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Last September, I looked at the land prices on all the public OpenSim grids, and the average price was $20.39 per standard region. Today, I reviewed the prices of all 55 grids that I know of that post their prices, and the average has fallen slightly to $19.22. The medianRead More →

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I occasionally get emails from people starting new OpenSim grids, and wondering how they’re going to pay for them. Here are the top five ways that OpenSim grids find success. 1. Commercial grids These are the best-known grids, typically because they put the most time and resources into sales andRead More →

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Genesis Metaverse, a commercial grid that emerged last fall from the collapse of Avi-Labs, has been having problems with its currency vendor, Podex, and took the dispute public today. For residents, this means that they will now buy and sell their currency directly from the grid and not from Podex,Read More →

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Today, I got another submission for a free ad that was basically just the grid’s name. And I regularly talk to grid owners who try to tell me that their grid is special because of its community, and to attract residents they offer low-cost land and free user accounts. HavingRead More →

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The Google Plus community OpenSim Everything gained 131 new members since last September, bringing it to a total of 506 members. It was the single biggest gainer of the OpenSim-specific communities we follow. However, more people could be visiting the community without becoming official members. OpenSim Virtual remains the largestRead More →

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If you’re a fan of Torben Asp — and you probably are, as he’s one of OpenSim’s favorite performers — and you live or visit the US east coast, you might now be able to catch him performing live, in person. “The move to the USA is to pursue a real lifeRead More →

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InWorldz announced that as of this month, it will no longer be publishing its region stats or active user numbers, two statistics which have been falling over the past few months. Total registered user numbers and the number of users currently logged in remain on the login screen, however. AccordingRead More →

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It seems unfair, but there are some people out there who seem to have the trust of their customers, no matter how many times they let them down. And other, completely decent, honorable grids can’t seem to get any respect. Part of the problem is that many honest, reliable, hard-workingRead More →

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This time, AviWorlds shut down not with a loud scandal, but without even a whisper. Over the past few days, grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli has opted not to renew his grid servers, let his domain name expire, and shut down his media accounts and stopped responding to emails, Skype messages,Read More →

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If you want to rent land, or sell other products or services, you need a landing page. A landing page is a page that converts someone who is vaguely interested in what you are offering into an actual customer. The effectiveness of your landing page is known as the conversionRead More →

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ZanGrid went live with the Gloebit virtual currency on Monday as the platform gets ready to start approving merchant cashouts. The currency can also already be used on Mobius Grid. Users can use a single virtual wallet to shop on any Gloebit-supported grid, and, when the grids allow, take the purchasesRead More →

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$6 for three years of protection against lawsuits from US creators — for any grid, anywhere in the world helps protect against take-downs by hosting companies and domain registrars helps keep creators from going to social media and blogs to get attention for problems The US Copyright office has madeRead More →

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In response to yesterday’s post about the changing editorial direction at Hypergrid Business — and free ads — I’ve been flooded with requests for advertisements. And I want to run the ads. Really, I do. Promoting OpenSim to the 100,000-plus site visitors who might not have heard of OpenSim beforeRead More →

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The world seems to have hit a tipping point when it comes to immersive environments, and the pace of change is exploding. These changes have been dramatically reflected in the readership of this site over the past couple of months. My life is about to change dramatically as well. SoRead More →

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OutWorldz founder Fred Beckhusen has purchased the Hyperica OpenSim directory from Hypergrid Business. He will continue to maintain the current website, add more content, and add more functionality, as well as the in-world hyperport, and the in-viewer destination guide. The Hyperica website had nearly 20,000 unique visitors over the courseRead More →

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AviWorldz has officially joined the big grid migration of 2017, becoming the latest in a string of grids to switch to DigiWorldz hosting. DigiWorldz is mostly known as a popular commercial OpenSim grid, but the company also provides hosting for other grids. This means that would-be grid owners can focusRead More →

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Firestorm is the preferred viewer for OpenSim users, based on a survey of Hypergrid Business readers. Nearly 53 percent of respondents chose Firestorm as their favorite, followed by 26 percent for Singularity and 7 percent for Alchemy. Firestorm was also the viewer that most people had tried. According to the survey,Read More →

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It didn’t take long at all. It was less than three weeks ago that Alexsandro Pomposelli announced that AviWorlds was back up and running — from his garage. The much-troubled grid is now down again as a result of a power surge, he told Hypergrid Business. “My anti-power surge didRead More →

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Last year was a mixed year for OpenSim grids. Active users were up, but the increase was much lower than in the previous year. The increase in registered users was also smaller, but this was mostly due to a multi-month outage on Avination, which is still down. Land area actually shrank thisRead More →

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Genesis Metaverse, a company which previously ran its own grid and also provided hosting to other grids, has left the hosting business and is now using DigiWorldz to handle its hosting and OpenSim management. The company was formed after last summer’s disastrous flameout of the AviWorlds grid and its associatedRead More →

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The OpenSim Embassy has a grand opening tomorrow, January 11, on the Second Life grid. Performers at tomorrow’s event, which starts at 11 a.m. Pacific, include the ChangHigh Sisters Fireshow of Light, Life and Love, SingerGirl XOXOXO, Amazon Ballet, DJ Pilou, and TatianaCoin. It will be held in the OpenSim EmbassyRead More →

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The Canadian Sun, an in-world magazine on the Great Canadian Grid, is sponsoring a St. Patrick’s Day parade on Friday, March 17. Participants are starting to build floats now, but there is still room for interested groups to sign up. Organizers are also looking for performers, and there will beRead More →

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OpenSim users can buy legal mesh bodies for their avatars — and the news has helped keep noted designer Linda Kellie from leaving. “Jessica Random and I sat down the other day and made a pro and con list,” she wrote in a post yesterday. “And in the end one ofRead More →

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Updated: January 19, 2018 Virtual reality is still in its very very very early stages. The headsets are bulky or uncomfortable, the interfaces aren’t really there yet, there isn’t that much content, and the experiences can sometimes give you motion sickness. But you need to try it anyway, and haveRead More →

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The AviWorlds grid is back up and running, grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business today. This is now officially the grid’s tenth incarnation, not counting the times it was down due to server problems or other temporary issues. The grid’s loginURI and hypergrid address is login.aviworlds.com:8002 and OpenSim users who wishRead More →

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The Baller Nation and Kea Nation grids have both moved to DigiWorldz. The two were previously the marquee customers of Genesis MetaVerse, which, like DigiWorldz, both runs its own grid and also offers hosting services for other grids. Genesis MetaVerse was one of the two hosting companies that emerged lastRead More →

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Genesis Metaverse has been attacked and some systems have been damaged, but the grid has been able to recover much of its data. To help protect against future attacks, the grid has also switched server companies, upgraded its hardware, added more backups and is taking other precautionary measure as well.Read More →

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For the past few years, the Hyperica grid and website has been a directory of hypergrid destinations for OpenSim users. Nearly 40,000 people have visited the site over the past two years, with more than 330,000 page views total. Those are decent numbers for OpenSim, but are tiny compared toRead More →

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It seems that everyone has been getting virtual reality for Christmas — and posting the reaction videos on YouTube: And on Twitter… Holiday 2016 VR Reactions   Here at Hypergrid Business, we normally get between 3,000 and 4,000 people a day looking for Google Cardboard QR Codes — on Sunday, thatRead More →

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At a time when grid outages and scandals are in the news (okay, just the one grid, but they do create a lot of news) it’s nice to see a grid do something positive. On Tuesday, I saw this post from DigiWorldz show up in my social media, which leadsRead More →

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I’ve been doing the stats report every month — without a break — since mid-2009. With nearly 300 active grids, many of which don’t have standard stats pages, the amount of work going into this has become unmanageable. It eats up parts of several days of my time, contacting everyone,Read More →

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This past year has been a troubling one for OpenSim, with slowing growth rates and increasing concerns that OpenSim will be sidelined by advances in virtual reality platforms. Active users numbers went up, but at a slower rate than in any of the previous years, and a steep decline fromRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids reached a new high of active users, 35,692, an increase of more than 2,000 since this time last month. The 2016 OpenSim Community Conference was responsible for about a quarter of the increase, but many other grids also saw gains. The total number of registered usersRead More →

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If you missed the panels from last weekend’s OpenSim Community Conference, you can now catch up with some of them on YouTube. OpenSimulator Core Developer Panel A discussion of key issues facing OpenSim developers, with Avacon founder Joyce Bettencourt, OpenSimulator core developer Robert Adams, core developer Michael Cerquoni, OpenSim core developer andRead More →

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Kitely Market sales have increased significantly over the past year, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. The market now delivers licensed OpenSim content to 162 grids, with 16,364 product variations grouped under 8,551 listings. Of the variations, 11,394 are sold with the export permission, meaning that they can beRead More →

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It’s not too late to order virtual reality presents for the holidays — and they don’t have to cost a lot of money, either! Once you get your headset, click here for instructions on what to do next. Here are some of my favorites — and I’ve personally tried these,Read More →

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Press release: myVR Launches Social Virtual Reality Platform for iOS myVR – Virtually Everything Brings Together Content Discovery, Social Interactions, Video, Chat and More in a Totally Immersive Experience San Francisco, CA – After a successful launch on Android on October, myVR, a new virtual reality social platform, today launchedRead More →

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OpenSim hosting company Dreamland Metaverse received the highest scores for performance, support, stability and its user interface in this year’s hosting providers survey, followed by DigiWorldz and Zetamex Network. There were 40 responses total to this year’s hosting survey, which asks grid owners about their hosting providers. However, many ofRead More →

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According to a new survey by Parks Associates, nearly 50 percent of U.S. broadband households who try a virtual reality headset plan to buy one. In addition, 3.5 percent of broadband households, or about 3.4 million households, already own a virtual reality headset. Despite the recent media attention to virtual reality,Read More →

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AviWorlds has received backups of region files of its residents from a former employee, grid owner Alexandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “Josh has sent me the files for AviWorlds and AviBrasil grids,” he said, referring to former head of technology Josh Boam. AviWorlds, and its sister hosting company, Avi-Labs, sufferedRead More →

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Updated: August 10, 2017 Do want to give a VR headset as a gift to someone with an iPhone — or buy one for yourself? You can. You won’t get the best possible mobile experience, however, since the two best headsets — the Samsung Gear VR and the Daydream ViewRead More →

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Unlike Android VR games, which work reasonably well with standard, off-the-shelf Bluetooth controllers, iPhones are a bit more temperamental. Regular Bluetooth controllers don’t work. What you do get are some work-arounds, but they only work with a a tiny handful of the thousands of VR apps and games in the iPhoneRead More →

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AviWorlds is coming back, grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business today. The Avi-Labs OpenSim hosting will also return, he said. “People can already order their free regions,” he said, even before the grid is back up. “When they sign in, their regions will be up.” The free region will haveRead More →