OpenSim grids are gearing up for the 4th of July and other summer events this coming month. OSgrid holds giant birthday bash OSgrid, the world’s most popular non-profit OpenSim grid, is having its seventh birthday celebration this month. The event will be held on July 26 and 27, and twoRead More →
Most virtual reality headsets these days follow one of two paths — they’re either peripherals that plug into a PC or a gaming console, or they’re hollow frames that users drop their smartphones into. GameFace — for now, at least — is unique. The company behind it, San Francisco-based GameFaceRead More →
Second Life is a “viable and flexible” platform for physics simulations testing alternatives and predecessors to Newtonian physics, according to a paper published last month by a professor at the Lutheran University of Brazil The choice to use Second Life for the experiment was a simple one. “As I researched a fewRead More →
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 →
Update: Simvalley, one of the grids mentioned in the below article, is no longer active.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 →
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 →
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 →
In February, I ran an overview piece about the Best metaverse communities, which has since become one of the most-read articles on this site. Yesterday, I updated that article with some new communities, and just got word of a few more communities that I’m missing, which might be of particular interest toRead More →
The on-demand, cloud-based Kitely grid has had hypergrid connectivity on its to-do list ever since it first launched in the spring of 2011. Actually enabling hypergrid, however, took quite a bit longer than expected — but the wait is finally over. Last night, the first group of users tested Kitely’sRead More →
The OpenSim metaverse nearly doubled in land area this month, as Virtual Worlds Grid added the equivalent of more than 18,000 regions to its grid, taking advantage of new variable size region functionality. Virtual Worlds Grid is a hypergrid-enabled community grid which provides free land to educators. The top 40Read More →
The release candidate of the next version of OpenSim — version 0.8 — is now out, and it’s got a bunch of cool new features, including a new default physics engine and the ability to rotate entire regions. A “release candidate” is not the final official release, but it isRead More →
Getting a student or employee into a virtual world is difficult enough without having to take them through the process of adding a private school or company grid to the viewer’s grid selection menu. There is currently no easy, automated process to create a custom viewer that has your gridRead More →
Update: Kitely made some changes on June 11. The story below has been updated to reflect those changes. Many grids offer free land to residents (get your free land report here), but nobody goes as far as to give away a full-sized, 100,000-prim region to everyone who comes along to useRead More →
Plenty of events happening around the OpenSim metaverse this month. The big social grids have packed events calendars. Check out the InWorldz Events Calendar and the InWorldz Event Announcements Forum Page. 3rd Rock Grid and Virtual Highway also have the month of May packed full of music and other community events,Read More →
If you accidentally stumbled on this story on Google thinking it was going to be about how to arrange cereal boxes on a supermarket shelf, you’re in the wrong place. This article is about how to create products that are designed to withstand commodification or virtualization. On second thought, someRead More →
The students at St. Kieran’s, a school in the Irish town of Broughal, recently went on a field trip to Clonmacnoise, a nearby site with historic ruins. They came back, and created a virtual model of the site in OpenSim. It took two weeks to build it, using the standardRead More →
Despite the dystopian predictions in Enerst Cline’s Ready Player One, the future virtual reality metaverse will not be owned and governed by one single corporate entity, said former Linden Lab CEO and founder Philip Rosedale in a keynote address today to the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference. Rosedale,Read More →
Kitely Market is out of private beta and is now delivering goods to any hypergrid-enabled grid. By default, the Market offers a choice of deliveries to avatars on Kitely itself, as well as to  Craft, DigiWorldz, FrancoGrid, Great Canadian Grid, Metropolis, OSgrid, and ZanGrid. Just make sure the items you’reRead More →
Storytelling is changing and the authors at Greyville Writer’s Colony have banded together to tell tales in the metaverse. The writers have created interactive stories, allowing readers to explore their worlds as their story unfolds on the screen. Offerings in this first set of tales range from 500 to 1,300Read More →
Businesses that sell land, currency or virtual content via their websites need to pay attention to online consumer interaction. Specifically, there’s a lot to be learned from e-commerce-related research about how to improve the order process. While e-commerce businesses selling products such as clothing or jewellery to the general publicRead More →
Celebrate Mardi Gras on Virtual Highway As usual, the Virtual Highway calendar is packed with DJ parties and live music every single day this month, with at least two events every day. This includes a Mardi Gras celebration on Monday, March 3 at 1 p.m. and a grand ball on Tuesday, MarchRead More →
We write a lot about business models in Hypergrid Business. You’ve got the big commercial grids, offering a lower-cost and more personal alternative to Second Life. The non-profits, which allow anyone to connect regions and live on donations from users, founders, and hosting companies. The school and company grids thatRead More →
Last updated Feb. 19, 2015: Please click here for latest list of Metaverse Communities. Staying on top of metaverse news and developments is hard. And getting help when you need it can be even harder. Fortunately, there are several online communities where OpenSim users share information and advice. Join in,Read More →
It’s the time of the year again, the time when lonely people all over the world feel even worse about themselves than normal. If you’re one of those people, then you’ll have a lot of places to avoid in February, since OpenSim grids are gearing up for Valentine’s Day. VirtualRead More →
The multi-grid, hypergrid-enabled OMC — Open Metaverse Currency — from Austrian currency exchange Virwox had its best year ever in 2013. The total value of transactions conducted in the virtual currency reached OMC 6.5 million in 2013, up three and a half times from OMC 1.8 million in 2012. That is equivalent to anRead More →
MADISON, Wisconsin – Almost three decades before Building Information Modeling (BIM) would go mainstream, the term “Virtual Building†was used in the earliest implementation of BIM through Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD debut in 1987. Since then, the concept hasn’t changed, but visualization technology has advanced to the point where designers, engineers, contractors,Read More →
The new year begins with both good news, and bad news. The bad news, first. Haven, a small commercial grid, closed as of December 27. Â According to a letter by the founder, health issues have cut into both the time and the financial resources she is able to dedicate toRead More →
2013 was a busy year for virtual worlds in general and Hypergrid Business in particular. According to Google Analytics, over 125,000 different people visited the site this year. About 44 percent were new visitors, stopping by just for one story that caught their attention. The rest, 56 percent, visited moreRead More →
The recent surprise announcement that the InWorldz/Second Life Connection Centers would be closed was followed by the creation of a new group to fill the void and word from the owner of the original group that he is not closing after all. Amore Crux, owner of the Connection Centers, issuedRead More →
Today, OpenSim development moves along at an uneven pace, with an estimated 1,200 bugs that need to be fixed before OpenSim can get to a stable, reliable version 1.0 release and get out of “alpha.” Development is mainly driven by three groups — large organizations like Intel who have paidRead More →
The results of the 2013 OpenSim hosting  are in, and the biggest surprise was the lack of votes for SimHost, once one of the leading vendors in this space. Another surprise? Vehicle physics tops the list of wanted OpenSim features, just as it did in 2011. Overall, 53 percent ofRead More →
The OpenSim grids are getting ready for the winter holidays this month, with calendars full of Christmas and winter-themed events. Holiday freebies, contests and music on Virtual Highway Virtual Highway, a closed commercial grid known for its music scene, is going all-out for the holidays this year. “Two stunning winterRead More →
Capitalizing on the excitement generated by the Oculus Rift, several other companies, both big and small, are jumping into the virtual reality headset market. There’s a product that projects 3D images onto a special screen in front of you, one that projects 3D virtual reality right into your eyeballs, andRead More →
InWorldz announced the beta version of a  new mobile fitness app this week, called InWorldz InShape. Participants will download a smartphone application which will allow their real-world movements and activities to be mirrored by their avatars in-world. The Android app will be available for download within the next two weeksRead More →
Amiryu Hosoi has earned over $200 since starting to list items on Kitely Market last Tuesday. This is the story of how this well-known designer decided to try out this platform. Hosoi started out in Second Life, with six regions on Japan Kanto, supported by her Hosoi Ichiba Second LifeRead More →
Regions on Second Life are going black, creators pulling out, Renderosity and CG Textures forbidding the upload of their content to Second Life, and a new survey of content creators indicates they expect things to get worse, while OpenSim grids stand ready to welcome another crop of fleeing content creators.Read More →
A public version of the browser-based PixieViewer will be available by Christmas, German-based PixieTec announced earlier this month, as will the source code for the project. Currently, the preview version of the viewer only works on the company’s own grid (read more about the preview release here). PixieTec is also working onRead More →
The Kitely Market is significantly different from Second Life’s Marketplace. Not only because it will soon allow delivery of items to foreign grids – that’s just the biggest and most obvious difference. But there are a number of other areas where, according to Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner, the new platformRead More →
The Kitely Marketplace is now open for business to residents of the Kitely grid with over 700 items listed. The web-based platform allows users to buy items for either Kitely Credits or real money, using PayPal. Payments made via Kitely Credits help preserve the anonymity of the buyers, while PayPal paymentsRead More →
If you’re an educator considering taking advantage of Second Life’s newly-restored educator discount, but wondering about what else is out there, check out some of these OpenSim-based alternatives. You typically get much lower prices, more control and privacy and — best of all — ability to back up entire regionsRead More →
InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, has made it possible for OpenSim users to have well-fitting mesh clothing. The grid hired former Second Life developer Karl Stiefvater — known as Qarl Fizz in-world — to finish work on his mesh deformer project, which began with a $5,555 crowdfunded project on Indiegogo. TheRead More →
Vivox may be the gold standard of voice in video games, and be the best integrated with Second Life and OpenSim viewers, but it isn’t the only game in town. TeamSpeak, for example, is another commercial voice product used on some grids. However, like Skype, it requires users to haveRead More →
San Francisco-based virtual worlds developer David Rowe has released a 3D viewer for OpenSim and Second Life, based on the Firestorm Viewer. The CtrlAltStudio Viewer works in conjunction with active shutter glasses and high-end graphics cards to create a 3D effect. “With the CtrlAltStudio Viewer, the display effect is that the virtualRead More →
While many OpenSim grids are trying to attract users from Second Life, or other grids, 3rd Rock Grid has decided to reach out to the real world for its latest marketing and outreach campaign, centered around its 3RG Music Village virtual performance space. The campaign will include targeted advertising through music-relatedRead More →
After Tuesday’s surprising announcement by Linden Lab prohibiting third-party trading in the Linden Dollar, some virtual currency exchanges are now fighting for their lives. “It is not only problem for Linden Lab or third party exchanges but also for but a big number of residents, especially from European countries, who will beRead More →
AviWorlds, a commercial social grid, will be going down on Wednesday as it switches from managed hosting by Dreamland Metaverse to running its own servers. AviWorlds has outgrown the management tools available from Dreamland Metaverse,  grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. The Dreamland Metaverse management panel offers some options,Read More →
I’ve written about New World Studio before, and just reviewed their Community and Licensed editions. The following are instructions for how to run the Community Edition the first time, and how to configure it without paying for the Licensed Edition. (Though the Licensed Edition makes the configuration a lot easier,Read More →
The commercial version of New World Studio is due out soon, and prices start at $20 per year for individual users, $38 for non-profits, and $64 for businesses. The Community Edition is still available for free, but has less functionality. (My review of its preview release is here.) Both editionsRead More →
I beta-tested the latest version of the New World Studio today. It took me exactly five clicks to have a new OpenSim-based world up and running on my computer. And the whole process took five minutes. Though probably half of it was spent taking pictures of my computer screen, resizingRead More →
Looking for an immersive platform for your company, non-profit, educational institution, or government agency? Start with the following list of vendors, all of which have a successful history of serving enterprise customers. Browser-based platforms Running a virtual world in a browser does impose some limitations on the environment. But, onRead More →