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The 2016 OpenSimulator Community Conference, to be held in December, is now accepting proposals for presentations and activities. “We are particularly interested in speakers that can dramatically tell the story of their work and employ great props and graphics,” the organizers said in the announcement. This year’s conference is organizedRead More →

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In getting ready for my monthly stats report, I’m checking to see whether the grids I’m listing in my directory are up and running, and collecting their terms of service pages and other links. And I just came across the land sales page of Genesis Global Journey, a small commercial gridRead More →

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Carlos Loff has moved his Virtual Lisbon and Space Life projects to DigiWorldz, with plot rentals available for interested residents. He was previously hosted by AviLabs, the hosting company behind AviWorlds, which imploded messily and publicly last month. Even before AviLabs fell apart, Loff said he was having trouble attracting residents.Read More →

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The next OpenSim Treasure Hunt has been scheduled, and it will rum from October 3 to November 7. The hunt, the fourth so far this year, is an opportunity for grids and venues to promote their destinations to hypergrid travelers, and for designers and other content creators to promote theirRead 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. An OpenSim viewer that runs in a regular web browser has long been at the top of most-wanted lists for OpenSim users. And the U.S. Army is stepping up. This fall, the U.S. Army’sRead More →

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Digitaleisure, one of the new grids created in the wake of AviWorlds’ latest flame-out, has been forced to rebrand as SkyLifeGrid due to legal issues. The original name and domain was too close to that of Digital Leisure, an online gaming company. Digital Leisure paid for the domain transfers, said SkyLifeGrid owner JoshRead More →

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The 2016 Fest’Avi event begins today, the third year that FrancoGrid is hosting the avatar exhibit. The event begins at 6 p.m. Paris time, or 9 a.m. Pacific, at hg.francogrid.org:80:FestAvi 2016. The event features an exhibit of 19 new creative avatar designs, theMorlitaM live concert, and the FestAvi party. The theme of thisRead More →

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Google Plus continues to be the social media destination of choice for OpenSim users, due its usability, sharing features, and support for identities based on avatar names. I currently track 175 virtual communities that have some relation to OpenSim, and just collected the members counts of each group. See theRead More →

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Adapting OpenSim to work on virtual reality headsets will require a substantial amount of work on both server and viewer code. Is this something that OpenSim users want to see happen? According to a survey conducted on this site this week, 79 percent of OpenSim users think that VR isRead More →

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OutWorldz founder Fred Beckhusen has posted his collection of 1,000 OpenSim scripts on the open source collaboration site GitHub, as well as the code for his one-click OpenSim installer, called DreamWorld. Like New World Studio before, DreamWorld makes it easy to install a mini-grid on a personal computer, together with the FirestormRead More →

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I got into writing about OpenSim back in 2009 because it seemed to be, at the time, the best path to an open-source, peer-to-peer metaverse. I want to see a future where anyone could put up a virtual environment, and have people teleport in and out from other people’s environments. ARead More →

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A complex mesh object can significantly slow down the loading of a region — as much as ten minutes, in some cases, according to Oren Hurvitz, co-founder and VP of R&D at Kitely. That’s a significant problem for Kitely in particular because the grid’s regions are all loaded on demand. TheyRead More →

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So your grid has been hit by a denial-of-service attack, or a server has crashed, or a hacker got in, or things just mysteriously stopped working. Or maybe you’ve had a customer service disaster, or your owner said something horrible on social media, or you’ve got management or partner problemsRead More →

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Despite the the absence of the Virtual Life grid and Avination in this month’s statistics, region counts, registered users, and active users all increased this month. Virtual Life grid shut down without notice, and Avination is in the process of moving to a new hosting provider and could be downRead 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. Editor: The team behind U.S. Army’s MOSES grid have long been cutting-edge contributors to OpenSim, building a grid management system, running scalability tests, and donating content to the OpenSim community. Now they are inRead More →

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A lot of folks are interested in getting a career in virtual reality these days, and I don’t blame them. The industry is exploding. So I’m getting emails from folks asking me for advice in how to get started. My standard advice is to go to college for a degreeRead More →

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Avi-Labs is offering free regions on the AviWorlds and AviBrasil grids, but will no longer be accepting new grid hosting companies, Nearly 200 free regions have already been given out, company owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business — 65 on AviWorlds and 117 on AviBrasil — and the infrastructure for theRead More →

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Atek Grid, formerly owned by the company behind the CloudServe OpenSim hosting company, has been bought by the Tampa-based Florida Web Council, Inc. CloudServe will continue to run the back-end technology for the grid and manage the hosting. Atek Grid is large in land area — the equivalent of 4,447Read More →

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There are grids whose welcome areas are always full of people hanging out, with mentors on hand to help newcomers and answer questions from residents and visitors, even grid owners stopping by to press the virtual flesh. Kitely has not been one of those grids. In the past, its welcomeRead More →

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Update: Genesis Grid has since been rebranded as Genesis Metaverse. The Genesis Grid, formerly hosted by Avi-Labs, has left that hosting company in the wake of recent problems and launched its own OpenSim hosting service. It will be hosting its own grid, as well as that of another former Avi-Labs customer,Read More →

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Kitely’s user community is celebrating History Month this August to celebrate history-inspired builds and encourage people to build more. It will also feature a number of events each week including live music and dance. Visitors can pick up landmarks and a HUD — heads-up display — at the History Month Hub eachRead More →

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If you want to share your OpenSim build online so that people can explore it with a virtual reality headset, consider Sketchfab. The platform, which has half a million registered users and nearly a million VR models, claims to be the largest 3D content sharing site on the web. For example, theRead More →

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Avi-Labs, the hosting company behind the AviWorlds grid, has been hacked, according to Josh Boam, the company’s technology manager, but grid data should be recoverable. “Everything is saved,” he said. According to Boam, company founder and owner Alex Pomposelli has been out of touch for the past few days. “IRead More →

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OSgrid celebrated its ninth birthday this weekend, but the events did not go smoothly on OpenSim’s largest and oldest grid. OSgrid has had some technical issues over the past few days, grid president Dan Banner told Hypergrid Business, starting with login in problems on Friday. Users were still able toRead More →

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Tangle Grid is hosting the Steam Expo starting from August 1 to September 25 where creators can showcase their items and visitors can see items being displayed. In addition to the exposition for creation, the grid hosts live DJing every Friday at the exposition from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.Read More →

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Several grids did not report numbers this month, resulting in a drop in active users of 3,209. Avination was down this month, as were Virtual Dream, My Virtual Community, and Cyberface. Some grids, such as Activity Ds stopped providing active user numbers. In addition, eight of the top ten most popular grids lost activeRead More →

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The number of non-exportable items on the Kitely Market dropped this week, while exportable products continue to rise, according to statistics released today by Kitely. The difference between the two was the second highest in history. The first, in November of 2014, came after Kitely significantly improved market functionality andRead More →

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Virtual environments can let people step back in time, by visiting the recreation of a place or event. Tell people about your favorite historical destinations in the survey below. Each submission gives you another chance to win a virtual reality headset for your smartphone. Did you miss a chance to winRead More →

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Last week, Linden Lab said that it was no longer working on its Oculus Rift viewer for Second Life, dashing OpenSim user hopes that eventually their viewer would be open sourced and be a usable virtual reality access option for their grids. However, CtrlAltStudio’s David Rowe says that he is updatingRead More →

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OSgrid was down on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week when the grid was no longer able to access its asset services, but other grids probably don’t need to worry about the same thing happening to them. “It was an issue with the cluster and was not related to OpenSim,”Read More →

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The third hypergrid Treasure Hunt officially began on Friday, with 14 grids participating. It will run through August 6, so there’s plenty of time for both hunters and grids to jump in. Prizes include $25 cash, Linden dollars, and Bluetooth MP3 speakers, Holland Woodenshoes key chain, and a HipHop Band T-shirt. For moreRead More →

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Philip Rosedale’s virtual world startup High Fidelity has announced the launch of its Marketplace this week. Registered users can now upload new content again. The Marketplace has also been redesigned, with a new submission flow, hosting for all associated assets, and ability to like items, the company said. However, thereRead More →

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Littlefield Grid, DigiWorldz and ZanGrid are holding big bashes to celebrate this year’s Fourth of July holiday, America’s Independence Day. Littlefield Grid party on Stonehaven Party Isle Littlefield Grid’s Fourth of July party started Thursday, with a beach barbeque, dancing, live music and DJ, food, swimming, rides, fireworks and free party favors.Read More →

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The Gloebit multi-grid virtual currency is now out of beta and can be used for shopping. Users who previously had a beta account will need to sign up again for the live version. You can sign up here, with either an email address and password or by connecting an existingRead More →

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In case you missed it, OSgrid has been holding weekly meetings every Saturday at Wright Plaza, after a long period in which communications between grid managers and residents were problematic. “We restarted it about three months ago,” said grid treasurer Lawrence Roberts on the Inworld Review last week. “It’s been well-attended, andRead More →

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Virtual learning environments can enhance retention through the feeling of presence and interactive learning tasks, according to the recently-published book Learning in Virtual Worlds, which is a compilation of studies about the use of virtual worlds in education. “Greater perceptions of presence do contribute positively to the type of learning studied here,” writes author Stephany Wilkes. TheRead More →

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The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids increased by almost 3,000 regions, but active users dropped by 405. The total number of standard region equivalents on the public grids is now 59,339, up by 2,821 compared to last month, the largest single-month increase in almost two years. The total includesRead More →

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The Global Learning Forum is scheduled to take place this Friday, June 17, at the SOC StudioX’s in-world campus auditorium from 1 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. Central Time.  The topic is the role of cyberspace and integrated learning environments. The event is open to all hypergrid visitors. Hypergrid teleport to metaverse.austudiox.com:9000. It will featureRead More →

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The Kitely Market is now delivering content to 138 different OpenSim grids and mini-grids and merchants are continuing to increase the amount of exportable content available on the platform. There are currently 7,486 product listings in Kitely Market containing 14,134 variations, of which 9,237 are sold with the Export permission.Read More →

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Avi-Labs, the OpenSim hosting company that grew out of the AviWorlds grid, has added OSgrid region rentals and OAR sales to its previous set of grid hosting services and managed server rentals. OSgrid regions go for $5 per month for 15,000 prims, with no setup fee, one of the lowest prices available. Two-by-twoRead More →

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OSgrid residents who plan to exhibit at next month’s anniversary celebration can now claim their parcels on the OSG9BW, OSG9BN and OSG9BE regions, grid president Dan Banner announced today. The exhibits can be constructed off-site and brought over or built right on location, he said. There is a limit of 676Read More →

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The Great Canadian Grid is continuing to suffer from on-going distributed denial of service attacks. DigiWorldz grid founder Terry Ford, whose company also provides hosting services, has been working on securing the Great Canadian Grid’s infrastructure since the attacks first began about a month ago. His company does not host theRead More →

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The second OpenSim Treasure Hunt concluded on May 25 with 122 participating regions, up from just 86 in the first hunt. The number of participating grids increased as well, from 22 to 26, Tangle Grid co-founder and hunt organizer Leslie Kling told Hypergrid Business. There were also many returning participants, sheRead More →

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OSgrid will hold its birthday celebration and fundraiser on July 30 and 31, the grid’s board told residents at a membership meeting last Sunday. OSgrid, which is turning nine this year, is the largest and oldest virtual world running on the OpenSim platform. The birthday celebration will also include music and other events, withRead More →

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Since it first launched in early 2011, Kitely has been the only major grid not to publish its stats, instead providing them by email to Hypergrid Business on request. That changed today, as the grid began publishing its land area and total registered users on its login page. This isRead More →

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A Brazilian team has launched a new grid and OpenSim hosting company, offering local payment and support options. OpenSim Brasil offers hosting for full grids, starting at 230 Reals, or about US$64, with a 100 Real setup fee, for an eight-region grid. The AllCity grid, currently has 25 regions andRead More →

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The crowdfunding campaign for a Virtual Lisbon grid is up and running again, asking OpenSim users to contribute just $1 each to the project. The founder, Carlos Loff is an experienced virtual worlds builder and community manager, and has been active in Second Life since 2007. This is his fourth tryRead More →

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The Virtual Life Grid has turned on hypergrid connectivity, the grid announced in a press release today and on Twitter. The grid’s hypergrid address is now virtuallifegrid.com:8002. For those interested in learning more, the grid will be holding a general meeting for residents on May 28 at 2 p.m. Pacific at the Virtual LifeRead More →

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The total number of standard region equivalents dropped this month on OpenSim’s public grids due to a large cleanup of orphan regions on Metropolis. The grid removed around 1,600 unused region reservation slots from its grid map. The total number of standard region equivalents on the public grids is now 56,535,Read More →