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The German-language Dorena’s World grid turned ten years old this month. Dorena’s World is one of the oldest grids in OpenSim. Founder Dorena Verne first came to OpenSim because “curiosity killed the cat,” she told Hypergrid Business. While Verne was still in Second Life, she started the grid as aRead More →

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Exhibitors can already start setting up for February’s Sci-Fi Expo on Tangle Grid, grid owner Leslie Kling told Hypergrid Business. The month-long exposition, accessible to hypergrid visitors, officially opens on Wednesday, February 5 and runs through March 5. The hypergrid address is tanglegrid.net:8002. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Writer Torn MacAlesterRead More →

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Stats were down this month in OpenSim, with the public grids reporting both fewer regions and fewer active users. It’s not an auspicious start to the year, especially since OpenSim stats declined in 2019 overall as well. This was the third consecutive month in which the total land area fell.Read More →

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Press release: VIRTUAL REALITY START-UP IMMERSIONN OPENS FOR BUSINESS New Discovery Engine for Immersive VR Content Launches with ‘Immersive Journalism’ Partnerships with Dagens Nyheter and Euronews 6 January 2019, London: Immersionn, a content discovery engine for virtual reality, today announced that it had officially launched its platform for subscribers and VRRead More →

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Over the past year, the public OpenSim grids lost both land area and active users. Since last December, grids lost the equivalent of 8,276 standard-sized regions, going from 81,326 regions to 73,050. And the total number of actives fell by 2,019, from 37,745 to 35,726. However, some individual grids didRead More →

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This past year has been full of questions for the OpenSim community. Who are we? Where are we going? Is the platform even worth it? The OpenSimulator software dates back to January 2007, according to the official history of the project. The open source virtual world software was meant toRead More →

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There will be New Year’s Eve party all over OpenSim tomorrow night, Dec. 31 — and during the day, as well. Mark your calendars — all times below are U.S. Pacific time. Caribou on Kitely at noon Get a head start on your New Year’s Eve celebration with DJ SaraRead More →

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AviWorlds, the grid that oscillates between proclaiming itself the highest-priced grid and the lowest-priced grid is back on the lowest-priced side again, with a free region offer for all residents. Addition regions are available for as low as $5 a month for a standard-sized, 15,000-prim region, and up to $25Read More →

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The OpenSim-specific Dayturn viewer was updated this weekend with Bakes on Mesh support. According to Dayturn developer and Xmir grid founder Geir Nøklebye, this viewer is a big improvement over previous versions. “It is a significant change for anyone using a mesh avatar because it lets you use old systemRead More →

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The seventh annual OpenSimulator Community Conference starts today, at 7 a.m. Pacific on the OSCC grid. Hypergrid address: cc.opensimulator.org:8002. Conference schedule #OSCC19 features over 60 speakers sharing innovative content, dynamic short presentations, and panels that all take place Saturday, December 14th and Sunday, December 15th within our OSCC Keynote regions.Read More →

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This Friday, the public is invited to tour the International Spaceflight Museum in Kitely. one of the several community social events organized to coincide with this year’s OpenSim Community Conference. ISM Exhibit Building Chair Mike Lorrey will personally lead and narrate a tour of the ISMuseum region in Kitely, withRead More →

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Join us this weekend for the 7th annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2019 celebrating the community and development of OpenSimulator opensource software. OSCC19 features over 60 speakers leading presentations, workshops, panel sessions, music, and social events across the diversity of the OpenSimulator user base. View the #OSCC19 Schedule here. Attending the conference event isRead More →

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Discovery Grid will hold the grand opening of its 2019 Virtual Seattle Winter Market 2019 on Saturday, December 7, 2019. The market will be open until January 7, 2020. The hypergrid address is discoverygrid.net:8002:Seattle. The market’s region coordinates are 503/448/46. This makes the second pop-up market for the grid, butRead More →

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The December issue of HyperGrid Zone magazine is out, and packed with profiles of OpenSim artists and creators, as well as Christmas events and destinations. The cover story is about the Nuna Gallery, which is located on 3rd Rock Grid and is having its grand opening on Dec. 15. To visitRead More →

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AviWorlds is celebrating a whole year of not closing down. “To celebrate one year online AviWorlds is now offering $5 per month private regions with 25,000 prims,” grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. The grid is currently hypergrid-enabled, allowing residents to teleport in and out to other grids, andRead More →

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I’m barely able to type this right now. I have a massive turkey hangover. But that’s not stopping me from scouring the web for Black Friday deals. This is probably a bad idea, because my sales resistance is so low, but I just can’t help myself. But it’s not justRead More →

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Tangle Grid has long offered free land plots to both local residents and hypergrid visitors, as well as free stores for merchants Now, the grid has expanded the offer. Instead of two free land regions, there are now six, joined together. “It gives it that community feeling,” grid owner LeslieRead More →

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It may look at first glance that OpenSim numbers went down this month. The total number of region equivalents fell by 8,955 to 72,911, and the number of active users fell by 1,166 to 35,589. But in fact, grids actually gained both land and users. The discrepancy is due toRead More →

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Tangle Grid‘s sixth annual Winter Expo starts Sunday, Dec. 1, and will run through Jan. 13, 2020. The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items, and also purchase content using the Gloebit currency. (Learn how to use GloebitsRead More →

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The Infinite Metaverse Alliance released the beta version of its simplified SceneGate viewer for OpenSim this weekend. The official launch of the viewer, which is available for Windows only, was Monday, November 25. Linux and Mac versions are coming soon, according to the organization. The SceneGate viewer is a forkRead More →

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Some lucky cows are apparently finding virtual reality to be quite moo-ving. A farm in Russia gave its cows custom made virtual reality headsets in an attempt to reduce their anxiety and improve the quality and quantity of their milk production. The experiments took place northwest of Moscow at theRead More →

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In addition to the official distribution of the OpenSimulator software, there are several variations of the open-source virtual world platform, including the mini-grid Diva Distro version, the easy-to-install-at-home DreamGrid version, the HalcyonGrid distribution from the now-defunct InWorldz grid, the AuroraSim distribution which hasn’t been updated since 2014, the still activelyRead More →

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  The November issue of HyperGrid Zone Magazine includes a feature about how to get banned from DigiWorldz, as well as features about artists, performers, and designers from around the hypergrid. HyperGrid Zone Magazine is supported by DigiWorldz grid owner and founder Terry Ford, and is published monthly. “We’re workingRead More →

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When you think of university level English education, an AR game might not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, with the current availability of powerful cellphones and inexpensive standalone VR headsets, augmented and virtual reality could be regularly used in college humanities courses sooner rather than later.Read More →

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Halloween is tomorrow, and OpenSim grids are turning up the spookiness — and the music. Get your costume on and check out these creepy spots tonight and tomorrow night! I’ve sorted the events below by time, in case you want to hit them all. OSgrid’s Halloween party Date and time:Read More →

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The United States Air Force had a problem. They needed to train hundreds of airmen, but there weren’t enough real aircraft to go around. Virtual reality offered the next best thing. Vinci VR, a two year old virtual reality startup founded by a 22 year old college undergrad, was recently awardedRead More →

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The new release of the OpenSim server software is out, OpenSimulator 0.9.1.0, also known as “Snail.” It supports animated mesh, the new YEngine script engine, and fixes a few bugs, according to core developer Ubit Umarov. It is also the first release to have a name, not just a number.Read More →

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The hypergrid turned 11 years old today. If you’ve ever wanted to teleport from one virtual world to another and be able to make friends and go shopping on other worlds, that’s the hypergrid. You can even join groups and send messages to friends on other grids. And if youRead More →

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Are you interested in presenting a panel at this year’s OpenSim Community Conference in December? Visit the OSCC’s Call for Proposals page and fill out the form. This year’s conference will focus on visions of the future and the evolution of the platform. It will take place on December 14Read More →

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The Tag Grid Marketplace, in development since 2015 but which the grid began widely promoting this year, has grown at nearly twice the rate of the Kitely Market over the past five months. Tag Grid merchants added 4,058 new item listings, while Kitely merchants added 2,289. However, Kitely is stillRead More →

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OpenSim land area went up by 3,300 regions this month, with the largest growth recorded on OSgrid, which gained more than 1,500 regions. OSgrid conducted a major clean-up last month, and some of this increase may have been due to region owners reconnecting their regions to the grid. OSgrid alsoRead More →

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The sixth annual Tangle Grid Halloween Expo is live now and will have its grand opening next Tuesday, Oct. 15. It will run until November 19. The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items,Read More →

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DigiWorldz, one of OpenSim’s most successful commercial grids, went down Tuesday due to a database issue and will be down for a few days while the grid uses the opportunity to do a major update. All in-world events have been canceled, and residents are used to follow the grid onRead More →

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This year, self-driving cars started getting pretty good. Deep fakes video started getting pretty convincing. Our virtual assistants got to the point where they could understand us well enough to do some simple things, like tell us the weather or get driving directions home. When it comes to artificial intelligence,Read More →

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In July, the team behind the popular Firestorm viewer announced that they planned to split the Second Life and OpenSim versions of their popular virtual world viewer. But after seeing the reaction from the OpenSim community, the developers have reversed their decision. “It made sense to split, but your pointsRead More →

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Analysts at the International Data Corporation are predicting smartphone sales to resume growth in 2020, driven by 5G and emerging markets. Sales declined for the past three years straight, as a result of consumers holding on to their phones longer. “To be clear, we don’t think 5G will be the saviorRead More →

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I should just cut-and-paste that headline every month. Okay, so…. AviWorlds has a new website and new sky-high land prices. A 15,000-prim region is now $65, for a grid with almost no users, not much content, and a history of shutting down and losing user content on a regular basis.Read More →

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Hypergrid Business has had exactly two site designs during its ten-year history. From 2009 to 2014, we were using a WordPress theme called The Stars, and were using it even after the company stopped supporting it. Here’s what it looked like when it first launched: Then, in 2014, we switchedRead More →

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  If you are in the UK this fall, and are interested in seeing some virtual reality and augmented reality art for free, check out the Alternate Realities touring exhibition that is part of the Sheffield Doc/Fest and will be coming to Brighton in October, Manchester in November and willRead More →

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The sixth annual Tangle Grid Steam Expo is live now and will run until October 1. The expo is fully accessible to hypergrid visitors at tanglegrid.net:8002:expo isle. (Learn how to hypergrid here.) Visitors will be able to get freebie items, and also purchase content using the Gloebit currency. (Learn how toRead More →

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The total number of active users on OpenSim’s public grids dropped by just over 500 active users, which is typical of the summer months. But land area was up by nearly 5,000 standard region equivalents, to 88,512, a record high. OpenSim grids also registered 3,948  new users this month, forRead More →