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Today, I got another submission for a free ad that was basically just the grid’s name. And I regularly talk to grid owners who try to tell me that their grid is special because of its community, and to attract residents they offer low-cost land and free user accounts. HavingRead More →

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Students from around the world can now travel to Pakistan and learn more about the country — virtually. Online educational community PenPal Schools has launched a free six week field trip project to connect about  2,000 students from 17 countries — 300 from Pakistan, and the rest from Australia, Argentina, United States, Pakistan, Canada,Read More →

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The Great Canadian Grid will host its first annual Art Fest at 10:00 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, April 29 and Sunday, April 30 at the RR Estates regions. It will feature display of art, photography, poetry and stories from talented artists around OpenSim, and the grid hopes to have the showRead More →

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The Google Plus community OpenSim Everything gained 131 new members since last September, bringing it to a total of 506 members. It was the single biggest gainer of the OpenSim-specific communities we follow. However, more people could be visiting the community without becoming official members. OpenSim Virtual remains the largestRead More →

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All approved Gloebits merchants can now, from Saturday, withdraw their in-world proceeds through PayPal. The cash-out limit of 5,000 Gloebits is also going up, based on the merchant’s transaction history and level of identity verification. Cash-out limits will continue to rise in the future, Gloebits CEO Christopher Colosi told Hypergrid Business.  “As timeRead More →

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Key OpenSim stats fell this month, as two popular grids — InWorldz and The Adult Grid — opted not to report their total land area or their active users. InWorldz has been the most popular grid every month from 2012 on, and had 5,276 active users last month. However, bothRead More →

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If you’re a fan of Torben Asp — and you probably are, as he’s one of OpenSim’s favorite performers — and you live or visit the US east coast, you might now be able to catch him performing live, in person. “The move to the USA is to pursue a real lifeRead More →

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On the back of a new free land offer marketing campaign, Island Oasis gained 603 new registered users this past month, nearly twice as many as in March. This was the highest number of new registrations since the grid first launched in 2011. The grid offers free parcels of 4,896 square meters each withRead More →

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DigiWorldz has bought VirTec this week and will resume normal business in two weeks when the vending machines will be running on DigiWorldz  servers and be deployed to other grids. This comes after VirTec’s previous owner Virtouse Lilienthal announced last week that he would stop selling new products to new gridsRead More →

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InWorldz announced that as of this month, it will no longer be publishing its region stats or active user numbers, two statistics which have been falling over the past few months. Total registered user numbers and the number of users currently logged in remain on the login screen, however. AccordingRead More →

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A number of grids are hosting Easter events including Easter Egg hunts and contests this Easter season. That includes two events on OSgrid. OSgrid‘s Easter Egg contest began last Monday and will go through Friday, April 14. The Event Plaza has been re-decorated for the occasion. Participants are competing to create the bestRead More →

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AltspaceVR, a social virtual reality platform, has launched a talk show focused on women in virtual reality that is taped before a live audience — well, live virtual audience. The show was launched on March 8, in honor of International Women’s Day, to celebrate and capture some of the wonderful storiesRead More →

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It seems unfair, but there are some people out there who seem to have the trust of their customers, no matter how many times they let them down. And other, completely decent, honorable grids can’t seem to get any respect. Part of the problem is that many honest, reliable, hard-workingRead More →

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Google Cardboard-compatible viewers are a great choice for people who want to experience VR but don’t want to shell out the hundreds of dollars that the big-name headsets cost. In fact, these viewers can start at just $5, and are pretty good for watching VR videos and playing casual games.Read More →

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OpenSim grids reported a net fall in both regions and active users this month, but the regions drop was due to one grid with server issues, and the active users drop was due to a couple of grids that had problems with their stats. Overall, OpenSim lost 975 active users this month,Read More →

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This time, AviWorlds shut down not with a loud scandal, but without even a whisper. Over the past few days, grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli has opted not to renew his grid servers, let his domain name expire, and shut down his media accounts and stopped responding to emails, Skype messages,Read More →

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To help schools and educators create, access and share more virtual learning and educational resources, an Educator Commons shop has been set up on OSgrid‘s Wright Plaza region by Kay McLennan, a professor of practice at Tulane University. The shop, which is hypergrid-enabled, has virtual world learning and teaching tools, freebies, Do-It-Yourself resources,Read More →

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To celebrate its first anniversary later on this month, the Croatian-language Kroatan Grid is holding a photo contest themed “my crazy virtual life.” The deadline for submissions is Monday, May 15, and the winning photos will be featured at the grid’s first anniversary party on Saturday, May 27. “Prizes are virtual, like aRead More →

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All active grids with infringing content have addressed the problem, according to VirTec owner Virtouse Lilienthal, one of the affected content creators. VirTec makes a multi-grid OpenSim vending system which has machines that report back to a central server. As a result, Lilienthal was able to discover that the machines were poppingRead More →

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If you want to rent land, or sell other products or services, you need a landing page. A landing page is a page that converts someone who is vaguely interested in what you are offering into an actual customer. The effectiveness of your landing page is known as the conversionRead More →

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The Kitely Market has passed the $100,000 sales milestone, the grid announced last week. The Kitely Market, which now delivers to 174 different OpenSim grids, is the leading online marketplace for OpenSim content. It accepts payment in both the in-world currency, Kitely Credits, and through PayPal. Merchants who sell via PayPal canRead More →

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VisionZ HG Magazine will be celebrating its second anniversary on March 15 from 1 to 3 p.m. Pacific time on the 3rd Life Grid. “Our focus is on all things happening in the Hyperverse, those spaces connected via the hypergrid protocol,” said editor Sunbeam Magic. The event will feature a live performance byRead More →

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Active user numbers on the OpenSim hypergrid  crossed the 80 percent share mark this month, reaching a new record high, while the hypergrid share of land area reached 95 percent, another new record high. The hypergrid gained 1,781 new active users to reach a new high of 30,655, or 81Read More →

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The annual No Borders Festival, which was previously known as ROBstock Festival, will take place on Saturday, February 11 and Sunday, February  12 from 8 a.m to 8 p.m Pacific time on 3rd Rock Grid to raise money in support of the Doctors Without Borders medical charity. The name was changed toRead More →

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The total amount of money spent on purchases over the VirTec OpenSim vending machines network nearly doubled last year, increasing by 92 percent from $4,206 in 2015 to $8,080 in 2016, the company reported. Meanwhile, the total number of transaction increased nearly three-fold. In 2015, the company’s first year offering the OpenSim vending service,Read More →

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I am passionate about OpenSim and making OpenSim more accessible to people unfamiliar with the OpenSim platform. New people, like myself a few years back, need places to get things for their avatar and their region and this is my contribution. I visited a variety of places on the hypergridRead More →

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Dear OpenSim Viewer Developer: A new trend in learning management systems  could be a vehicle for expanding educator use of the OpenSimulator platform. More specifically, one of the newer learning management systems – Canvas – includes an external app integration feature that allows faculty and institutions to easily integrate bothRead More →

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ZanGrid went live with the Gloebit virtual currency on Monday as the platform gets ready to start approving merchant cashouts. The currency can also already be used on Mobius Grid. Users can use a single virtual wallet to shop on any Gloebit-supported grid, and, when the grids allow, take the purchasesRead More →

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$6 for three years of protection against lawsuits from US creators — for any grid, anywhere in the world helps protect against take-downs by hosting companies and domain registrars helps keep creators from going to social media and blogs to get attention for problems The US Copyright office has madeRead More →

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OutWorldz has released a beta version of the DreamWorld OpenSim installer for home-based mini-grids which now offers users a free subdomain for their grid, such as anygrid.outworldz.net. Previously, users had the option of registering their own domain name with a commercial registrar or using a free external DNS service like No-IP, DuckDNS, andRead More →

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In response to yesterday’s post about the changing editorial direction at Hypergrid Business — and free ads — I’ve been flooded with requests for advertisements. And I want to run the ads. Really, I do. Promoting OpenSim to the 100,000-plus site visitors who might not have heard of OpenSim beforeRead More →

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The world seems to have hit a tipping point when it comes to immersive environments, and the pace of change is exploding. These changes have been dramatically reflected in the readership of this site over the past couple of months. My life is about to change dramatically as well. SoRead More →

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Grid owners, content creators, and other members of the OpenSim community are working to solve a serious case of alleged content theft that surfaced recently on the Alife Virtual grid and may involve several other grids and 62 allegedly stolen OARs, or region backup files. On Thursday, Genesis Metaverse CFO JanetRead More →

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OutWorldz founder Fred Beckhusen has purchased the Hyperica OpenSim directory from Hypergrid Business. He will continue to maintain the current website, add more content, and add more functionality, as well as the in-world hyperport, and the in-viewer destination guide. The Hyperica website had nearly 20,000 unique visitors over the courseRead More →

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AviWorldz has officially joined the big grid migration of 2017, becoming the latest in a string of grids to switch to DigiWorldz hosting. DigiWorldz is mostly known as a popular commercial OpenSim grid, but the company also provides hosting for other grids. This means that would-be grid owners can focusRead More →

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Firestorm is the preferred viewer for OpenSim users, based on a survey of Hypergrid Business readers. Nearly 53 percent of respondents chose Firestorm as their favorite, followed by 26 percent for Singularity and 7 percent for Alchemy. Firestorm was also the viewer that most people had tried. According to the survey,Read More →

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It didn’t take long at all. It was less than three weeks ago that Alexsandro Pomposelli announced that AviWorlds was back up and running — from his garage. The much-troubled grid is now down again as a result of a power surge, he told Hypergrid Business. “My anti-power surge didRead More →

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It has often been the so-called vice industries that have driven forward new technologies. This will also be the case with virtual reality, where we are already seeing it shaking up the gambling sector. Sectors such as gambling were among the first business use cases for the internet, and tendRead More →

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myVR, a social virtual reality platform from the folks at myWebRoom, has opened the platform to allow brands and marketers create and publish in-app branded experiences. For instance, companies can place branded videos and images on virtual televisions accessible by other users in the virtual rooms, game developers can availRead More →

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Viar.Live allows users to upload and share 360 degree photos, create virtual reality tours from the uploaded 360 degree photos, embed virtual reality content on websites, and distribute the content across desktops, iOS and Android mobile platforms. It supports Google Cardboard Camera and iPhone Pano so anyone whose phone supportsRead More →

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One of the devices that generates the greatest interest among the tech community at the moment is Microsoft HoloLens. By revolutionizing the way we perceive reality-altering solutions, the technology that stands behind HoloLens is as fascinating as it is complex. In simple terms, it can be described as the mergingRead More →

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Public OpenSim grids gained land area, registered users, and active users this month, with active users reaching a new all-time high. Grids reported a net increase of 638 active users, for a new total of 36,330 actives, despite the end of the OpenSimulator Community Conference. That event accounted for a one-time additionRead More →

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Last year was a mixed year for OpenSim grids. Active users were up, but the increase was much lower than in the previous year. The increase in registered users was also smaller, but this was mostly due to a multi-month outage on Avination, which is still down. Land area actually shrank thisRead More →