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Islandz, the successor to InWorldz, officially opened for business last week, writes Ryan Schultz. InWorldz, one of the most successful and longest-lasting commercial grids in the OpenSim ecosystem, closed in August due to financial problems. InWorldz was one of the last remaining closed grids. Almost all other OpenSim grids allowRead More →

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“We estimate that on average 1.5 new VR studios open for business somewhere in the world every day.” “Regardless of what you or I may think about it the big brands are the ones sitting on the money to pay for top notch VR. And they are very much incentivizedRead More →

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In case you’re wondering what I’ve been doing with myself now that I’m not blogging about OpenSim as much, here’s an update. First, I’m super busy at my day job. I’m covering artificial intelligence for IDG’s CIO magazine and cybersecurity for CSO. I’ve also been getting my new blog, Upsider,Read More →

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Augmented reality endorsement picks up pace, according to a recent market forecast. The AR market volume is expected to hit $30 billion by 2023, growing at 39 percent CAGR. This growth is rooted in AR’s utility. Augmented reality proves itself a multi-purpose technology, being eagerly adopted across different domains, such asRead More →

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As the November 1 opening of the Santorini 1st Digital Bienniale art festival approaches, organizers have made available the 28-page preview book free exclusively for Hypergrid Business readers: download it here. Read the original festival announcement here. #Neighbourhood: Art is a political act Digital and real worlds will handshake at Santorini onRead More →

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Earlier this year, I wrote about how I’m ready to start winding down Hypergrid Business and move on to the next part of my life. My kids are out of the house, I’ve rented a new office, and I’ve been disentangling myself from old commitments. At my day job, covering technologyRead More →

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Since Google announced that they were shutting down their Google Plus social platform by end of next summer, organizers of OpenSim-related communities on that platform have begun searching for an alternative. Google Plus was particularly attractive for OpenSim users since it allowed avatar names, a welcome alternative to Facebook’s realRead More →

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Google has announced today that it is shutting down the Google Plus social network for consumers. The platform has been popular for OpenSim users to share news about the hypergrid. OpenSim Virtual has more than 2,000 subscribed members and there are many other communities serving different cross-grid communities as well as individualRead More →

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The Second Life-based Community Virtual Library is opening two branches in OpenSim next summer, on the Kitely and Avacon grids. The two new library branches will be CVL Hypergrid Resource Libraries with content designed to help people navigate virtual worlds across grids with various viewers. How to help Many peopleRead More →

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Kristopher Therrien, known as Quill Littlefeather to the OpenSim community, passed away this month. His family will be holding a memorial service on Saturday, September 29 at 11 a.m. at People’s United Methodist Church in Fremont, NH. Littlefeather has been involved in a number of OpenSim grid projects, including SkyLife GridRead More →

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  High Fidelity, the new virtual world platform started by Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale, now allows its users to convert its virtual currency to real-world cash. “This opens the possibility for people to earn real money creating and selling virtual goods and services within High Fidelity,” Rosedale said inRead More →

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Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference to Return to San Francisco on November 9-10, 2018 SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Annual Rockcliffe University Consortium Conference ‘The Future Present’ is happening November 9-10, 2018 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California. Educators registering for the conference can expect hands-on and networking opportunities,Read More →

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Survey: Enterprise Companies Seeing Strong Return on Investment in VR & AR LONDON – Businesses working in areas such as automotive, construction, manufacturing and retail are seeing a good return on their investment in virtual and augmented reality, according to an industry survey by VR Intelligence. The survey targeted senior-levelRead More →

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Breadables creator oYo, formerly based on the now-defunct InWorldz grid, has found a new home — the Tag Grid. The True to Life horses have concluded a successful beta test and will be officially released this Friday, Sept. 14. “We will gather at 8 a.m. for a party and countRead More →

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Elf Clan, one of the largest themed communities in OpenSim, has found a new home after the collapse of InWorldz. It will now be headquartered on OSgrid, with hypergrid linked locations on DigiWorlds, Kitely, and other hypergrid-enabled grids. Full list of affiliated locations is here. “After our experience with SecondRead More →

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  OSgrid, the largest grid in the OpenSim metaverse, will hold a donation carnival this month, staring on Friday, Sep. 21 and running through Sep. 28. “We are hoping to raise enough this year to do some much needed upgrades,” Koni Lanzius, OSGrid’s donation drive coordinator, told Hypergrid Business. “The wholeRead More →

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Pornhub Awards Show to bring Virtual Reality to the Masses Combining live VR streaming and a massively multiuser VR virtual world will deliver two breakthroughs for the premier of the Pornhub Awards Show on September 6, 2018 Vancouver, B.C. – In the latest example of the power of porn to launchRead More →

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Beth Reischl, founder and owner of the now-defunct InWorldz grid, is starting a new grid, called Islandz, she told New World Notes yesterday. The new URL has been purchased, islandzvw.com, though there is nothing up on the site just yet. Some filtered content from the old InWorldz grid will be movedRead More →

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One of the more novel shows of this summer has been NBC’s “Reverie,” which grapples with the potentials and risks of realistic virtual reality. The show stars Sarah Sashi (Person of Interest) as Mara Kint, a former negotiator for the police who left after she failed to prevent her brother-in-lawRead More →

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Citing changes in the social fabric of the hypergrid, Han Held announced in the official AvatarFest Google Plus group that 2018 would be the last year of AvatarFest, the annual OpenSim festival celebrating end user creativity. “VisionZ has folded, Hypergrid Business is decreasing focus on OpenSim, the HG Safari hasRead More →

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The 1st Digital Bienniale immersive interactive art exhibit will open to the public on September 20 on the Metropolis Grid. There is also companion physical world event organized by Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art on September 17 for press and contributing artists. There will also be a OpenSim basics workshopRead More →

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Editor: This is a contributed announcement from Tag Grid. The Adult Grid has changed its name to Tag Grid. We can still be reached on our old URL and we are in the process of changing the whole site to reflect the new name. We have changed the name asRead More →

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In the comments section on one of the several InWorldz-related articles these past few days, I saw some people talking about whether OpenSim is safe for content. The idea being that InWorldz was somehow safer because it’s not OpenSim. First, InWorldz IS OpenSim. It’s just another fork off the OpenSimRead More →

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DigiWorldz and Discovery Grid were the two top destinations of former InWorldz residents looking for a new home, with respondents almost evenly split at 38 and 36 percent, respectively. Kitely was in third place, with 18 percent of respondents. InWorldz, one of OpenSim’s oldest and most successful grids shut downRead More →

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OpenSim grids are welcoming former InWorldz residents with open arms, offering technical support to get their OARs uploaded, discounts on region rentals, and even free homes and stores. Scroll down for details about special offers. Where to go For people looking for a closed, commercial grid — no hypergrid travelRead More →

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Editor: This is a contributed comment from hypergrid entrepreneur Frank Corsi. The Atek Grid has been a long running open to connect grid, supporting many residents who enjoy the abilty to connect land regions from home PC or rented servers. As the sole owner of the grid, I have been busyRead More →

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The lights went out at midnight. InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful OpenSim grids, shut down last night. And it ended in a way fitting for a social grid — with a party. “Tonight we were lucky enough to have the ability to log in and have aRead More →

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Editor: InWorldz cofounder and former CTO David Daeschler just asked us to publish this statement about the current situation with the grid’s crowdfunding campaign. For all those that have been asking me what is going on with InWorldz, I’d like to make a public statement. I have not been involved inRead More →

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Update: As of July 25, the GoFundMe campaign has been halted, after having raised more than $16,000 — just shy of the $17,000 goal. It’s unclear what is happening now. The official InWorldz announcement page about the issue seems to be the best place for updates. There’s also some discussionRead More →

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InWorldz, one of the oldest and most successful commercial grids, is shutting down this week, owner Beth Reisch announced today, citing financial difficulties. According to Reischl, travel-related communication problems, bureaucratic mistakes and other issues resulted in the shutdown of the grid’s PayPal accounts and the calling in of the company’sRead More →

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Kitely will soon offer the option of hosting Virtual Private Grids on top of the Kitely grid, the company announced this week. According to the company, this new offering will enable groups and organizations to benefit from Kitely’s stability, performance and ease of use while gaining a new level ofRead More →

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Tranquility has unveiled their newest addition, Halcyon, a Gloebit-enabled region with a hypergrid shopping mall. It has more than 20 stores available for creators who wish to sell to the whole OpenSim community. Three different size stores are in place to accommodate small or large needs. There are also larger stores availableRead More →

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After Europe’s new data privacy regulations, GDPR, went into effect on May 25, OpenSim users saw a flurry of requests from grid owners asking them to agree to new privacy policies. Sometimes, those messages would pop up in the middle of a hypergrid trip, hindering travel. DigiWorldz, for example, hasRead More →

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My new Oculus Go headset arrived today ($199 on Amazon) and I wasn’t originally planning to get it because I’m not a big fan of standalone headsets. That’s a headset that has the computer and screen built right in, so you don’t need to plug in a phone, computer orRead More →

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The gambling-focused, Bitcoin-friendly YrGrid has been down and out lately — and it’s looking like that might be permanent. We did see it online last month, so it’s still on our active grids list, but readers have been emailing us complaining that they can’t get it in, and can’t getRead More →

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Earlier today, I posted an article about what we here at Hypergrid Business are doing to comply with GDPR. Fines are up to 20 million Euros or 4 percent of total annual global revenues — whichever is higher, and GDPR applies to every company that has European users or customers —Read More →

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You might have noticed a flood of emails lately and website popups asking you to consent to new privacy policies. That’s because a major new European privacy regulation, GDPR, goes into effect today. Fines are up to 20 million Euros or 4 percent of total annual global revenues — whicheverRead More →

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Twice as many grids now use Gloebit-powered payments compared to an older service, Podex, due to Gloebit’s easier set up and overall lower costs. Gloebits reports that it now has close to 2,000 account users and is on more than 50 grids, and the cumulative value of transactions reached more thanRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids lost the equivalent of nearly 4,000 regions, for a new total land area of 80,671 standard region equivalents. The number of active monthly users dropped by 2,580, to reach a total of 35,399. Most of the land area losses were due to a regular cleanup on OSgrid,Read More →

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Interested in taking a flight without worrying about the engine blowing out? You can now fly virtually, on an airplane filled with other passengers, on the Kea Nation enclave on the DigiWorldz grid. Kea Nation has brought in several airplanes recently, including the KNVV Douglas DC, which can carry up to 12Read More →

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The GreekLife grid has been around for eight years, but it has really started to take off in the last two, now reporting thousands of regions and active users. Now the grid owners are turning their experience running their own successful commercial grid into a service for other would-be gridRead More →

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OpenSim land area and users rose slightly this month, despite outages and maintenance on several grids. Atek was down for a while before later resuming, as was Virtuality Grid, while Kinky Grid also went under construction temporarily. Tangle Grid is currently still down for maintenance. And Gevolution was doing loadRead More →

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With sexism still strong in the gaming industry, a Europe-based 3D model marketplace is looking to create a welcoming place for women developers in the surging virtual reality industry. With almost as many women using virtual reality as men — 14 percent versus 20 percent, according to a study byRead More →

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Child avatars are a sensitive topic in virtual worlds. For some users, the presence of child avatars opens the possibility of inappropriate sexual roleplay, which is at best extremely creepy and, at worst, illegal. For other users, child avatars are a necessity for grids with an educational focus. And forRead More →

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This year’s Virtual World Best Practices in Education 2018 conference, which ended last week in Second Life, was shorter than last year — three days, instead of four — and attracted about 1,100 attendees, down from a high of around 4,500 in previous years. Attendance was up slightly over lastRead More →

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Blockchain — the technology powering Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — is coming to virtual reality. Today, High Fidelity, the new VR platform from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, announced the launch of the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance, which is dedicated to using the blockchain to create an independent identity systemRead More →

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The Atek Grid has launched a new cryptocurrency, which will become the primary in-world currency, grid owner Frank Corsi told Hypergrid Business. The new currency, Dosh Coins, is based on blockchain technology. This is similar to the way Bitcoin works, except that its based on a slightly different cryptocurrency technology, EtheriumRead More →

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OpenSim land area continued to increase gaining a total of 3,400 standard region equivalents this month — after gaining more than 9,000 regions last month. The number of active users also increased by 1,300. OSgrid is still the biggest grid with a total of 20,203 standard region equivalents, followed byRead More →