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The cloud-based, on-demand Kitely grid has added support for non-player characters (NPCs) and instant teleport gates as part of its upgrade to the latest version of OpenSim, the company announced today. NPCs — also known as bots — are useful for creating automated tour guides, robot receptionists, and, in roleRead More →

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Georgia’s Forsyth County Schools plans to triple the number of its OpenSim regions next year, the district’s coordinator of online education, Steve Mashburn, announced at Friday’s Non-Profit Commons meeting in Second Life. The school district deployed a 16-region grid, hosted by Dreamland Metaverse, earlier this year. The same vendor will be usedRead More →

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In the first quarter of the year, the OMC virtual currency has gained both popularity and usefulness, with both the total currency in circulation and the number of grids it’s available for use on growing, which has also been reflected in the growing number of users. The OMC, or Open Metaverse Currency,Read More →

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The number of small OpenSim grids continued to climb this month, as companies, schools and individuals continued to strike out on their own. We’re tracking 285 grids, of which 169 are currently active — an increase of 26 grids from last month’s 143 active grids. Meanwhile, the top 40 public OpenSimRead More →

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Linden Lab has issued new guidelines for third-party viewers who wish to include advanced new features that use the proprietary Havoc physics engine. Of most interest to OpenSim users, the guidelines require that the viewer be “primarily focused on Second Life as a target market, and have a significant baseRead More →

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Press Release: Unity Reaches One Million Registered Developers SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – Apr 9, 2012) – Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity multi-platform engine and development tools, is thrilled to announce that the Unity engine and tools now has over 1 million registered developers and over 6 million total downloads.Read More →

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Press Release: Designing Digitally, Inc. Wins the 2012 Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge FRANKLIN, OHIO – Designing Digitally, Inc. took first place honors in the Familiarization category in the 2012 Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge with its 3D virtual campus tour of the United States Air Force Academy. The Ohio-based tech firmRead More →

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Companies interested in the cost-savings and productivity benefits of immersive virtual environments but put off by the cartoony avatars may soon have another option, according to LA-based Integrated Virtual Networks. IVN’s patented “Silhouette” technology uses standard cameras to capture the user’s image, isolates it from the background, and converts it intoRead More →

Member Turnover from Period One to Period Two

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New research released in March shows that OpenSim development is becoming increasingly led by entrepreneurs, hobbyists, and large corporations. While entrepreneurs remain important in the development of OpenSim, hobbyists are becoming more essential, said report authors Robin Teigland and Zeynep Yetis of the Stockholm School of Economics and Paul M. Di Gangi of Loyola University in Maryland.Read More →

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InWorldz co-founder David Daeschler, also known as Tranquillity Dexler in-world, announced plans for marketing and expansion at the InWorldz Convention in Las Vegas today. The grid, now celebrating its third birthday, will begin doing advertising for the first time, Daeschler said. He did not specify a time frame. And new mentorsRead More →

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Press Release: Worlds Inc. Receives Sixth “Virtual Worlds” Patent BOSTON, MA —  Worlds Inc.  announced that it has been issued patent no. 8,145,998 from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office  for patent application no. 12/406,970 titled “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space.” This isRead More →

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Hypergrid inventor and UC Irvine professor Crista Lopes — also known as  “Diva Canto” — has added a feature to OpenSim where you can invite someone to be your friend even if they’re not on your grid. In fact, they don’t even have to be logged on — they’ll get the inviteRead More →

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New World Studio, which is currently the easiest way — by far — to install OpenSim on a home computer, will get an upgrade and some new features next month, said Olivier Battini, president of the Virtus Association, the non-profit behind both New World Studio and New World Grid. New World StudioRead More →

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Press release: Broad/MSU launches Virtual Broad Art Museum with original digital artworks on view in multi-user online environment East Lansing, MI – The Virtual Broad Art Museum, a multi-user online environment developed in anticipation of the fall 2012 opening of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan StateRead More →

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Press release: Forsyth County Schools has selected Dreamland Metaverse ATLANTA, GA – Forsyth County Schools announced today that it has selected Dreamland Metaverse to host the NOBLE Virtual World on the OpenSim platform. The metro Atlanta district, with 35 schools and 38,000 students, is the first major school system in theRead More →

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A major spring cleaning on OSGrid — followed by an outage a couple of weeks later — played havok with the grid’s total region counts over the past four weeks. About three weeks ago, the grid dropped from more than 11,000 regions to just around 6,000 regions as a resultRead More →

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Press release: Ball State granted rights to develop $10 million Blue Mars virtual world technology Muncie, INDIANA – The future of virtual worlds has a new home at Ball State University, thanks to the generosity of Avatar Reality Inc., which granted the university rights to the multimillion-dollar 3-D virtual world platform, BlueRead More →

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Press release: Daden asks industry – what makes a good interactive chatbot? Birmingham UK — A survey to find out what functionality users want to see when they interact with a virtual agent – or chatbot – has been launched by chatbot specialists Daden Limited. Increasing in popularity, chatbots —Read More →

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Kitely, the cloud-based, on-demand OpenSim grid, announced much-awaited alternate logins today. Instead of having to sign in with a Facebook account, customers can now choose to use their Twitter accounts instead, or just an email address. However, signing in with Twitter or Facebook offers more functionality, said Oren Hurvitz, Kitely’s co-founderRead More →

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Editor’s note: This article was updated on 1/27/2023 to remove dead links and links to malicious sites. The U.S. military will be testing OpenSim’s scaling capabilities tomorrow, on the MOSES test grid. MOSES — Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy — is an OpenSim-based world run by the U.S. Army SimulationRead More →

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Avination, one of the top commercial grids using the OpenSim software, announced today that it has enabled border crossings for vehicles with the latest release of its server software. The standard OpenSim physics engine lags behind that of Second Life when it comes to vehicles, and there are problems havingRead More →

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Press Release: Serious Games Association Forming: Open to Publishers, Developers, Technology Providers, Consultants LOS ANGELES– The Serious Games Association (SGA), designed to support all professionals in the serious games community with educational conferences, special interest groups, tools and training, is open for membership at www.seriousgamesassociation.com. Programs and services for all marketRead More →

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Press release: Course teaches journalists in a virtual world how to cover disasters and crises in the real world The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas collaborated with the Virtual Journalism Learning Center (VJLC) to offer a free course in Spanish on “How to Cover Natural Disasters and Crises,”Read More →

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OpenSim’s top 40 public grids gained 580 new regions over the past month, hitting a new record high of 23,231 regions. Meanwhile, the total number of active public grids is now 118, with 20 new grids added to our list this month — not counting private grids, Sim-on-a-Sticks, and gridsRead More →

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Credit card thieves have figured out a way to steal money from OpenSim grid owners. They take the credit cards, and use them to purchase virtual currency from the grids. Then they turn around and redeem the currency for cash before the card holder notices the theft and complains. TheRead More →

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Imprudence — the recommended viewer for OSGrid, Kitely, and many other OpenSim grids — will be phased out in favor of the next-generation Kokua viewer. But folks who’ve exported content using Imprudence don’t have to worry. Kokua will, eventually, support object and exports and imports in the same format asRead More →

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Press Release: ProtonMedia Introduces ProtoSphere 2.0: the Immersive, Social, Learning & Collaboration Software for the Enterprise Market-leading collaboration environment for the cloud deeply integrates with Microsoft technologies LANSDALE, Pa.—ProtonMedia has introduced ProtoSphere 2.0, the company’s immersive business collaboration environment for the enterprise. ProtoSphere 2.0 is an innovative approach in immersive,Read More →

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Press Release Pleasanton, CA – Companies that want to monetize a hybrid event shouldn’t neglect the importance of marketing the virtual side, says Erica St. Angel, vice president of marketing for Sonic Foundry, who spoke at the 2012 Virtual Edge Summit, Jan 9-11, in San Diego. Companies already face the challengeRead More →

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OpenSim’s top 40 public grids gained 1,056 new regions over the past month, hitting a new record high of 22,651 regions. Meanwhile, the total number of active public grids is now over 90, with 16 new grids added to our list this month. There are also an unknown number ofRead More →

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Press release: ALTADYN® Introduces Patent Pending Technology For 3D Virtual Events, The First Self Service, Instantly Setup Full 3D Immersive Platform For Virtual Events With No Download Required Irvine, California – Altadyn announced its new platform today: 3D-VirtualEvents.com. Offered in SaaS mode on the cloud, it has been designed forRead More →

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Note: Updated with new contact email address. Ever since Vivox made its hosted voice service available for free to small and non-profit grids on December 23, OpenSim grids and individual region owners have quickly adopted the technology. Large commercial grids like Avination (which had Vivox first, several months ago) and KitelyRead More →

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Update: Island Oasis grid co-founder Karl Dreyer tells me that he’s keeping an eye on new developments in OpenSim that allow grid owners to filter content before it’s saved into an OAR file — and customers may soon be able to export their Island Oasis regions.  “I surely will beRead More →

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New Voice — the company that brought us $5.95 regions on OSGrid and its own Nova grid — just dropped the starting price for regions even lower. To zero. That’s right. These are full regions. On the Nova grid, which runs the Aurora-Sim version of OpenSim, they can hold 80,000Read More →

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Vehicle physics topped the list of missing features in our survey of OpenSim hosting providers this week. Because of the holiday — and the short notice — only 70 people responded to the survey, compared to last year’s 114. Of those, 52 percent said that vehicle physics was among theRead More →

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Kitely became the second commercial OpenSim grid to roll out Vivox voice today. Boston-based Vivox Inc. is currently the gold standard of in-world voice, used in Second Life, EVE Online, EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, DC Universe Online and in many other massively online multiplayer games. The company reported 60 millionRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids gained 915 new regions since this time last month, bringing the total number of regions on these grids to 21,595, a new record high. OSGrid was the single biggest gainer. The non-profit grid, which allows users to connect regions running on home computers at noRead More →

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Press release: WonderBuilders and STCC Awarded NSF Grant to Develop Virtual ESL Learning Environment Boston, MA— WonderBuilders, Inc., an Open Wonderland 3D virtual world platform and services provider, is partnering with Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) to create an English as a Second Language (ESL) learning environment. Funded by aRead More →

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Press Release: ‘Virtual Learning for Dummies’ Available From Virtual Communications Leader SAN FRANCISCO, CA — ON24, the global leader in webcasting and virtual event solutions, today announced the availability of “Virtual Learning for Dummies,” a free booklet that explains virtual training in a no-nonsense style. Available via ON24’s website, “VirtualRead More →

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Two new social worlds announced launches today — SmallWorlds, which is live, and Interactive City, which still seems to be the process of getting off the ground. SmallWorlds is a cartoonish, Flash-based, 2.5D, Lively-style virtual world more closely akin to Farmville than of Second Life. Built by New Zealand’s Outsmart,Read More →

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Press release: ITE and EON Reality to Set-Up Centre for Virtual 3D Learning in Singapore IRVINE, CA — EON Reality, Inc., the world’s leading interactive 3D software provider, today announced that ITE — Institute of Technical Education, Singapore, has signed a MOU — Memorandum of Understanding — to collaborate inRead More →

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Press Release: Training Expert Randy Hinrichs to Present a Free Online Seminar: “Thinking and Learning in 3D—How to Create Successful Virtual Learning Experiences” Author of the new book “Transforming Virtual World Learning” will join 40 attendees in VenueGen for an interactive, small-group discussion of how immersive virtual classrooms can improveRead More →

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Press release: UBM Partners with the Abu Dhabi Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training to Produce iCampus, the First Digital University in Middle East CHICAGO and LONDON — UBM Built Environment’s Client Solutions and UBM Studios today announced that they are partnering with the Abu Dhabi Centre forRead More →

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Cloud-based OpenSim vendor Kitely Ltd. rolled out two features today aimed at improving the social aspects of the grid — a list of publicly-accessible regions, and a maturity ranking system. “While many people use their virtual worlds for private activities, almost a third of all the Kitely worlds people haveRead More →

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Press Release: BAE Systems Invest in Daden to Develop Data Visualisation System Birmingham, UK — BAE Systems has signed an agreement with Birmingham based Daden Limited (Daden) to accelerate the development of a versatile 3D immersive visual analytics application which can be used for the collaborative analysis and understanding ofRead More →

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Press Release: ANCC Expands Virtual Poster Hall in 2011 Using the Digitell, 3D, Immersive Platform, ANCC Doubles the Number of Poster Sessions From Last Year Jamestown, NY– The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) has contracted with Digitell for a second year to expand their 3D, Virtual Poster Session Hall. TheRead More →

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Press Release: 3rdRockGid.com launches Occupy World Peace Virtual Initiative The owners of 3rdRockGrid.com have thrown their support and solidarity behind the efforts of the Occupy protest movement sweeping the world. “From our collective position, this is not only a noble step, but a necessary one in order to bring theRead More →

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Press Release: Discover the Innovation Behind Some of the Industry’s First Virtual Clinical Trials ProtonMedia and Microsoft to host workshop at Microsoft’s Technology Center featuring industry leaders discussing the impact of virtual clinical trials LANSDALE, Pa.–ProtonMedia and Microsoft will be hosting an interactive workshop focused on innovation in clinical trials.Read More →

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Press release: Fashion Research Institute Announces ScienceSim Land Grant Program Awardees New York, NY  – Fashion Research Institute has been collaborating with Intel Labs since 2009, helping to push the limits of content development, and overseeing the Science Sim Land Grant Program. The program consists of awards of campuses of fourRead More →