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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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Virtual reality is about to make a huge impact on everything from gaming to business. But virtual reality may be changing our homes as well. Here are five ways that virtual reality is impacting architecture and interior design. 1. Offering a new tool for visualizing design Virtual reality interfaces allow for testing newRead 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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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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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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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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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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There’s been quite a bit of debate about whether violent video games can make people more violent in real life — though no conclusive research. With the advent of virtual reality — immersive, interactive experiences in which users feel as though they are actually characters inside a different world — thisRead More →

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OpenSim-based virtual networking company SimB2B was recognized as a top-five startup at the CoInvent NY Startup Showcase on Thursday, one of over twenty companies presenting. “SimB2B is the first grid to offer business to business networking and events such as trade shows,” SimB2B vice president Jack Mamiye told Hypergrid Business.  IndividualRead More →

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Virtual reality’s success or failure will depend on interface design, Oculus Rift chief scientist Steve LaValle told a packed virtual conference hall last weekend at the OpenSimulator Community Conference. “If we do fail, it’ll be because human comfort hasn’t been given the respect it needs,” he told the attendees onRead More →

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Full immersion virtual reality might be here sooner than you think — for movies, at least. Palo Alto-based Jaunt VR is developing a suite of hardware and software tools for creating 360-degree virtual reality videos. The use of 16-camera contraptions and 3-D sound-field microphones, which capture the sounds coming from variousRead More →

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With OSgrid down for three months and no news from its managers about when it is expected to come back up, other grids have been stepping up to serve its users. Most recently, Tangle Grid launched the open Tangle OS grid at the beginning of October. That grid is nowRead More →

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If you live, like me, in a northern climate, then you might be starting to suffer from the lack of sunlight, and from the cold November winds. Fortunately, there’s plenty to do in on OpenSim grids, where the sun shines bright whenever you want it to and the temperature is alwaysRead More →

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Love them or hate them — and many people do love them — but there are now breedables on the hypergrid. Previously, breedables in OpenSim were limited to closed grids like InWorldz, with Oyo Breedables, Fussels Breedables, and, of course, Amaretto Breedables. As of this week, however, breedable turtles have arrivedRead More →

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Are you already preparing your smartphone to be your doorway to virtual reality? If no, it’s high time you did so. While virtual reality hardware keeps going three different paths, mobile platform is taking shape as the one with a huge potential to dominate eventually. So don’t wait for the consumerRead More →

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3rd Rock Grid, a mid-sized closed, commercial grid won’t be closed for too much longer. The next grid upgrade will bring hypergrid functionality in the next two or three weeks, grid founder Terry Ford, also known as Butch Arnold in-world, told Hypergrid Business. “We will have some safeguards in place to notRead More →

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It looks like a little gray box. But when you move it through the air, it sounds more as though you’re moving a whole orchestra around the room in the palm of your hand. Technology developed at the university makes it seem as though the music is coming from thisRead More →

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Exo-Life, a small social world, has completed its move from Zetamex to Dreamland Metaverse hosting this week. Zetamex and Dreamland Metaverse are the two leading hosting companies for companies, organizations and individuals running private OpenSim grids. How they switched The migration process was very straightforward, Dreamland CEO Dierk Brunner told HypergridRead More →

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Anyone who has worked on the production side of virtual environments can attest that content creation and scene development is a costly and time consuming endeavor. Depending on the complexity and fidelity of the scene, production can easily become the highest expense of the project. In more traditional virtual environmentsRead More →

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Bassima Alansary came to virtual worlds in secret. Her family and culture forbid her from having an avatar, or from speaking to men even in virtual settings. She lived in Saudia Arabia, in fear of being punished for the simple desire of wanting to learn to speak English. “When IRead More →

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Island Oasis pulled in the highest overall scores in the fifth annual OpenSim grid survey, narrowly edging out The Adult Grid for first place. Island Oasis is a top-ten grid by active users, making its high score even more surprising, since scores tend to diminish over time as grids get largerRead More →

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It’s going to be a busy month, with Oktoberfest and Halloween parties across the grids. One of the biggest Halloween celebration this year is probably the InWorldz Frightfest, on the InWorldz Event sims which will run from October 17 through Oct 31. Island Oasis will hold its Halloween Party on October 31.Read More →

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Update: The poll is now closed. See the results here. It’s time again for the OpenSim grid survey, where OpenSim residents can rank their grids and see how they compare to others. If your grid isn’t on the list, write it in and help the world discover new hidden gems.Read More →

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The London-based Spellscape grid, a magic-themed role play world, has donated code for filtered inventory exports. This would enable grid owners to allow their users to save their inventories in the form of IAR files, while still protecting exclusive content that is not allowed to leave the grid. Previously, this was only possibleRead More →

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The European Union is giving away more than 80 million Euro — US $103 million — as part of the FIWARE Accelerator Programme for tech startups using cutting-edge technologies such as realXtend, an early off-shoot of OpenSim. The funding is in the form of a direct grant — no equity or loan repayments required.Read More →

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As we wrote before, virtual reality is transforming education in many different ways. But one of the most powerful is that it helps students develop a motivation for learning through virtual rewards that provide real value to the learners, a sense of personal or group success, and personal autonomy. Virtual rewards can replace traditionalRead More →

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Virtual worlds are providing a new and exciting, interactive landscape for writers. One such place is Nara’s Nook, an OpenSim grid on which which authors gather weekly to discuss their projects and to share or promote published work. But grid owner Nara Malone takes this a step further. She actuallyRead More →

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3rd Rock Grid, a closed, commercial social grid known for its music scene, has stepped up with a fundraising call for another grid. OSgrid has been down for almost a month after a failure of its asset storage hardware and there’s been little information from the grid administrators so farRead More →

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The grid numbers were down this month, partly due to an outage on OSgrid, the oldest virtual world running on the OpenSim software and one of the largest grids. However, the number of downloads of the OpenSimulator software reached an all-time high this month. The number of standard region equivalents droppedRead More →

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Education and technology are interconnected. This synergy is able to transform the world we live in. The contradictory phenomenon is that while being an early adopter of technology, education is also one of the last sectors to be fully transformed by it, due to institutional inertia and a number ofRead More →

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August was a relatively slow month in OpenSim, but September is shaping up to be full of major events, including an anniversary celebration on Avination, an Air & Space Expo, a 9/11 commemoration, and much more. Make sure not to skip over the RezMela contest, where you decide this weekRead More →

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Press Release:  OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale as Keynote Speaker The OpenSimulator Community Conference is pleased to announce Philip Rosedale, Founder and CEO of High Fidelity, Inc. will be a keynote speaker at the second annual OpenSimulator Community Conference, scheduled to take place virtually on NovemberRead More →

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While many companies still haven’t even heard of virtual reality, real estate developer Panoptic Group has already been putting virtual reality to work, using it to help sell new properties. The Chicago-based firm is known for its innovative projects and teamed up with Arch Virtual, a company that builds custom virtual reality simulations for realRead More →

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Virtual reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus haven’t hit the consumer market yet, but virtual reality is already making a difference in many industries. The medical profession, for one, has been one of the earliest adopters of virtual reality, virtual worlds and simulations. Here are fiveRead More →

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Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder often experience a cluster of symptoms, including flashbacks and nightmares, emotional numbness and hyperarousal, which results in sleeping difficulties, angry outbursts and feeling constantly jumpy. “A veteran might be mowing his lawn on a peaceful summer’s day and suddenly the smell of gasoline fromRead More →

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A couple of days ago, I rounded up all the places where you can order a Google Cardboard kit. But you don’t have to settled for cardboard, if you have access to a 3D printer. Check out this guide for 3D printing your own Google Cardboard headset here. Several differentRead More →

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Tangle Grid is rapidly becoming known as the Expo Grid for their high-profile, hypergrid-enabled events. Tangle Grid’s Fashion Expo, which ended on August 3, brought in 85 visitors — up 55 percent from June’s Steam Expo on the same grid. About half of the Fashion Expo visitors came via hypergrid,Read 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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Rhode Island Congressman Jim Langevin didn’t even have to get out of his iBOT wheelchair to board the new roller coaster at the Warwick Mall. With a pair of headphones and an Oculus Rift headset, a virtual reality program catapulted him through flames, into mid-air and upside down in aRead More →

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Sept. 18 update: All prices will be going up on Nov. 1 but existing customers — and all those who order before Nov. 1 — will be grandfathered in. Read more here. Aug. 9 update: The prices were slightly raised, and more features added, with more starting regions, and choice of namesRead More →

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OpenSim users chose “better vehicles and physics” as a top priority more than any other feature in a Hypergrid Business survey this past week. You can see the raw results of the survey here. Overall, 43 respondents out of 143, or 31 percent, said that better vehicles and physics wereRead More →

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Update: The survey is now closed, but you can see all the raw results here.   The explosion of new virtual reality developments, the announcement that Linden Lab is working on a new version of Second Life, and a steady stream of updates from High Fidelity have combined to createRead More →

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Riftmax Theater 4D, a virtual environment with a theater and meeting space, has been released for the Oculus Rift and is now available for free as a download from Oculus Share or from the project website. It was also the location of last week’s Road to VR Roundtable Discussion and is where the talkRead More →

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A new branch of OpenSim, ArribaSim, promises better performance than mainline OpenSim while maintaining full compatibility. And now there’s a packaged version of it, called Arriba Mini-Grid, that sets itself up with a single click. The package is provided by Dorena’s World, a mid-sized German-language commercial grid. In face, Dorena’s WorldRead More →

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The biggest choice every new grid makes is whether to enable hypergrid or not. Every single grid up until now has opted for either yes, no, or sometimes. Newly-launched Exo-Life, however, has picked a different path. It is on the hypergrid, but connects only to eight other grids. Currently, of theRead More →

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The top OpenSim grids saw a record increase in active users this month, and a near-record increase in region counts, despite the summer season and a lack of stats from a major grid. The top 40 public OpenSim grids gained 2,109 regions this month, for a new record high of 46,907 regions.Read More →

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William Warren’s research group is advancing virtual reality technology in the service of studying the science of the swarm: how patterns of crowd movement emerge from individual behaviors. He described his work June 29 in a keynote address to a conference in Vancouver. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] —The cognitive scientistsRead More →