASA. That’s right, the 3D content sharing site Thingiverse from MakerBot Industries LLC is teaming up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the MakerBotRead More →

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I love watching YouTube demos of new Oculus Rift titles, and am a fan of PewDiePie and folks like him. Last night, however, I watched an Oculus Rift review video that wasn’t the typical player-scared-by-creepy-shadow or man-scared-by-rollercoaster or grandmother-astounded-by-Tuscan-villa. It was an opera, Senza Peso, reviewed by emart. I’ve been trying toRead More →

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Quality reasons have caused Ohio-based YEI Corporation to delay shipping on its Kickstarter-funded PrioVR virtual reality full body controller system. “You deserve a quality product and we don’t believe the product we can ship next month will meet that level of quality,” said Mike Sutherland, VP of YEI Technology, in an announcement. “The shortRead More →

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With 14 days left to go in its Kickstarter, the Beijing-based ANTVR Technology Co., Ltd., is now looking at stretch goals for the next two weeks. The Kickstarter for an open source version of the Oculus Rift ends on Jun 23 and has already passed $231,000 on a goal of $200,000.Read More →

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Loading Human, a first-person adventure from Untold Games that ended a successful Kickstarter this past Tuesday, will have a natural, “invisible interface” approach to interactivity. Hand-held controllers allow the player to interact with any object in the game. Of particular interest is the fact that the in-world hands change gesturesRead More →

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The Virtuix Omni, an omni-directional treadmill commonly seen in conjunction with the Oculus Rift, has delayed shipping to end of this summer or later. According to an update sent out a week ago to its Kickstarter backers, Virtuix has run into manufacturing issues with one of the components of theRead More →

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OpenSim news site Grid-Press has reached its first fundraising goal on Patreon, a crowdfunding site that allows supporters to schedule regular payments to artists and other creators. Pledges start at as little as $1 a month, and higher pledge levels come with bonuses such as T-shirts and exclusive OAR files.Read More →

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Two leading OpenSim hosting vendors — Kitely and Zetamex — both announced major site redesigns this week. But only one can be the winner of our first site vs. site, head-to-head redesign competition. And, before you start yelling, I understand that these two sites have different purposes, and service differentRead More →

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The Tropical Paradise Virtual World grid shut down with no warning to either its residents or its staff, one of the employees told Hypergrid Business today. “Today, everything — including the grid, the website, Facebook and Twitter — were taken down without any prior notice or warning to anyone,” saidRead More →

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Press release: Announcing the 2nd Annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014 June 3, 2014 – AvaCon and the Overte Foundation are pleased to announce the second annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014, to take place virtually on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid on November 8-9, 2014. The OpenSimulator Community Conference is anRead More →

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The on-demand Kitely grid has fixed a minor but annoying hypergrid bug and will be donating it to the OpenSim community. The bug fix was part of a bigger collection of bug fixes and site design changes announced today. Usually, to teleport from one grid to another, users type aRead More →

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According to the latest Google Analytics report, the number of unique monthly readers on Hypergrid Business passed 19,000 this month. Readership normally goes up and down a bit every month, depending on the season, breaking stories, and how much time I have to spend on the site, but typically hoversRead More →

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This month we’re featuring poetry and other literary-related events on the hypergrid. Poetry on Kitely The on-demand Kitely grid is rapidly becoming a poetry hub for the hypergrid. Every Sunday except June 1, at 3 p.m. Pacific, there’s the “Freda in Progress” reading at the Babel Tower Auditorium on theRead More →

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Oculus VR is teaming up with Samsung on a new virtual reality headset, Engadget reported today. Oculus will provide the software, Samsung will handle the hardware. Samsung will also give Oculus early access to its next-generation OLED display screens. The site also reported that Samsung’s new headset will not beRead More →

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The much-troubled AviWorlds grid is down again. The grid has been a target for controversy since its first launched in early 2011 as AvWorlds with a plan of being the most expensive social grid. Since then the grid has changed business models numerous times, changed hosting providers, and repeatedly changedRead More →

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Las Vegas-based OpenSim hosting company Zetamex will stop hosting minigrids on June 1, company CEO Timothy Rogers announced yesterday. Zetamex will continue to provide hosting for individual regions and full grids. A minigrid — technically known as a standalone — is a grid that runs entirely within a single server.Read More →

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Today, I decided that what my gates were missing were sound and light effects. Other gates had whooshing noises and particle explosions — I wanted them, too. I couldn’t find any that I liked. Maybe I didn’t search hard enough but anyway, I looked up the instructions for llPlaySound andRead More →

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Today, I helped an OpenSim entrepreneur, known to the metaverse as Minethere Always, come up with a visual style for her ads and website, using a super slimmed down version of the branding process that an agency would use. She might decide to go into a totally different direction, whichRead More →

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If you’re like me, you’ve been downloading OAR files like crazy. For example, I’ve got a full set of Linda Kellie OARs — just in case. And the Hyperica hyperport redesign keeps generating new OARs, since we want to save a copy at every major step in the process. Up untilRead More →

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Mona Eberhardt has a great post today on Living Virtually about the heights of Second Life avatars. Unfortunately, since we use the same viewers, all the same issues apply to OpenSim users as well. Maybe somebody out there has some ideas for a solution?Read More →

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Since I last checked out grid-worthy WordPress themes, many more gorgeous, free, responsive themes have hit the market. Here’s a roundup of a few I’ve collected, thinking, “Wow, this would make a great grid website!” because they have a strong focus on images. These themes illustrate some of the other things IRead More →

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Sarah Kline, moderator of the OpenSim Google Plus community, posted a note today that the grid is now accepting reservations for the festivities. The event will be held on July 26 and 27, and two 512-meter-square variable regions have been created for it — a land area equivalent to eightRead More →

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I’m always playing around with hypergate scripts, trying to make them easier to use. This particular script works by getting the name of your destination from the object’s name, and its hypergrid or local address from its description. The gate itself is just a flat panel in two pieces, theRead More →

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I’ve been asked for some marketing advice recently, and realized that other people might benefit from it as well. I’ve written on this topic before, but it hasn’t made much of an impact! So I’m revisiting it again. I truly believe that OpenSim is a great platform, and what itRead More →

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Vancouver-based Utherverse Digital Inc., a proprietary virtual world platform known for its adult content, is developing a new generation of its software that will not only be Oculus Rift compatible right from the start, but can also replace your current Web browser. According to Utherverse CEO Brian Shuster, the new Curio browserRead More →

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Las Vegas-based OpenSim hosting provider Zetamex has announced a new inventory system that promises to be faster and more scalable than the default OpenSim infrastructure, with the ability to heal itself automatically if data is corrupted. The system is currently in preliminary testing and available exclusively to Zetamex customers. There isRead More →

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The virtual reality hardware landscape is changing so quickly, it’s hard to keep up. But one trend is already clear, with devices falling into one of three categories — PC and console peripherals, self-contained systems, and smartphone-powered headsets. Here’s an overview of what’s going on with the all the majorRead More →

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Littlefield Grid is raising money for charity victims with donation boards on its high-traffic public areas. “We hope that it helps,” said grid owner Walter Balazic. The project was spearheaded by one of the grid’s residents, who lives in Serbia. “I’m sure Contessa Newton would appreciate our friendship and supportRead More →