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Icelandic article Björk is making a music video for the Oculus Rift. “It’s easy to get really intimate [with virtual reality],” she said in a recent interview. “It’s almost more intimate than real life. It also has this crazy panoramic quality. I think it’s really exciting.” Read the full article atRead More →

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This past week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco featured more female speakers than ever before, according to new analysis from Vocativ. According to the report, the number of women speakers at the conference has doubled, from 10 percent in 2011, to 20 percent this year. Read full report here.Read More →

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The RobStock team have set the date for the 8th annual RobStock Charity Event for the last weekend in March, from Friday, March 27 to Sunday, March 29. “We are asking artists to give an hour of their time free, all tips going to the charity,” the organizers said in a pressRead More →

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Game development studio Epic has just announced that their engine, the infamous Unreal Engine, will be completely free for everyone to use starting immediately. This is a full version of Unreal Engine, and not just a demo or trial version. Those who choose to use Unreal Engine will still beRead More →

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Press release: HTC unveils strategic partnership with Valve; announces VR developer edition available in Spring and consumer edition available by end of 2015 BARCELONA, Spain – HTC, a pioneer in innovative, smart technologies, today announced plans to bring mass-market virtual reality (VR) one step closer. Through a strategic partnership with Valve, HTCRead More →

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Sony says its Project Morpheus will be released for the PlayStation 4 in the first half of 2016, bringing virtual reality to its game console. The manufacturer revealed a new design for the headset as well as improved hardware specifications, as it prepares to release the PS4-powered VR headset inRead More →

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MindMaze Announces $8.5 Million in Angel Funding; MindLeap Game System Driven by Players’ Brainwaves SAN FRANCISCO — GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE – Today MindMaze, a neurotechnology company, unveiled the industry’s first thought-powered virtual reality (VR), augmented reality and motion capture game system, MindLeap. The system is based on MindMaze’s proprietary, medically-provenRead More →

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OpenSim core developer Melanie Thielker is donating a new cluster storage solution to the community. Called FSAssets, it is designed to replace the MySQL databases or the RAID storage arrays used by other grids. FSAssets is also the new asset storage for OSgrid, which had previously relied on RAID storage. Any gridRead More →

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Monthly pageviews for Hypergrid Business crossed the 100,000 milestone for the first time in its six-year history, according to today’s Google Analytics report. Visitors viewed 101,371 pages in February, up from 97,036 pages in January. Both of these numbers are a significant increase over last year, when monthly pageviews typicallyRead More →

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US $10 (8 Euro) for a 15,000-prim region. Includes Bullet physics, hypergrid, Vivox voice, backups, choice of six starting OARs.Read More →

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$15 per month for a 15,000-prim varregion region on the Tag Grid, no set up fee.  Can hold up to 100 avatars. Can be sized as a single standard region, a 2×2 varregion or 4×4 varregion. Grid has own online content marketplace. No hypergrid. Read More →

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An open grid is one that allows outside people to connect their own regions. Those regions could be hosted for free on home computers, or be provided by third-party hosting companies, such as Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex, CloudServe, Oliveira, or any other grid-agnostic vendor on our hosting list. Here is theRead More →

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John Vechey, the cofounder of Bejeweled maker PopCap Games, has created a new startup, Pluto VR, to take advantage of the opportunity that the resurgence of virtual reality has created. Seattle-based Pluto VR will focus on the software needed to make virtual and augmented reality environments more social and connected. ReadRead More →

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Press release: CommonFloor Introduces Virtual Reality for consumers in Real Estate – CommonFloor Retina Bangalore – CommonFloor.com, India’s leading online real estate platform introduces CommonFloor Retina, world’s first virtual reality innovation in real estate that is available to the masses. This technological breakthrough offers ‘real’ property experience for the seekers allowing them toRead More →

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Inventory exports, or IARs, became a heated topic of discussion in Google Plus communities yesterday, with one grid even disabling its IAR exports temporarily as a result. Much of the debate is due to a misunderstanding of how IAR backups work — and of how thieves steal content. What isRead More →

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Press release: 360Heros announces new technology for producing 4K virtual reality 360° videos Supports Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard headsets Offers super high-definition video Olean, NY – 360Heros Inc., a company specializing in virtual reality 360 video technology, creates camera systems that can capture 4K (4,000 x 2,000 pixels)Read More →

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Ready Player One is a best-selling novel by Ernest Cline set in the year 2044, a time when nearly the entire human population is tapped into a metaverse called The Oasis. There’s also a movie currently in development. The book is a love letter to 1980’s culture, but it stillRead More →

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Augmented and Virtual Reality Devices to Explode from 3 Million Units in 2015 to 55 Million in 2020 Scottsdale, Arizona – ​The augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) markets are seeing much action, from new devices and new content, to existing content adapting to make use of the new medium. HeadRead More →

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OpenSim developer Dahlia Trimble has won a bounty for her work on fixing llLookAt, a function useful in making objects move better. “Fred Beckhusen has tested the code and is happy with the result,” said Talla Adams in an announcement today. Adams, who is the moderator of the OpenSim VirtualRead More →

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OSgrid, the oldest grid running on the OpenSim software, is backup. The news was announced in a tweet a few minutes ago. “OSgrid is opening its gates to direct logins and regions at this very minute,”Melanie Thielker, founder and owner of the Avination grid and an OpenSim core developer, told Hypergrid Business. “It’sRead More →

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WizDish‘s ROVR developer kit will cost £395, or about US $610, according to a report today in VRFocus. WizDish is an omni-directional treadmill similar to the $700 Virtuix Omni or the $600 Cyberith Virtualizer and is designed to allow users to walk or run while wearing virtual reality headsets. The device requires special shoes, andRead More →

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Valve just announced that it will show off its own virtual reality hardware, SteamVR, at next month’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Valve is the company behind Portal, Team Fortress 2 and the widely-used PC game distribution hub Steam. “At GDC 2015, we’ll be giving demos of the refined Steam Controller,Read More →

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Press release: Immersive Technology Alliance Annual Meeting and Affiliated VR Mixer Offers Easy Access From GDC Event Features VR Design Education, Industry Predictions, and Open Standards Discussion TORONTO, ON — Non-profit and non-proprietary, the Immersive Technology Alliance (ITA) is the voice and standards body for technologies such as virtual reality, augmentedRead More →

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Ever since the hardware failure took down OSgrid‘s asset database last August, OSgrid residents have been worrying about whether the grid would ever recover — and, if it did, whether their inventories would be restored as well. The wondering is now over. The asset database has been rebuilt, in aRead More →

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With the renewed interest in consumer-grade virtual reality systems, it is inevitable that there will be a new sort of “format war” going on for the hearts and minds — and wallets — of the general public. How this will play out is anybody’s guess, but the current positioning of contendersRead More →

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When it comes to virtual reality, there are two fronts, two main technical directions that the technology is evolving in that everyone is talking about. But there’s also a third front, that hasn’t been getting as much attention, but which has the potential of being truly revolutionizing. Videos and video games OneRead More →

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River Island, a UK-based fashion chain, has released the first-ever fashion app for Google Cardboard-compatible virtual reality headsets. The app was released to promote the launch of the company’s Design Forum x Jean-Pierre Braganza collection, which hits the stores on February 24, and was created in partnership with the British Fashion CouncilRead More →

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The drama-plagued AviWorlds grid is back up under its previous ownership with a new domain name, and a new business model. “This will not be a commercial grid and you can only enter by invitation or referral,” grid owner and founder Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. He is also known asRead More →

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Today, the US Patent Office awarded Apple a patent for a virtual reality headset that is, in effect, a case for an iPhone or iPod. The patent application does not mention the iPad — possibly because it was first filed seven years ago, in 2008, two years before the iPadRead More →

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Given the choice between selling to Kitely‘s 1,003 local active users or to the 14,075 on the hypergrid, it makes sense that more and more Kitely Market merchants have gone the hypergrid route. In fact, exportables have long been growing at a faster rate than non-exportables for the past eightRead More →

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Press release: Open Source Virtual Reality platform gains traction with 13 new partners VR ecosystem is now supported by 38 members; Academia Support Program announced to support developers worldwide CARLSBAD, Calif. – Razer, a world leader in connected devices and software for gamers, and Sensics, a leader in high-performance virtualRead More →

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The Adult Metaverse Google Plus group was the fastest-growing OpenSim-related virtual community over the past six weeks. The community, as it sounds, is dedicated to adult content and events on the hypergrid, and has grown from 282 members on January 1 to 444 members today, a growth of 162 members.Read More →

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This was another record-breaking month for OpenSim, with new highs in regions, users, and active users on the 303 active worlds. For those who are new readers, OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills toRead More →

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OSgrid has been able to restore the rest of the assets from the recovery disk, OSgrid grid administrator Allen Kerensky announced today. However, he did not provide an estimated date for when OSgrid will be coming back up. He did say that the grid was now working on setting up the networkingRead More →

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Immersis, a project from the French VR company Catopsys, has hit its $100,000 Kickstarter goal for a virtual reality projection system. The technology adapts the image, in real-time, to the shape and size of the room you’re in. Watch the video below.Read More →

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DX Exchange, one of the oldest exchanges trading Linden Dollars, has now entered the OpenSim payments space. The exchange is now providing the currency infrastructure for Sunlight Grid, with four other grids in beta testing. Currently, there are two main exchanges providing currency services to OpenSim grids. Virwox operates theRead More →

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Mattel has updated its View-Master toy, this time, for the smartphone-owning virtual reality generation. The headset, which is scheduled to hit the market in the fall, is made in bright primary colors and works the same way as any other Google Cardboard-compatible headset — it breaks up the cellphone screenRead More →

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In the past, several grid owners have discussed using Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, for in-world payments but, until now, no grid has done so — Bitcoins are typically too volatile to be used within a grid. To read more about coins and gambling legislation read on https://www.bestuscasinos.org/legal/new-york/ about what mightRead More →

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Press release: LG G3 AND GOOGLE CARDBOARD BRING MOBILE VIRTUAL REALITY TO EVERYDAY LIFE More Consumers Get Access to Affordable and Powerful VR Experience with LG’s VR for G3 Giveaway SEOUL & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — LG Electronics (LG) and Google are making virtual reality (VR) more accessible to mainstream consumers. LG todayRead More →

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Virtual reality technology is going to radically change what it means to attend church in the next fifty years — and maybe much sooner. While the technology is still in its infancy, however, virtual churches are limited experiments rather than significant outreach efforts – but this will change. “Numerous persons andRead More →

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Ireland’s Immersive VR Education Ltd., has launched a Kickstarter to raise funding for its Apollo 11 virtual educational experience for the Oculus Rift. The Kickstarter launched yesterday and is already more than €3,000 towards its €30,000 (US $34,000) goal. Watch the video about the project below. You can also watch an RTERead More →

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Its not just cars, movies, and hotels using virtual reality for marketing. Outdoor-apparel brand Merrell showed off an Oculus Rift experience at the Sundance Film Festival last month and said it will do more virtual reality promotions. Watch the video below. Read the full story at AdAge.Read More →

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Are you launching a new grid? I bet you’re looking for some combination of “virtual,” “paradise,” “life,” “world,” and “avatar” that haven’t been used yet. Stop! If you use a grid name that reminds people of other OpenSim grids then you will have triple the branding challenge you would have otherwise.Read More →

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Press release: VirtualTourCafe Offers 3-D Virtual Reality Alternative to Traditional Real Estate Virtual Tours and Open House Online service embraces new 3-D technology developed by Matterport to offer international and out-of-town buyers an alternative to the traditional real estate virtual tours and being there in person. Pleasanton, CA  – VirtualTourCafeRead More →

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I Am Cardboard — known for their Google Cardboard virtual reality smartphone cases made out of cardboard or EVA foam — is moving up-scale. Its latest design, XG VR, has already raised $70,000 on Kickstarter, well past its $20,000 goal with 22 days left to go. It’s certainly one ofRead More →

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DodoCase, one of the earliest and best known of the many companies that offer Google Cardboard kits, is now offering a design-your-own case for $30. According to the company, volume designs are available for quantities over 50. A plain pop-up viewer is $25, a little on the pricey side forRead More →

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The initial batch of companies in what could be the first virtual reality accelerator have been announced. Among the projects selected by Rothenberg Ventures’ River are a system that creates 360-degree VR imagery, a headset that uses eye-tracking to build immersive experiences, and an embedded-in-VR journalism project. Each company got $100,000, office space and regular adviceRead More →