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Update: My daughter used the camera a couple of times, and then it stopped working. When she turns it on, the display window just says “Error” and it does not connect to WiFi or to its smartphone apps, and no combination of restarting or button pressing seems to make the messageRead More →

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The US virtual reality market revenues will reach $38 billion in annual revenues by 2026, after an “inflection zone” over the next five years, according to Greenlight Insights, Inc. Of that, 62 percent, will be hardware revenues, and a third of total industry reviews will be in the enterprise marketing. On theRead More →

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Thanks to the CoreVR option on the Matterport 3D application, real estate and hospitality companies who have Matterport Pro 3D cameras can now capture 3D models of their locations, upload them, and convert them into virtual reality for free until end of this year. Those spaces will then be ready forRead More →

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Tucson Roadrunners, an American Hockey League affiliate of the Arizona Coyotes, will stream, in 360 degrees, their inaugural home opener against the Stockton Heat at 8:05 p.m. Central Time today. The team has entered into partnership with 360fly to provide viewers with 360 degree experiences of hockey games throughout this season through their videoRead More →

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Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs has given $10 million for a virtual reality project to the Washington Leadership Academy, a public charter school in the heart of Washington, D.C. The prize was one of ten such XQ Super School prizes awarded this year. “The prize money will be used inRead More →

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There’s a battle raging now for who will be the dominant platform of the coming virtual reality metaverse. Facebook, which has been getting a big chunk of the media attention with the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and its $2 billion acquisition, has suffered a few blows lately, even as rival GoogleRead More →

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Headsets Don’t Make or Break a VR Experience (or Why Content is Still King) In 1992 Indie filmmaker Robert Rodriguez made a movie with a budget of just $7,000. In Hollywood terms that’s the equivalent of a cappuccino. El Mariachi went on to gross $2 million at the box office. WhatRead More →

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A number of grids are hosting Halloween themed events, destinations, parties and hunts this month. Halloween Dance at Littlefield Grid Littlefield Grid has dedicated the Halloween Themed region to host the event for the entire month of October. There will also be a costume party and Halloween Dance at 8Read More →

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Nearly 800 responses came in for this year’s Seventh Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and after 31 were deleted as invalid, DigiWorldz came out with the most responses, while AllCity received the highest scores, followed by FrancoGrid, Virtual Highway, DigiWorldz and Lost Paradise. People rated 51 different grids, of which 19 made it pastRead More →

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The public OpenSim grids added more than 4,000 new regions this month, registered more than 4,400 new users, and grew by 735 new active users after maintenance and other outages depressed the numbers last month. ZetaWorlds, an open grid that allows resident to connect regions that they host on their own computers, forRead More →

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Three things that you might not think go together — riding a Harley through the main drag at this year’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, virtual reality, and the American Association of Retired Persons. But here’s the latest sign that virtual reality is rapidly becoming a new medium for all demographics and interest groups. WatchRead More →

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Press release: University of Notre Dame and NextVR Deliver Football in Virtual Reality for the First Time Legendary collegiate football program teams with leading virtual reality content provider to present highlights from Oct. 15 Notre Dame vs. Stanford game NOTRE DAME, Ind. — University of Notre Dame football and NextVR,Read More →

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Press release: VisionZ October issue hits stands on Saturday Halloween is the focus of this month’s issue of VisionZ Hyperverse Magazine due out on Saturday, October 15. Typically, after a few days, the racks can be found all over the Hyperverse, here are a few key locations, including at 3rdlifegrid.com:8002:EyE eMagine, hypergrid.org:8002:yesRead More →

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Three 360 degree films — the Peal, Help and Real — demonstrated that immersive storytelling can pack a big emotional punch. The three films took the top prizes at the FIVARS 2016 Awards last month at the Virtual Reality Toronto event. The Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories featured 30 titlesRead More →

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Press release: IMAX and ODEON & UCI Cinemas to launch first IMAX VR center in Europe Groundbreaking Agreement Ushers in Next-Generation of Immersive Entertainment Experiences to ODEON’s Printworks Multiplex in England LONDON – IMAX Corporation today announced an agreement with leading European exhibitor, ODEON & UCI Cinemas Group, to installRead More →

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It was a busy week for virtual reality announcements this week. Following on Google’s Pixel and Daydream presentation earlier in the week, Oculus showed off new hardware and software at their annual Oculus Connect conference in San Jose. The company showed off new controllers, Watch the official Oculus Connect presentationsRead More →

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NBC is partnering with AltspaceVR to bring viewers virtual reality feel of the U.S. Presidential debates and will be streaming the second debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tonight at the AltSpace VR’s Democracy Plaza at 8.30 p.m eastern time. Users of AltSpaceVR will be able to join theRead More →

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Fox gave away 25,000 virtual reality viewers to fans of The Simpsons to celebrate the show’s 600th episode this week. They went quick. They were Google Cardboard viewers, made of cardboard, and made by Knox Labs, one of the best-known of the companies making Google Cardboards. Fox Broadcasting Company andRead More →

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DigiWorldz and the Great Canadian Grid are back up after a nerve-wracking week when Hurricane Matthew threatened to cut off power to the grids’ Florida data center. “DigiWorldz is back online and no damage at all,” DigiWorldz founder Terry Ford, also known as Butch Arnold in-world, told Hypergrid Business. DigiWorldz alsoRead More →

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DigiWorldz and the Great Canadian Grid have gone off-line as Hurricane Matthew took down power lines in the area, set transformers on fire, caused power surges, and inflicted other damage. That caused unstable power situations for some of the power circuits feeding the data center where those two grids are hosted,Read More →

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Customers will purchase more than 450,000 Google Daydream View headsets by the end of the year, according to SuperData Research. Samsung’s Gear VR, Daydream’s closest competitor, is estimated to sell around 2.3 million units. However, the headset has been on the market for over a year. Daydream View will hitRead More →

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Google officially announced its new Pixel phone and its Daydream View VR headset today. The live stream of the presentation was watched by more than a quarter million people. Watch the full presentation below. (The Daydream VR announcement starts at the 1:04 mark.) According to Clay Bavor, Google’s VP forRead More →

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The U.S. Army’s Moses project is one of the most high-profile users of OpenSim, with a focus on training and simulations rather than on using OpenSim as a platform for a social grid. Last Friday, project leader Douglas Maxwell sent a note to OpenSim developers disclosing four “high priority securityRead More →

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AviWorlds is back, and the company has its original domain back as well. This is the ninth time that the grid has come back up after it had closed. “Since I’m back in New York now I’ve had time to start a smaller project,” grid owner Alexandro Pomposelli — also known asRead More →

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Udacity, an online platform for college courses, is now offering a VR development course — with no previous programming experience necessary. The class costs $199 per month, and runs for six months. Those who complete the program will receive a “nanodegree” certificate from Udacity — and get half of theirRead More →

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  The Kokua Viewer team has released an OpenSim-friendly version of their viewer this week, and 3rd Rock Grid is set as the default grid in the grid manager. Other grids included are Craft, InWorldz, Kitely, FrancoGrid, OSgrid, SirinHGpole, Spellscape, and Tangle. Users can also add their own grids, asRead More →

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Engage, a free multi-user virtual reality social platform that allows educators to create and share virtual environments and take students on virtual field trips is now available in preview edition and will launch early next year. The platform also supports business networking, worker training and collaboration, with private rooms that can accommodate upRead More →

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MyWebRoom will launch a free new social virtual reality platform next month, myVR, which will allow users to create and customize private room, and hold events using mobile-based VR headsets. It could be the first virtual reality platform that allows user-created environments. Two of the big players in the space, AltSpace and vTime, onlyRead More →

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More brands are likely to engage in using 360 degree video advertising, 2D digital billboards, 2D video, and even TV spots inside virtual reality environments over the next two years, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said in a report released Monday. At the same time, heat mapping analytics, emotional and story telling experiences willRead More →

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Kroatan, a new social OpenSim grid, is hosting a Halloween Hunt from October 8 to November 8 at the Silent Meadow region. The hunt features the story of Frank Inglewood, an England citizen who disappeared from his car and mysteriously turned up at the spooky Alchemilla Hospital. The hunt entails finding Inglewood’s writing pads,Read More →

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OpenSim developers are getting ready to release OpenSim 0.9.0, and some grids are already experimenting with the new features by downloading the experimental version of the new release — and they are running into some problems. The problem is specific to grids using the new ubOde physics engine, which is includedRead More →

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Editor: The U.S. Army’s MOSES grid has long been making cutting-edge contributors to OpenSim, building a grid management system, running scalability tests, and donating content to the OpenSim community. Now they are in the process of moving to a branch of OpenSim called Halcyon, open-sourced last year by InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, and areRead More →

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Time Inc., the publisher of the iconic Life magazine that closed in 1972, is relaunching the title — in virtual reality. The new Life VR features immersive storytelling, the company said in its announcement last week, and is available as a free download in the Life VR app for iOS and AndroidRead More →

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The Proto Awards gala will be held in Hollywood on October 8, and the list of nominees has been announced. Categories include Most Transportive Experience, Best Game, Best Music Experience, Best Social Experience, Best Mobile Experience, Best Interaction Design, Most Innovative, Best Original Score, Best Live Action Experience, Best Sound Design, Best Educational Experience, Best Student Experience, Best Narrative Experience, Best Independent Experience, Best UserRead More →

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Sketchfab is calling on 3D creators to re-create iconic scenes from movies and is giving away two Oculus Rifts, among other prizes, to the best creations. The contest deadline is October 13, and the application details are here.   Star Wars – Deliverance of Binks by JCulley3D on SketchfabRead More →

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The community-focused AvatarFest event kicks off on Friday, accessible to all OpenSim hypergrid users. There are about two dozen exhibitors already participating, and more than a dozen performances are scheduled, including those by OpenSim celebrities Truelie Telling, The Fabulous Wailers, Rosie O’Grady, and many others. There is also a performance of “Two GentlemenRead More →

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The first lecture of Harvard’s CS50 introductory programming class, can now be viewed as a 360-degree video. It was filmed using the professional-level Nokia OZO VR camera, which costs around $45,000. This is the first time that the class is available in a format that can be viewed immersively on a virtualRead More →

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Google’s Daydream virtual reality platform is now open to the public. The Daydream software development kit came out of beta, the company announced Thursday. The kit, available here for Android, has native Unity integration and native integration with Unreal Engine 4. Daydream is coming this fall, and is part ofRead More →

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The tenth annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference will be held March 29 through April 1 of next year — and is currently accepting proposals. Conference organizers are looking for presentations about new projects, research, services, or tools that benefit educators, or retrospectives about previously-presented work. Academic papers should beRead More →

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People watching 360-degree videos recalled the brands mentioned 28 times more than in traditional ads, according to a new report by Nielsen. Recall of 360-degree content in general was eight times higher, and consumers were three times as likely to buy after seeing an ad in virtual reality. Nielsen’s researched was conductedRead More →

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Virtual reality ad platforms continue to evolve, with vendors now offering analytics for advertisements placed inside 360-degree videos, virtual reality games, and other virtual experiences. Vendors are also trying to make the ads less annoying for users by experimenting with ad types and placements. VirtualSky Denver-based VirtualSky recently rolled out the ability toRead More →

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US $5 per month for a 16,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Dynamic Worldz grid. No setup fees. Variable-sized regions start at $12 per month.Read More →

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US $20 per month for a 20,000-prim region on the hypergrid-enabled Mobius Grid. Can be configured as up to a five-by-five a varregion at no additional cost.Read More →