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CtrlAltStudio released a viewer yesterday that can be used to access Second Life and OpenSim grids with an Oculus Rift. This is a preview viewer, which can be used to walk and look around inside the virtual world, but is missing user interface functionality. It works both in standard mode,Read More →

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Press release: Arch Virtual releases architectural visualization application built with Unity3D game engine, including Oculus Rift compatibility This week, Arch Virtual released a new interactive, real-time architectural experience for the Panoptic Group, based out of Chicago, Illinois. The application was developed using the Unity3D game development engine, and can be embeddedRead More →

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The folks behind the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset announced an app store yesterday, called Oculus Share. The site is intended for developers at first, but the company plans to grow it into a full-scale gaming marketplace. Oculus Share is already up and running. “With Share, you can host Oculus-readyRead More →

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I recently read Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses and as I was reading it, I kept thinking, “This would be great advice for grid owners!” Ries was the co-founder and CTO of IMVU, which I’ve never used, butRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids have reached 27,608  regions, a new record high. They also reported 306,942 total registered users and 17,922 active users this month. This is 709 more regions than on the Second Life grid. Meanwhile, of the 266 currently active public OpenSim grids, 214 reported their statistics this month,Read More →

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At some distant point in the future, virtual reality will be good enough and immersive enough that we can telecommute to our jobs by simply stepping into some version of a Holodeck or plugging into some version of the Matrix. Today’s virtual reality has only very limited use for theRead More →

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If you’re an educator considering taking advantage of Second Life’s newly-restored educator discount, but wondering about what else is out there, check out some of these OpenSim-based alternatives. You typically get much lower prices, more control and privacy and — best of all — ability to back up entire regionsRead More →

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Linden Lab has restored the 50 percent discount for educators and non-profits last month, but some educators are wary of taking the company up on its offer. “Our IT [information technology] folks, like many who once supported experiments in Second Life, have moved on,” said Joe Essid, who directs the WritingRead More →

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[Editor: Virtual therapy has been in the news lately for everything from schizophrenia to addiction recovery to pain management for burn victims to weight loss. Studies and research reports are accumulating, showing that virtual therapy and counseling can be as effective, or even more effective, than traditional approaches. To offer a personalRead More →

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The promise of virtual reality was all the rage in the 90s, but didn’t go anywhere because the headsets were laggy, low-resolution, had small fields of view, and made their users sick. Today, the Oculus Rift is ushering in a new wave of virtual reality technology, with over 17,000 developmentRead More →

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Press release: Designing Digitally, Inc. Chosen to Be on the 2013 TrainingIndustry.com Top Content Development Companies Watch List FRANKLIN, OH–Designing Digitally, Inc., a full-service interactive E-Learning development company, has been named as one of the 2013 TrainingIndustry.com Content Development Companies Watch List. “This year’s Watch List includes a combination ofRead More →

Train wreck image by Wystan via Flickr

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Whenever a grid closes unexpectedly, there are always some users who are surprised and unprepared. They didn’t make offline backups of their builds, didn’t get their OAR or IAR exports, didn’t move their in-world social networks to a more permanent — or, at least, different — platform like an emailRead More →

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The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) conference began today, and will continue for the next three days. The conference will take place across three different virtual worlds and will host presentations in Second Life, OpenSim’s Jokadia grid, and in Cloud Party. The majority of presentations and social eventsRead More →

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Linden Lab has cut its land and setup prices in half for educators and non-profits, the company announced this morning. “We’re pleased to announce an update to Second Life pricing for educational and nonprofit institutions,” the company said. The offer is effective immediately, and applies to any accredited educational institution.Read More →

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AviWorlds, a commercial grid which allowed people to connect self-hosted regions, went down yesterday. At the time, it had 138 regions and 319 active monthly users. Many of the grid’s regions, as well as centralized grid services, were hosted by Zetamex. “The owner has just contacted and left me,” ZetamexRead More →

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The land area of the top 40 OpenSim grids continued to grow, with the number of regions now at 25,783 — an increase of 535 regions compared to the same time last month. This is another record high month for OpenSim region totals. ScienceSim saw the most growth, with 512Read More →

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Press release: OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces Keynote Panel: The Future of OpenSimulator The OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013 will open on Saturday morning, September 7, 2013, with a keynote panel of core developers, who will discuss the future of the OpenSimulator platform. Topics will include a variety of issues including theRead More →

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InWorldz, OpenSim’s most popular grid, has made it possible for OpenSim users to have well-fitting mesh clothing. The grid hired former Second Life developer Karl Stiefvater — known as Qarl Fizz in-world — to finish work on his mesh deformer project, which began with a $5,555 crowdfunded project on Indiegogo. TheRead More →

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Press release: Stephen Gasior Joins NOBLE Virtual, Inc. ATLANTA – NOBEL Virtual, Inc. has announced the appointment of Dr. Stephen Gasior as the Director of School Development. In addition to overseeing the chartering of NOBLE Virtual Schools across the nation, Dr. Gasior will monitor science content in the NOBLE LearningRead More →

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Press release: OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces Keynote Speaker Grady Booch World-renowned computer scientist Grady Booch will deliver a keynote address at the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference.  Grady’s keynote address, titled “My Virtual Life,” will reflect on a quote from Joseph Campbell, who observed that, “One has to know how andRead More →

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The Oculus Rift is coming to Second Life. It’s already available for the Unity platform. Other virtual world platforms and games are rapidly signing on, including the Unreal engine, Valve, Bioshock, Hawken, Minecraft, Portal, and many, many more. This 3D headset — and the flood of competitors soon to comeRead More →

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Vivox may be the gold standard of voice in video games, and be the best integrated with Second Life and OpenSim viewers, but it isn’t the only game in town.  TeamSpeak, for example, is another commercial voice product used on some grids. However, like Skype, it requires users to haveRead More →

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The Vivox voice platform is currently used on more than 500 OpenSim grids, according to Vivox co-founder and CTO Jim Toga. The vast majority do not pay for the service, and do not need to, because they are non-profits, educational grids, or personal hobby grids. The large commercial OpenSim gridsRead More →

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Press release: OpenSimulator Community Conference Needs Participants for Grid Load Test Organizers of the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference are planning a large-scale load test of the OpenSimulator conference grid on Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at Noon PDT.  The conference will take place entirely within an OpenSimulator virtual world designedRead More →

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Press release: Proposed Charter School Reaches Final Step NOBLE Virtual World, Inc., announced today that chartering of NOBLE Virtual School of South Carolina is now on the last step of the process – a hearing in front of the Board of Trustees of the South Carolina Public Charter School District.Read More →

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San Francisco-based virtual worlds developer David Rowe has released a 3D viewer for OpenSim and Second Life, based on the Firestorm Viewer. The CtrlAltStudio Viewer works in conjunction with active shutter glasses and high-end graphics cards to create a 3D effect. “With the CtrlAltStudio Viewer, the display effect is that the virtualRead More →

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Press release: ProtonMedia Announces Mobile Strategy for ProtoSphere 3D Virtual Collaboration Cloud LANSDALE, Pa.–ProtonMedia continues to lead the industry by announcing the first enterprise-ready 3D virtual collaboration environment optimized for iPad. ProtoSphere by ProtonMedia brings the ultimate business collaboration solution to the simplicity and mobility of iPad in Release 3.0 of its award-winning collaborativeRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids have reached 25,248 regions, a new record high. They also reported 295,411 total registered users and 19,505 active users this month, both of which are also record highs. The previous record high was last October, when the 40 top grids had 25,202 regions. The numbers dropped dramaticallyRead More →

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Stand4Love, an annual event in support of marriage equality, has expanded beyond its traditional base in Second Life to include an OpenSim grid, Avination, in this year’s celebrations. “This event is actually our first Stand4Love event in a different grid other than Second Life,” said Stand4Love founder Editorial Clarity. “Our mainRead More →

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Virtual reality therapies are increasingly proving successful in a number of settings. As the virtual reality platforms and interfaces improve, we will start to see more of the following: 1. Reducing pain Pain is partly psychological in nature, which means that distractions can help relieve pain. Listening to music, forRead More →

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Avination donated code to the OpenSim project today intended to reduce viewer disconnects, crashes, server instability, and teleport failures. According to the company announcement, the technology is called “HTTP-inventory throttling.” What happens is that when an avatar first appears in a new location, the user’s viewer requests information about theRead More →

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Second Life customers who have difficulty buying Linden Dollars from the official LindeX exchange — your voices have been heard. When Linden Lab shut down all third-party currency trading in early-May, there was a mass outcry that included two public petitions. Linden Lab reversed course ten days later,  allowing approved outside exchangesRead More →

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Press release: Daden releases White Paper on Mobile Immersive Learning Birmingham, U.K. – New training and education opportunities offered by 3D Mobile Immersive Learning, and the potential benefits to learners and organisations are described in a free white paper released today. Mobile immersive learning is a type mobile eLearning that usesRead More →

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Virtual worlds are a great way to run classes. In fact, according to the latest Hypergrid Business survey, educators are the second largest professional user segment for OpenSim, and about a third of users overall used OpenSim for training and simulations. You can have students from all over the worldRead More →

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While many OpenSim grids are trying to attract users from Second Life, or other grids, 3rd Rock Grid has decided to reach out to the real world for its latest marketing and outreach campaign, centered around its 3RG Music Village virtual performance space. The campaign will include targeted advertising through music-relatedRead More →

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Press release: Virtual worlds non-profit applies for charter school status in North Carolina ATLANTA  – Can you imagine a school where students visit the Sistine Chapel, the Louvre and the Basilica of St. Francis and are back home by the bell? Or a school where students learn to operate lasersRead More →

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Press release: Virtual Highway Expands and Upgrades Servers, Announces Partnership with Currency Exchange Colorado and Wilmington, DE – Podex Exchange, a US company in operation since 2007, has partnered with Virtual Highway to provide a currency exchange service to the grid’s residents. Terminals are available in the new member center and in various venuesRead More →

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More than 200 people responded to our survey of how people use OpenSim, and the results are in — the majority of people use OpenSim for work and for creative self-expression. The first question of the survey asked people who they were. Around 40 percent of respondents said they usedRead More →

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Press release: Announcing the 1st Annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013 The Overte Foundation and AvaCon are pleased to announce the first annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2013, to take place on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid on September 7 and 8, 2013.  The OpenSimulator Community Conference will be a celebration of the platform and of theRead More →

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Who are the main users of OpenSim? This is an important question for vendors, grid owners, developers and other types of service providers deciding where to invest their resources. Please help us find the answers by answering a couple of very quick questions.Read More →

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In a surprising reversal, Linden Lab has decided to allow third-party exchanges to sell Linden Dollars to users, a move that will benefit international Second Life residents who had difficulties using the official LindeX exchange. “We’ve heard from some users outside of the US who are concerned that it mayRead More →

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I had put up this page since Linda Kellie’s site was going down, but Zetamex just announced that they purchased it, and it will be staying up. Yeay. So you can continue to go there to download these things. There’s also a download page here, of all the OAR andRead More →

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Update (May 17): Linden Lab launches Authorized Reseller program, five exchanges now live. Linden Lab announcement is here. List of Authorized Resellers is here. The five exchanges currently allowed to sell Linden Dollars to users are  AnsheX, Buildo, VForEx Inc, VirWoX, and Zoha Islands. No third party exchanges are allowed to purchase Linden Dollars from users, however. ——————- WhileRead More →

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Recent outages at two of the biggest, most popular grids in the metaverse — Metropolis and AviWorlds — cut into this month’s active user numbers, but overall the OpenSim metaverse continued to expand. The top 40 OpenSim grids by land area gained 1,173 regions this month, for a new total ofRead More →

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Despite dire warnings from Linden Lab, the Podex, Crossworlds and AnsheX virtual currency exchanges still seem to be operating, with, so far, no ill effects to users. As a result, DXexchange has decided to resume selling Linden Dollars, pointing to the clause in the Linden Lab Terms of Service that saysRead More →

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In the wake of the recent closing of at least 16 third-party Linden dollar exchanges — only AnsheX, Podex, and Crossroads are still up, as of this writing — some Second Life residents have launched petitions to allow third-party exchanges to remain, or asking for more information. A petition on Change.org, Linden Lab: Lets try to openRead More →

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Kitely merchants can now start uploading products to the Kitely Market, the company announced today. There’s a 100 Kitely Credit fee to list new items, which is between US $0.33 and $0.50, depending on how many Kitely Credits are bought at once. Adding variations on the same product — different colors, forRead More →