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AviWorlds, a commercial social grid with a history of experimenting with business models, is putting a stop to its latest experiment with the hypergrid. This is the fourth time, by our count, that AviWorlds has turned hypergrid connectivity on and off. The last time was this spring. Hypergrid is theRead More →

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What do OpenSim users want for most of all? Content. According to this year’s OpenSim  Hosting Survey, 35 percent of respondents most wanted an online marketplace, and 30 percent wanted a bigger selection of content — and 53 percent picked one or the other, or both. In third place was a web-basedRead More →

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Zetamex, the second highest-rated OpenSim hosting company, has been repeatedly criticized for changing things up too much — price plans, offerings, management panels, even CEOs — all have changed repeatedly in the past few months, leaving users struggling to keep up. Some of the changes have been for the better,Read More →

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More than half a million Google Cardboard kits are in user hands, Google Cardboard product manager Andrew Nartker announced in a blog post yesterday. Google Cardboard is a smartphone headset, typically made out of yes, cardboard, that often ships as an assemble-it-yourself kit. It comes with lenses, an NFC chip to tell virtualRead More →

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It was a three-way competition between Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex and CloudServe in this year’s hosting providers survey, since the OSgrid outage took a lot of the smaller hosting providers out of the running. Despite the outage, the total number of responses was up by 62 percent compared to last year.Read More →

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I may have been premature when I announced that immersive movies were the killer app for virtual reality. What was I thinking? Who wants to spend two hours in a bulky headset? Obviously, the killer app for virtual reality is going to be music videos. The length of a songRead More →

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Toronto-based Cordon Media, Inc. has raised more than $21,000 Canadian dollars on a $50,000 Indiegogo campaign for a new virtual reality smartphone headset that works with both iPhones and Android devices, folds up into a slim 15mm phone case, and comes with an innovative multi-touch gesture interface. The Pinć– pronounced “pinch” —Read More →

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Update: The survey is now closed, and part one of the results is up. Part two of the results is here. It’s almost the end of the year, time for the annual Hypergrid Business OpenSim Hosting Providers Survey. Please note that this is a not a survey about individual grids —Read More →

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VRChat — an application that adds multi-user support, directional audio and gestures to 3D environments — is now available through the Oculus Rift app store. Unlike OpenSim, it doesn’t support in-world content creation. Instead, it requires that the environments and avatars be created inside the Unity 3D engine. And whileRead More →

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OMC helps establish an economy for the XMIR grid OMC allows hypergrid travelers to make payments OMCs can be purchased with the widest variety of payment options To help establish an economy for the grid, the recently-launched commercial Xmir grid has added support for in-world payments via the OMC currency from Virwox, a virtual currencyRead More →

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3rd Rock Grid, one of the oldest social OpenSim grids, has joined the hypergrid. As a result, the number of active users on hypergrid-enabled grids has just crossed the 12,000 mark, to 12,416. 3rd Rock reported 470 active users last month. And, with the addition of 3rd Rock’s 443 regions,Read More →

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Winter Silvermith and Karima Hoisan joined Mal Burns, Maria Korolov, Tara Yeats and Petlove Petshop this week for a discussion of all things metaverse. Karima Hoisan is a well-known poet in Second Life and OpenSim, and part of the machinima duo Randt & Hoisan. Silversmith is the editor of the Corran Journal,Read More →

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Virtual reality artists can now paint in 3D, with a new painting app, Tilt Brush, released for the Oculus Rift. You can paint thick, three-dimensional brush strokes, smoke, stars, and even light, according to development studio Skillman & Hackett. Watch a preview video below. Read more about it on Wired.Read More →

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Android smartphone users can now watch Paul McCartney’s recent Candlestick Part concert in virtual reality by downloading this app and using it in conjunction with Google Cardboard or similar smartphone-phone based headset. “ It was a spectacular show, one we think everyone should be able to experience,” said Vaunt VR, theRead More →

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Gear VR manufacturer Samsung has posted two new virtual reality-related videos from its recent Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco. The video below demonstrates the Gear VR headset. In addition, Samsung lead designer Alex Cho talks about review research pertaining to virtual reality experience design. In the second video, below, Oculus Rift scientistRead More →

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There’s been quite a bit of debate about whether violent video games can make people more violent in real life — though no conclusive research. With the advent of virtual reality — immersive, interactive experiences in which users feel as though they are actually characters inside a different world — thisRead More →

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Fidelity Labs, the R&D think-tank inside Fidelity Investments, created StockCity for Oculus Rift and the Web. Stock City is a 3D visualization tool that uses virtual reality to transform an investor’s stock portfolio into a city that conveys information about stocks without a single number or percentage. It is an immersiveRead More →

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World’s largest simulation, modeling and virtual reality event to open in Orlando on December 1 ARLINGTON, VA. — More than 500 corporations, government and military organizations, academic institutions and research institutions from around the world will exhibit and demonstrate revolutionary breakthroughs in one of the world’s fastest growing technologies. TheRead More →

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Immersed Conference and Exhibition Demonstrates How Virtual Reality Is the Real Deal Jaunt, New Deal Studios, iZugar Studio, and More Will Envelop the Senses TORONTO, ON – Organized by The Immersive Technology Alliance, Immersed features two days of sessions led by leaders in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), andRead More →

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The rock band The Who has released a free virtual reality app for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets and plan to add support for the Oculus Rift as well, when that device comes out. Watch the trailer for the app below. The app was created by UK-based design studioRead More →

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OSgrid has begun the rebuilding process, grid administrators announced today, even as the latest attempt to recover data starts to approach the finish line. Around 3 terabytes of data has been recovered as of this morning, out of a total of 3.5 terabytes — or about 21 million files. On NovemberRead More →

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CANADA –  Corran Journal today announced their expansion to cover all OpenSim grids. Residents across the metaverse have a new source for reviews, opinions, and stories that affect their social lives. “We’ve been inworld since 2010, in SecondLife we were known as the Corran Sun,” said editor Winter Silversmith. “IRead More →

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The total number of regions, registered users and active users all hit new record highs this month. The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids rose by the equivalent of 1,943  standard regions to 54,123, the grids gained more than 8,000 new registered users, and the number of active users rose by an evenRead More →

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Press release: Announcing the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds 2015 Workshop, March 6-7, 2015 November 17, 2014 – The U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, Simulation and Training Technology Center’s Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy (MOSES) and AvaCon are pleased to announce the Federal Consortium of VirtualRead More →

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You may have seen the recent flood of announcements from companies jumping on the virtual reality bandwagon. Movie studios, hotel chains, car companies are releasing virtual experiences at a furious pace. Most people are either excited or confused by all the attention, but a few have been upset at theRead More →

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Tangle Grid, a mid-sized commercial grid known for its hypergrid-enabled Expos, has decided to reduce the number of its 2015 Expos, but to make each Expo longer. “ The committee got together and looked at traffic and participation numbers for the Expos on TanGLe and we decided to make changes,” saidRead More →

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The InWorldz InShape app has been accepted by Apple for distribution in its App Store and will go live on Monday, InWorldz announced yesterday. This means that InShape will now run on the iPhone as well as most Android devices, the grid said. Read more about InShape here.Read More →

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Crista Lopes — you might know her as “Diva Canto,” an OpenSim core developer, inventor of the hypergrid and professor of informatics at UC Irvine — is now also in the viewer development business. And her new viewer, OnLook, is a dramatic departure from other viewers we’ve seen so far forRead More →

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OpenSim-based virtual networking company SimB2B was recognized as a top-five startup at the CoInvent NY Startup Showcase on Thursday, one of over twenty companies presenting. “SimB2B is the first grid to offer business to business networking and events such as trade shows,” SimB2B vice president Jack Mamiye told Hypergrid Business.  IndividualRead More →

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Samsung has just gone public with its Project Beyond 3D camera for virtual reality film-making. It’s not yet available for sale, and there’s no news yet about when it will hit the market. The device is about the size and shape of a frisbee, with 16 high-definition stereoscopic cameras positionedRead More →

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Are you still holding off on getting a Google Cardboard kit and turning your smartphone into a super low-cost virtual reality device? Maybe Volvo will change your mind. On Tuesday, the company is giving away a limited number of Volvo-branded Google Cardboard kits. All you have to do is downloadRead More →

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Virtual reality’s success or failure will depend on interface design, Oculus Rift chief scientist Steve LaValle told a packed virtual conference hall last weekend at the OpenSimulator Community Conference. “If we do fail, it’ll be because human comfort hasn’t been given the respect it needs,” he told the attendees onRead More →

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Full immersion virtual reality might be here sooner than you think — for movies, at least. Palo Alto-based Jaunt VR is developing a suite of hardware and software tools for creating 360-degree virtual reality videos. The use of 16-camera contraptions and 3-D sound-field microphones, which capture the sounds coming from variousRead More →

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On Monday, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Firefox, the Mozilla foundation launched the MozVR project to help fosaster the emerging virtual reality Web. In June, an Oculus-compatible version of Firefox was released. This is not a full virtual world platform like OpenSim, but more of an open source alternative toRead More →

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With OSgrid down for three months and no news from its managers about when it is expected to come back up, other grids have been stepping up to serve its users. Most recently, Tangle Grid launched the open Tangle OS grid at the beginning of October. That grid is nowRead More →

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OSgrid has successfully recovered 1.9 terabytes, out of 3.5 terabytes total, grid president James Stallings II said during a conversation on OSgrid’s Internet Relay Chat channel yesterday. The conversation was reposted on OSgrid’s forums by grid administrator and OpenSim developer Allen Kerensky. Stallings — who was posting under the userRead More →

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Press release: Avegant Closes Extended Series A Round of Funding Led by Intel Capital and NHN Investment REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Avegant today announced the close of an extended $9.37 million series A round of venture funding led by Intel Capital and NHN Investment. The company will use the fundsRead More →

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If you live, like me, in a northern climate, then you might be starting to suffer from the lack of sunlight, and from the cold November winds. Fortunately, there’s plenty to do in on OpenSim grids, where the sun shines bright whenever you want it to and the temperature is alwaysRead More →

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Nimble VR is less than $1,300 away from its $62,500 Kickstarter goal, with 39 days left to go. It’s a sign that this is a useful bit of technology — a camera-based motion sensor that attaches right to the front of an Oculus Rift headset. A sensor attached to the frontRead More →

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There’s yet another smartphone-based virtual reality headset on the market, this time from Australia-based company Phenomec. The headset, called the VRSmartView Developer Kit, costs AU $49.99 or about US $43.48 and is available for order now from the company’s website. Delivery is currently scheduled for December 12 of this year.Read More →

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Over the years, OpenSimulator has grown to be a widely used platform, serving as the virtual world server for many communities ranging in size, specialization and languages. due to the platforms open source nature, community contribution to its code base over the years has made OpenSimulator a formidable choice forRead More →

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Seems that there’s a mania for mergers going on. Next Reality and SkyLife Grid merged with AviWorlds. 3D Grid merged with Metropolis. And now Lost World grid is merging with AviWorlds, too. Is there a merger in your grid’s future? Take this quiz to find out!Read More →

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The motorsports-focused Next Reality grid has merged with AviWorlds. Next Reality had 125 regions as of mid-October, and was known for its racetrack and for its adults-only Red Light Hotel. Grid owner Mike Hart had been running the grid on his own until a failure with its RAID storage broughtRead More →

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There are plenty of headsets on the market today that are basically shells made out of plastic — or cardboard — that you slide your smartphone into. Higher-end devices such as the Oculus Rift, Sony’s Project Morpheus, GameFace, AntVR, Vrvana Totem, CastAR, and Immersion VRelia, haven’t yet hit the consumer market.Read More →

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On November 1, for the first time, avatars and the people behind them are going to run the American Cancer Society Relay for Life, for real, virtually. What in the world does that mean? Using the InWorldz InShape system, beta testers from the virtual world will get together on aRead More →

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Press release: CloudServe announces appointment of Chief Technical Officer AUSTIN, Texas — OpenSim hosting company CloudServe is announcing the addition of  Josh Boam — also known as Josh Piper in-world — to its staff as Chief Technical Officer. As experienced programmer and content creator, Boam assumed his role with the CloudServe teamRead More →

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3DGrid, a small non-profit German grid offering free or nearly free regions to educational institutions, announced today that it is merging with Metropolis, Germany’s largest grid. 3DGrid is a three-year old grid that, at last count, had 14 regions. It did not release its user numbers. “My personal involvement inRead More →