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The 3dcolab.com crew has built a simulation of the historic Michigan Central Station, a railway depot which is one of the best known iconic ruins of Detroit. We showed our magnificant as it used-to-be re-creation last month at the Detroit Design Festival dElectricity event. The location was a friendly art gallery and coffeeRead More →

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The Tokyo University of Information Sciences released a new tool this week for converting OpenSim regions to mesh. The new OAR Converter tool takes a region saved as an OAR backup file and converts it to a Collada file, which can then be used inside Unity 3D and other all-mesh environments.Read More →

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Love them or hate them — and many people do love them — but there are now breedables on the hypergrid. Previously, breedables in OpenSim were limited to closed grids like InWorldz, with Oyo Breedables, Fussels Breedables, and, of course, Amaretto Breedables. As of this week, however, breedable turtles have arrivedRead More →

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Merchants selling products on the Kitely Market can now advertise them. According to today’s announcement, merchants can now put up ads promoting individual products, or their entire stores. The ads will appear on top of search results in a “Featured Products” or “Featured Store” section. Prices start at US $0.10Read More →

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I just noticed that KZero has an excellent new design. Perfect timing, too — as interest in virtual reality is exploding, so is the need for virtual worlds consultants of all kind. Arch Virtual also has an excellent new site, as does Designing Digitally. Of course, lots of vendors in ourRead More →

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OpenSim Creations, the top site for OpenSim creators sharing original content under Creative Commons licenses, is gone. “In the wee hours of October 20, the entire /home folder of this server got wiped,” said owner Vanish Seriath in a post today. “Why, I don’t know. To make matters worse, I don’tRead More →

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This is a follow-up to yesterday’s article about the rules of grid competition. So you’ve decided to avoid self-sabotaging, unproductive, negative types of marketing and competition. What’s left? Lots of stuff! 1. Market your cool new features Don’t expect people to notice it when you add a major improvement toRead More →

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Terry Ford, founder of the commercial 3rd Rock Grid, is spearheading the formation of new association of OpenSim grid owners. “We at 3rd Rock Grid do not see other grids as our enemy,” he told Hypergrid Business. “Instead, we hope all grid are successful as their success is our success,Read More →

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As OpenSim grows bigger and bigger, some grids might think that an easy way to gain customers would be to bash other grids. For example, AviWorlds grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli said in a recent comment, “For me a competitor is my mortal enemy.” Now, I’m all in favor of competitionRead More →

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Now that the Hyperica hyperport is starting to get into shape, I’ve set out some free hypergates for people. Just teleport over to hg.hyperica.com:8022 and pick them up. I’ve got some all-in-one gates, like the one from The Hypergates, and a Blamgate from Pathfinder, and Diva Canto’s teleporter. The gate fromRead More →

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The Hyperica hyperport gets a decent amount of traffic, and has a few scripts running on it. Plus, I recently rearranged the grid, and my hosting company updated our software. Let’s just say that region restarts are common place. And my gate scripts kept breaking. It’s turns out, this wasn’tRead More →

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Press Release: Archos VR Glasses: Jumping Into the Mobile Virtual Reality World Available in November, starting at $29.99, Archos VR Glasses create immersive experiences for smartphone users Denver – Archos, a pioneer in Android devices, announces the Archos VR Glasses. Immersing users in a virtual reality environment, the French company keeps on making cutting-edgeRead More →

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Island Oasis, a closed commercial social grid, released a new viewer for its residents yesterday. The custom viewer — available for download here — is a version of Firestorm configured specifically to work with Island Oasis, including links to the grid’s online marketplace, currency purchases, and full search functionality, said theRead More →

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Are you already preparing your smartphone to be your doorway to virtual reality? If no, it’s high time you did so. While virtual reality hardware keeps going three different paths, mobile platform is taking shape as the one with a huge potential to dominate eventually. So don’t wait for the consumerRead More →

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The Adult Grid became the second major closed grid to connect to the Kitely Market, the grid announced today in a press release. Zandramas, another closed grid, did the same this past April. The Adult Grid — like the name suggests — features adult content. It came in second inRead More →

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There is a new version of the OpenSimulator software, 0.8.0.2, which fixes an inventory permissions bug that appeared in 0.8 and 0.8.0.1. This change fixes a problem with the llGiveInventory and llGiveInventoryList scripting commands, said core developer Justin Clark-Casey in a post. When these script commands are used to give items to anRead More →

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Press Release: First Classes in U.S. to Use Oculus Rift Virtual Reality System at Charlotte Latin School CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The art, engineering and programming students at Charlotte Latin School are the first students in the U.S. to use the Oculus Rift virtual reality system in their classes, announced Arch N.Read More →

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OpenSim hosting company Zetamex is bringing founder Timothy Rogers back as its CEO, a new support partnership with Zandramas, and a limited time region offer to existing customers. This was the news that came out at last night’s public meeting at the Zetamex virtual office on their ZetaWorlds grid, andRead More →

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The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids rose by the equivalent of 1,616 standard regions to 52,180, the grids gained more than 6,000 new registered users, but the number of active users fell by 280 this month on the back of a continued outage at OSgrid. Metropolis was the biggestRead More →

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Trying to come up with a new name for a grid? Try to avoid any of the words in the cloud above so that you wouldn’t be confused with other grids.Read More →

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Press Release:  OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014 Expected to Sell Out, Tickets Still Available October 16, 2014 – Conference organizers expect the OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014 to be a sell out event this year.  The conference will be held on November 8 and 9, 2014 on an OpenSimulator grid designed specifically forRead More →

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Piquant. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, at the epicenter of tech, opined last week about women in tech, suggesting they not ask for raises but instead trust “the system” to recognize performance with pay increases when appropriate, earning “good karma” along the way. At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. FiveRead More →

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The Museo del Metaverso — Metaverse Museum — is starting back up again on the Craft grid after two years of inactivity. The Museum was originally created in Second Life in 2007 and in 2010 it moved permanently to Craft. The museum offers a new way of presenting and promoting art through workshops,Read More →

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A new hosting provider, CloudServe, is offering cloud-based OpenSim regions starting at $7.95, mini-grids starting at $34.95 and full grids starting at $94.95. CloudServe is a service operated by Austin-based 3D Virtual Web, Inc., the company behind Virtual World City. Prices are mid-range — not as low as Zetamex, but aboutRead More →

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Attendees of the New York Comic Con 2014 got a chance to fly virtual dragons, thanks to the folks from DreamWorks Animation. The movie studio created a virtual experiences using Oculus Rift headsets, fans, and vibrating seats to put users on the back of flying dragons, part of the studio’sRead More →

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3rd Rock Grid, a mid-sized closed, commercial grid won’t be closed for too much longer. The next grid upgrade will bring hypergrid functionality in the next two or three weeks, grid founder Terry Ford, also known as Butch Arnold in-world, told Hypergrid Business. “We will have some safeguards in place to notRead More →

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It looks like a little gray box. But when you move it through the air, it sounds more as though you’re moving a whole orchestra around the room in the palm of your hand. Technology developed at the university makes it seem as though the music is coming from thisRead More →

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Zetamex will not be accepting any new customers for the rest of the month, incoming president Richard Lehman said in an announcement posted today on the company’s website. Lehman became the owner of the company in mid-September, but previous CEO Timothy Rogers was slated to continue to serve as actingRead More →

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OSgrid residents who rent their regions from Dreamland Metaverse and who can no longer wait for OSgrid to come back up can have them moved to a private mini-grid, the company announced yesterday. The offer includes a free month of hosting, plus custom asset retrieval. OSgrid has been down forRead More →

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  Robert Bosch, the world’s largest supplier of automotive parts and equipment, is training between 8,000 and 10,000 mechanics on direct-injection and breaking technology — using virtual reality. The company has launched a 750-stop tour with Oculus Rift headsets that allow the technicians to get virtual tours of the insidesRead More →

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SkyLifeGrid founder Josh Boam agreed to provide hosting for the much-troubled AviWorlds grid last month. Now, the two grids are merging — and a third grid, QuickLifeGrid, is joining up as well. As of last month, SkyLife had a little over 100 regions and 36 active users. I have no data onRead More →

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The hypergrid turns six years old on October 26. On that day in 2008, Crista Lopes, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, sent an email to the OpenSim developers mailing list. “I started working on an extension to OpenSim that makes it work in peer-to-peer mode… I’mRead More →

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I just spent an hour Googling around for this because half the tutorials out there are for older versions of GIMP, so they no longer work! But I needed some quick gold and silver textures — and this technique works for silks, as well. Here’s how to do it. CreateRead More →

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Exo-Life, a small social world, has completed its move from Zetamex to Dreamland Metaverse hosting this week. Zetamex and Dreamland Metaverse are the two leading hosting companies for companies, organizations and individuals running private OpenSim grids. How they switched The migration process was very straightforward, Dreamland CEO Dierk Brunner told HypergridRead More →

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Carl Zeiss, a company known for high-end lenses, is now in the virtual reality business. Their headset, the VR One, is currently available for pre-order, with shipping scheduled to begin before Christmas. The first version of the device will support iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones, trays for otherRead More →

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Anyone who has worked on the production side of virtual environments can attest that content creation and scene development is a costly and time consuming endeavor. Depending on the complexity and fidelity of the scene, production can easily become the highest expense of the project. In more traditional virtual environmentsRead More →

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One of the most popular articles on this site is Log your visitors to Google spreadsheet, which I wrote in 2012, and which Zuza Ritt updated the following year. Here’s an easier way to do it, and the script to go with it. Step One: Create the form Sign in toRead More →

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If you live in Houston, Los Angeles, or Washington DC, check out the Oculus Rift experience for the upcoming movie “Interstellar” by director Christopher Nolan. The virtual tour, which began in New York City this week, takes you on a three-minute trip through the spaceship “Endurance” featured in the movie.Read More →

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Update: Craft was back up earlier than expected, on Monday, October 6. See this post for details. OSgrid went down with RAID problems in late August and still hasn’t recovered. The Next Reality Grid was hit a week later. Now Craft, an open, non-profit European grid popular with artists, hasRead More →

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I’ve been feeling left out because so many cool virtual reality accessories coming out are for Android phones. And I have an iPhone. So I was really excited about the $49 AirVR, which just pulled in $25,000 Canadian — of a goal of $20,000 — with 11 days still left to go inRead More →

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Okay, so the field for motion control is wide open. Nobody knows what technology and user interface paradigm will actually take us into mainstream virtual reality. But this probably isn’t it. Watch the video below, where users wear thimbles on their fingers while pointing at computer screens. If you don’tRead More →

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A prototype virtual reality system from Sightline VR‘s Tomáš “Frooxius” Mariančík combines an Oculus Rift, a Leap Motion controller, and an innovative user interface to allow people to use their actual hands as controllers, no gloves required. I really like the in-world touch-screen interface but wonder whether your arms would get reallyRead More →

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The folks at Oculus VR have posted videos for all the keynotes and talks from their Oculus Connect conference two weeks ago, so if you weren’t able to get to San Francisco, here’s your change to catch up on what you missed. Watch the Oculus Connect introduction below. Then theRead More →

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One of the downsides of PC peripheral headsets like the Oculus Rift is that they require high resolution screens and motion sensors, which are expensive. Case-based virtual reality displays that are simply holders for smartphones solve trade that problem for a different one — cell phones don’t have enough powerRead More →

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Bassima Alansary came to virtual worlds in secret. Her family and culture forbid her from having an avatar, or from speaking to men even in virtual settings. She lived in Saudia Arabia, in fear of being punished for the simple desire of wanting to learn to speak English. “When IRead More →

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We all love OpenSim. That’s why we’re here. But some of us aren’t as good at communicating it as others. One reason could be that a large part of the human population, especially the technically savvy and the creative folks, hate the idea of marketing. They’ve been the victims ofRead More →