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I’m a big believer in OpenSim. One reason is that I get to hear about large projects and deployments that use OpenSim that I’m not allowed to talk about. There are organizations out there paying sizeable sums for OpenSim builds and custom development work. Meanwhile, I also talk to vendorsRead More →

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If there’s anyone out there who can’t get crowd funding for their virtual world project, you no longer have any excuses. A rock simulator just got funded. Okay, it wasn’t much — its goal was $500 on IndieGoGo. But there’s still 28 days left to go in its fundraising campaign,Read More →

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Now that Facebook has bought OculusVR for $2 billion dollars, the pressure is on Google to do something in this space. This week, Google has released its own headset — and it’s made of cardboard.   Cnet calls Google Cardboard “perhaps one of the most important, quirky, and ingenious advances inRead More →

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Firefox is adding native support for virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift to its Web browser, developer Vladimir Vukićević said this week in a blog post. “We are adding native support for VR devices to early experimental builds of Firefox, so that Web developers can start experimenting with addingRead More →

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OculusVR will acquire the Carbon Design, the company behind the Xbox 360 controller, OculusVR announced this week. “The team will officially become a key component of the product engineering group at Oculus, operating from the Carbon studio in the Seattle area,” the company said.     “The Carbon team bringsRead More →

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Press release: Metaio R&D Lab Releases 6D Augmented Reality Holodeck Technology to Developers MUNICH — Metaio, the world leader in Augmented Reality (AR) software and solutions today revealed its 6D Holodeck technology that places virtual environments directly in the real world allowing smartphone users to explore them with their on-board cameras.Read More →

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There are some great companies working in the OpenSim ecosystem. Unfortunately, many of the customers who would benefit from their services never get to know about them because of a lack of outreach and marketing. Everybody suffers. The customer’s needs don’t get met because they settle for a product orRead More →

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ANTVR — a Beijing-based, open source alternative to the Oculus Rift, completed a successful Kickstarter campaign this week. ANTVR is a wireless virtual reality headset that comes with a clever transformable controller. Kickstarter prices started at $270, and delivery is scheduled for this September. Some critics are worried that theRead More →

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There are only four days left to get your proposal in for this fall’s OpenSimulator Community Conference. Last year, around 350 people attended the conference, and more than 3,000 watched the 40-plus videos posted online. The conference was also a great opportunity to network with potential business partners and technology experts.Read More →

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Most virtual reality headsets these days follow one of two paths — they’re either peripherals that plug into a PC or a gaming console, or they’re hollow frames that users drop their smartphones into. GameFace — for now, at least — is unique. The company behind it, San Francisco-based GameFaceRead More →

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As one of five partners in a very small  virtual world software startup, I went in search of patents that may concern my company’s next software product. I had no idea that I would be mired in a sea of legalese. Much of our company’s work involves the OpenSim platform.Read More →

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U.K.-based group Infinite Void is seeking £5,000 — about US $8,500 — for a virtual ride to outer space. The idea is to send a weather balloon with 12 GoPro cameras up to the edge of space — 30 kilometers, or nearly 20 miles, straight up. The recorded video would then beRead More →

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In celebration of the fact that Hypergrid Business has had more than 20,000 readers this month — a record high — I’ve been looking at the design of our advertising sales page. I’d been leaving this for last because for me, like for many people, this is the least fun part.Read More →

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Kitely, the largest commercial OpenSim grid by land area, plans to deliver its Kitely Market content throughout the metaverse — not just to OpenSim grids. “Our goal is to make Kitely Market the main metaverse marketplace,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. “As there are more than one platform vyingRead More →

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The popular Diva Distro version of OpenSim is now available with the latest 0.8 update of the software, supporting variable-sized regions and profiles. “Profiles and varregions both work out of the box for new installations of the Diva Distro,” developer Crista Lopes said in the announcement. Lopes, who is also known as DivaRead More →

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Arch Virtual is putting the finishing touches on a super fun project for the Sacramento Kings to help project stakeholders, fans and members of the community explore the arena long before construction starts. The new $477 million downtown Sacramento Entertainment and Sports Center was approved by the city of Sacramento lastRead More →

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Linden Lab is working on a new virtual world, Linden Lab has confirmed, but urged users not to panic. “Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that will be in the spirit of Second Life, an open world where users have incredible power to create anything they canRead More →

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Linden Lab is working on a next generation virtual world that would not be backwards compatible with Second Life, said Radegast viewer developer Latif Khalifa in a post at SLUniverse today. According to Khalifa, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg broke the news today at a meeting with third party viewerRead More →

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Over 40,000 orders for the Oculus Rift’s Development Kit 2 have already come in, bringing the total number of headsets sold to over 100,000. The DK2 became available for pre-order in mid-March, and shipping is scheduled to begin next month. “We’ll ship 20 to 30,000 in July,” said Nate Mitchell,Read More →

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The BBC is experimenting with immersive virtual reality, according to today’s blog post by Cyrus Saihan, head of business development for BBC Future Media. “When the BBC started making the world’s first regular public television broadcasts in 1936, there were only about 20,000 TV sets capable of receiving the programming,”Read More →

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Press release: Red Dot Square announces ground breaking Virtual Reality software to help organisations make better, faster, retail and shopper decisions A new development in Virtual Reality technology is changing the way businesses plan, visualise and improve the retail and shopper experience thanks to the creation of the industry’s leadingRead More →

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This is it. This is the kind of moment every democratic citizen argues for: An opportunity to give voice to your demands as a citizen. Don’t waste it. Act now. On May 15, the Federal Communications Commission began seeking public comments on how best to protect an open Internet. The publicRead More →

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Second Life is a “viable and flexible” platform for physics simulations testing alternatives and predecessors to Newtonian physics, according to a paper published last month by a professor at the Lutheran University of Brazil The choice to use Second Life for the experiment was a simple one. “As I researched a fewRead More →

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Update 2: The 200-plus-user drop on Zandramas, is due to a similar problem as at Metropolis, a glitch in the database during the recent upgrades. Update: The 700-user drop on Metropolis is a result of a glitch caused by some regions updating from OpenSim 0.7.6 to 0.8.0. The grid is working on fixingRead More →

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According to a new study by a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Business, patent trolls cost startups $21.772 billion in lost venture capital funding over the past five years. The study specifically focuses on actual patent trolls — companies that file 20 or more patent lawsuits — not onRead More →

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Framestore, the company behind the “Game of Thrones” virtual reality simulations at SXSWi 2014, has opened what it says is the world’s first virtual reality and immersive content studio. “We’re already building a state-of-the-art space in our New York office to accommodate a variety of cutting-edge equipment that will guideRead More →

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It was more than a year ago when developers from the Avination grid and the Singularity viewer got together and created a new permission for OpenSim, the export permission. Since then, no major grid has adopted it, not even Avination itself. Until now. But it’s not Avination rolling out the exportRead More →

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Press release: Science Fiction Inspires Lowe’s Holoroom and Home Improvement Innovation Augmented reality project planning experience is first concept from newly-formed Lowe’s Innovation Labs MOORESVILLE, N.C. – On Wednesday, Lowe’s underscored its commitment to advancing retail innovation as it introduced Lowe’s Innovation Labs and the first concept to come outRead More →

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Expedia will now accept Bitcoin as payment for hotel reservations, the company announced in a press release Wednesday. The company will be using Coinbase to process the Bitcoin payments, converting them immediately into US dollars. This is the same vendor used by Overstock and Dish to process their Bitcoin payments.Read More →

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Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale offered insights into his new company’s business model and technical architecture yesterday in a talk and question-and-answer session about High Fidelity on the MOSES OpenSim grid yesterday. Of particular interest from a business perspective is that the High Fidelity software will be open source, similar toRead More →

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London-based Cmoar Ltd. unveiled a new smartphone-based virtual reality headset at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week. The company is planning a Kickstarter for the project, but no date has yet been set. The headset is designed for watching traditional movies on a virtual movie screen, for watching 3DRead More →

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Update: Simvalley, one of the grids mentioned in the below article, is no longer active. Folks who rent regions from Swondo, Dreamland Metaverse, Zetamex and Sasso can now upgrade them to super-sized varregions at no additional costs. Swondo, a Dutch hosting company offering regions on OSgrid and Metropolis, has beenRead More →

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Control VR, the glove-based controller system that got half-way to its $250,000 Kickstarter goal after just one day, has now passed that goal with 23 days left to go. The Los Angles-based company is promising delivery by Christmas of this year, with a two-glove development kit priced at the $600 pledge level.Read More →

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As of today, the only Kitely users who can create new metered regions are those with premium accounts. As part of this change, the metered regions will also be renamed to “Premium” regions. In addition, all existing metered regions owned by free users will no longer be accessible by their ownersRead More →

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Do you think your design for a virtual Mars base is good enough to live in? Then you’ve got three days left to submit it to NASA. That’s right, the 3D content sharing site Thingiverse from MakerBot Industries LLC is teaming up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the MakerBotRead More →

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I love watching YouTube demos of new Oculus Rift titles, and am a fan of PewDiePie and folks like him. Last night, however, I watched an Oculus Rift review video that wasn’t the typical player-scared-by-creepy-shadow or man-scared-by-rollercoaster or grandmother-astounded-by-Tuscan-villa. It was an opera, Senza Peso, reviewed by emart. I’ve been trying toRead More →

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Quality reasons have caused Ohio-based YEI Corporation to delay shipping on its Kickstarter-funded PrioVR virtual reality full body controller system. “You deserve a quality product and we don’t believe the product we can ship next month will meet that level of quality,” said Mike Sutherland, VP of YEI Technology, in an announcement. “The shortRead More →

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With 14 days left to go in its Kickstarter, the Beijing-based ANTVR Technology Co., Ltd., is now looking at stretch goals for the next two weeks. The Kickstarter for an open source version of the Oculus Rift ends on Jun 23 and has already passed $231,000 on a goal of $200,000.Read More →