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OSgrid, the popular OpenSim-based virtual world, has officially reopened to the public after a period of extended maintenance. The grid’s return marks a significant milestone for the OpenSim community, providing users with what administrators describe as “a more professional and stable experience.” The grid went down in early March, dueRead More →

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IDC released their latest headset predictions today, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. We saw a 10 percent bump in augmented and virtual reality headset shipments last year — but they’re predicting a 12 percent drop for 2025. Do the IDC numbers mean anything? Yes, they do. IDCRead More →

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OSgrid has entered emergency long-term maintenance after discovering that “all IAR files have been corrupted,” the grid announced yesterday. This is really bad news for residents who hadn’t yet had time to get their inventory backups downloaded ahead of the grid’s previously announced March 21 database reset. OSgrid will nowRead More →

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All the OpenSim stats were up this month, as both land area, active users, and registered users all increased compared to mid-December 2024. The land area of the public OpenSim grids went up by 170 standard region equivalents, active users were up by more than 700 — and the gridsRead More →

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Both land area and active users increased this month in OpenSim, possibly because people are spending more time inside, where it’s warm. But who knows, really, why people do what they do? Anyway, I am now tracking a total of 2,6617 public grids, of which 290 were active this monthRead More →

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Discovery Grid, which had been in OpenSim for more than a dozen years, is moving today to the Open 3D Engine platform, also known as O3DE. In his announcement, grid owner Rene Vega — also known as Balpien Hammerer in-world — cited declining user engagement and the limitations of OpenSimRead More →

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Second Life founder Philip Rosedale is coming to OpenSim tomorrow, Sunday Dec. 8, at 4 p.m. Pacific Time for a fireside chat at the OpenSimulator Community Conference. Rosedale founded Linden Lab in 1999 and continues innovating in virtual worlds. Watch the conversation in person at the OSCC conference grid, hypergridRead More →

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The OpenSimulator Community Conference, starts today with music and celebrations, then gets off to its full start tomorrow morning with a welcome panel with OpenSim core developers at 7 a.m. Pacific time tomorrow morning. You can see the full schedule here. You can also watch the presentations live streamed at AvaCon’sRead More →

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The Opensimulator Community Conference is the annual conference that focuses on the user community and developers of the OpenSimulator virtual world software. This year’s conference will run from December 6 to December 8, 2024. Registration is now open, and is free. OSCC 2024 kicks off with a Friday pre-conference launch event featuring meetups, art,Read More →

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The OpenSim Worlds Fair is set to launch on March 1, 2025, and will celebrate innovation, creativity, art, technology, fashion, and education in OpenSim. This event, a year in the making, will unite the OpenSim community under one roof, showcasing the talents and achievements that define our world. With nearlyRead More →

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Kitely has added support for physically based rendering (PBR) materials in both its virtual worlds and on the Kitely Market, the company announced this week. The update also includes support for textures up to 2,048 by 2,048 pixels in size. PBR materials allow for more realistic textures by simulating howRead More →

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The clock is ticking for virtual world enthusiasts and creators looking to share their innovations at this year’s OpenSimulator Community Conference. Potential presenters have until October 29, 2024 to submit their proposals for the twelfth annual gathering of the OpenSim community. “We hope that you can join us for ourRead More →

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The AvatarLife Viewer now supports video conferencing for up to 5 participants, audio conferencing, screen sharing without video, and six-language support. “We believe in empowering our users with the tools they need to communicate and collaborate seamlessly. Whether it’s for a small group chat, a business meeting, or sharing workRead More →

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It’s the spooky season here in the United States, with Halloween coming up soon and all sorts of creepy scary stuff happening, and cooler weather outside. Also — we’ve got the elections. So, three reasons for people not to want to leave their house and spend time in OpenSim asRead More →

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This year’s Storylink Radio’s October celebration is more ambitious than ever before, organizers told Hypergrid Business. There will be live in-world Halloween storytelling all month long and dozens of YouTube exclusive presentations, including short Halloween tales every night on Storylink Radio’s YouTube channel. All the videos were filmed in virtualRead More →

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This time of year — in the northern hemisphere, at least — people start spending more time inside as temperatures drop and school starts. So it’s no surprise that the total number of active users on the public OpenSim grids is going up. According to their published stats report, thereRead More →

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The virtual doors of OSFest 2024 have swung open, welcoming creators, builders, merchants, performers, and sponsors to begin crafting their digital spaces. This annual event, hosted on the OpenSim Fest grid, is set to run from October 4 through October 20, 2024, offering a diverse platform for virtual exhibitions, performances,Read More →

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Summer is generally a slow time for OpenSim, and virtual worlds in general, as people spend more time outside and on vacation and educational projects go on break. The total number of active users went down by more than 3,700, to 43,001. DigiWorldz, for example, lost 1,220 actives this month,Read More →

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Update (Sep 1, 2024): Several educators have asked to be able to order after the school year has started. To accommodate their request, Kitely decided to extended the offer until September 15. Only 10 more people will be able to take advantage of this deal, and there will be noRead More →

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The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids jumped by more than 33,000 region equivalents this month, with the addition of a large new grid to our list. However, the total number of active users was down by nearly 1,500, due to several grids not reporting stats this month. MissingRead More →

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Kitely, a leading OpenSim grid, has announced a significant upgrade to its virtual world hosting service, implementing an enhanced version of OpenSim 0.9.2.2. This update comes on the heels of a recent system-wide upgrade that doubled world performance. According to an announcement earlier this week, the new version of OpenSim includesRead More →

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OpenSim active users are up by 1,039 this month, reaching a new all-time high of 48,234. The total land area also increased, by 489 standard region equivalents. However, the total number of registered users on all the public OpenSim grids fell by more than 10,000 since May. The biggest reasonRead More →

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Kitely, a leading OpenSim grid, has announced a significant upgrade to its virtual world hosting service, doubling the performance of all Kitely regions without increasing prices. The company has achieved this by adopting the latest Amazon server technology, the M7i generation, while maintaining its existing pricing structure. “This upgrade enablesRead More →

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I don’t personally agree with the dystopian visions of the metaverse as presented by sci-fi writers. But if you want to understand where the inspiration for platforms like Second Life — and OpenSim — comes from, these books are a must-read. Plus, they might give us some tips about whatRead More →

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The total land area in OpenSim fell this month by over 3,000 standard region equivalents, the total number of registered users fell by just over 1,000, and the number of active monthly users dropped by 425 compared to this time last month. The region loss was due to the factRead More →

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Today was the last day of 3rd Rock Grid, one of the oldest grids in OpenSim. The grid announced that it was closing back in March, and, since then, many of the former residents have found their way to other grids, with ZetaWorlds being a popular destination. Start at Sirocco,Read More →

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I have a new OpenSim grid stats report coming out tomorrow, so I’ve been surfing OpenSim grid websites these last couple of days, looking for errant stats pages. And that means that I’ve been looking at a lot of grid home pages. And there are some really pretty ones outRead More →

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The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 138,831 standard regions this month, an all-time high — and the fourth month in a row that OpenSim land area has broken this record. That’s an increase of more than 5,000 regions since last month. The biggest gainerRead More →

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So. You have some thoughts about where OpenSim is going. Or there’s a cool new fashion designer in OpenSim you want to tell people about. Or there’s a feature you’d really like to see implemented. You’ve been thinking for a while about writing it up and sending it to HypergridRead More →

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So, I’m back home — after flying to Lima, Peru for an AI conference last week. I was there to give a keynote speech about AI. The whole flight over I was worried that Nvidia or OpenAI or someone else would announce news of such major importance that I’d haveRead More →

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The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 133,076 standard regions this month, an all-time high — and the third month in a row that OpenSim land area has broken records. There was an increase of 1,196 standard region equivalents compared to last month. Meanwhile, theRead More →

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The seventeenth annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference, beginning on Thursday, March 14, 2024, will be an online distributed conference happening in multiple virtual spaces. This conference focuses on the use of immersive virtual environments for educational purposes including virtual and augmented reality. This year we are returningRead More →

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I cover artificial intelligence at my day job. Every week, I talk to the experts building the technology and deploying it, and to companies already finding value in it. The AI-powered transformation is bigger than anything I’ve ever covered before, in my two-plus decades of technology journalism. And it’s movingRead More →

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The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 131,880 standard regions this month, an all-time high, with an increase of 369 standard regions compared to last month. Meanwhile, the total number of registered users went up by more than 2,100 and the number of active usersRead More →

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The organizers of OSFest 2024, an annual festival that will be held this coming October, recently opened voting for this year’s theme to their Discord community. Festival participants can vote by reacting with a specific emoji to indicate their preferred theme from a selection of options, either via the OSFestRead More →

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The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 131,511 standard regions this month, an all-time high, on an increase of more than 1,000 standard regions compared to last month. However, the total number of active users went down by over 3,500. Part of the decrease wasRead More →

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I’m giving two presentations tomorrow at the OpenSim Community Conference. First, I’m giving my usual state of the hypergrid talk at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time. I’ll be doing a roundup of this year’s top news and OpenSim statistics. Then, at 4 p.m. Pacific, I’ll be talking about how generative AIRead More →

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As usual this time of year, activity on OpenSim grids is up as people spend more time inside on the computer, and grids ramp up for holiday events. Compared to last month, the number of active users is up by nearly 1,700. The total land area is down, however, byRead More →