The weather’s been getting cooler here in the US where I live — some days, at least. The weather’s been a little wonky lately. And there have been other things happening in the country that make me want to spend less time in the real world and more time inRead More →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
I’ve been interacting with OpenSim bots — or NPCs — for nearly as long as I’ve been covering OpenSim. Which is about 15 years. (Oh my God, has it really been that long?) I’ve been hoping that OpenSim writing would become by day job, but, unfortunately, OpenSim never really tookRead More →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
One of my interests is the relationship between the real world and the virtual. If the virtual can inspire or inform the real, it then transcends its technical isolation. Curating an art exhibition is just such an opportunity. In the physical realm, curating is labor intensive, so decisions on placementRead More →
Alternate Metaverse Grid celebrated its first annual International Day on Thursday, March 7: Celebrating International Diversity on OpenSim. Grid co-owner Cataplexia Numbers said she was looking of a way to bring together the residents of various countries that are members of the Alternate Metaverse Grid and have them not onlyRead More →
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 →
In a move to make the virtual realm more inclusive, Wolf Territories Grid, announced the launch of its new speech-to-text function today, in order to improve the in-world experience for hard-of-hearing and deaf community members. With the commitment to ensure equal participation for all users, Wolf Territories Grid’s new speech-to-textRead More →
3rd Rock Grid, the second-oldest grid in OpenSim, will be shutting down soon. “We have to shut down the grid due to a few circumstances that have technical consequences, making it impossible to further manage the grid,” said 3rd Rock Grid board member Florin Spanachi, who is also known asRead More →
Could Mark Zuckerberg’s lust-driven quest to own VR, AR and mixed reality end up costing Meta at the end of the day? That’s a question being posed after The Information reported recently that Google had approached Meta partner with its new software platform — Google Android XR — that is beingRead More →
In a move that promises a faster, smoother, and more responsive virtual world experience, Wolf Territories Grid has migrated to a new server cluster at a data center in Frankfurt, Germany. The upgrade is expected to significantly enhance performance and reliability for the grid’s thousands of users, who can nowRead More →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
OpenSim active users are up by 3,220 this month, reaching a new all-time high of 47,343. It was the biggest one-month increase in active users since May of 2022. The number of regions on all OpenSim grids is also up by 3,021, the biggest monthly increase since this past June,Read More →
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 →
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 →
Apple’s new Vision Pro headset aims to reinvigorate the virtual reality market and make the technology mainstream, though its high price tag may limit adoption.Read More →
OpenSim land area is at a new all-time-high of 131272 standard regions, the fourth month in a row it has set a record. Meanwhile, several grids are hosting Halloween events this month and getting ready for other fall holidays. OpenSim active users tally is, however, down this month by aroundRead More →
It’s that time of year again when the open metaverse community comes together to share developments at the annual OpenSimulator Community Conference. The organizers have put out the call for presentation proposals for the 2023 event happening December 9 and 10. This will be the eleventh year for the community-runRead More →
This year’s Hypergrid International Expo kicks off at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, October 6 at the HIE’s Auditorium on Craft World, featuring an opening party with music from Zoree Jupiter at 11 a.m., Arianna Nightfire at 1 p.m., and Forest Azure at 10 p.m. Pacific Time. “The three artistsRead More →
OpenSim land area has passed 130,000 standard region equivalents this month, for a new all-time high. This is the second month in a row that OpenSim has set a land record. The total number of regions grew by over 2,000 over the past month. Registered users also increased, by moreRead More →
The annual OpenSimulator Festival, known as OSFest, takes place September 15 through September 30 inside the OSFest virtual world grid. The sixteen-day event features live music, exhibits, talks, tours, social spaces, and shopping for attendees across the Hypergrid metaverse. This year’s OSFest offers 94 hours of non-music events at free,Read More →
StoryLink Radio and Seanchai Library will host a series of Halloween-themed live voice, streamed, and in-world storytelling sessions during the month of October, which is high story-telling season. Virtual world citizens are welcome to listen to the stories at the Halloween Merchant Mall in Kitely. There will also be aRead More →
The Metaverse Spectrum Business Conference, Expo, and Pitch Fest will highlight expanding business applications for the metaverse at its virtual conference this coming December. The event, which will be held in the metaverse, will include sessions on marketing, product development, training, and recruiting applications of the metaverse. Speakers will hailRead More →
OpenSim’s public grids hit a record high this month with its largest land area ever, the equivalent of 127,958 standard regions. This was an increase of 2,252 regions compared to last month. Meanwhile, the total number of registered users on public OpenSim grids increased by 7,440 and the total number ofRead More →
AviTron owner Alexander Pomposelli has a long history of closing grids without warning. Back when he ran AviWorlds, I counted more than a dozen times that he closed that grid, often without any warning. Residents complained of losing access to regions, inventories, and in world-currency balances. At one point,Read More →
AvatarLife is launching its Wild Poker game today, based on Texas Hold’em poker. But it’s more skill-based, said AvatarLife CEO Sushant Chandrasekar. There is also a starting jackpot of 1 million AV$, the grid’s local currency — which translates to about US $4,000. “The launch event will be a threeRead More →
The Discovery Grid will host its seventh anniversary party on Saturday, July 1 at the Louisville region, featuring a virtual Thunder Over Discovery 2023 aviation event which will coincide with the real-life Thunder Over Louisville aircraft event, showcasing vintage and modern aircraft in action. Both grid residents and hypergrid visitorsRead More →
AvatarLife grid will host a virtual Pride Week for residents and visitors from other grids starting at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, June 24, with events running through Friday, June 30. The Pride Week, which coincides with and has events that match those held during the United Nation’s PrideRead More →
I used to think that the path to the metaverse started with screen-based virtual worlds then expanded to virtual reality. At some point, I thought, we’d all be doing everything in the metaverse. The same way that the Internet made information instantly accessible to everyone everywhere, the metaverse would doRead More →