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After Tuesday’s surprising announcement by Linden Lab prohibiting third-party trading in the Linden Dollar, some virtual currency exchanges are now fighting for their lives. “It is not only problem for Linden Lab or third party exchanges but also for but a big number of residents, especially from European countries, who will beRead More →

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So I’m building a themed region — Maria’s Virtual Fit Club — on Kitely. (Facebook group here, Kitely login link here, story about the project here.) So, the first thing I think about, because I’m at heart a traditional newspaper layout designer, is the style template for the signs. There’sRead More →

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Today, two commercial grids — AviWorlds and Avination — announced their continued support of third-party currency exchanges. The announcements were in reaction to yesterday’s Linden Lab decision that third-party exchanges would no longer be authorized by the platform. As a result, 11 exchanges have already announced that they are endingRead 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.Read More →

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Three years ago, I participated in a groundbreaking fitness and lifestyle modification program in Second Life, as a result of which I made long-term changes — and lost 20 pounds. (Read more about my experience here and more about the Club One program here.) It may seem crazy that virtualRead More →

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PressRelease: RescueSim introduces next generation Head Mounted Display for full immersion virtual incident management training Rotterdam – Leading international developer of simulators and virtual training VSTEP, is proud to announce that its RescueSim virtual incident management training platform is to be fully compatible with the next generation Oculus Rift HeadRead More →

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I love participating in online conversations, so here’s my take on the “Why do I blog?” meme which recently showed up on New World Notes and Journey To The Center of the Metaverse and Daniel Voyager’s Blog after a challenge by Strawberry Singh. How long have you been blogging? I launched HypergridRead More →

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These last few weeks, I’ve felt a feeling of foreboding. Like there were big things looming on the horizon. Big things that would change the world as we know it. These big things are still far off, and even bigger things maybe creeping up behind them, out of our view.Read More →

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During the Spring Semester of 2007, this fool rushed into Second Life, something he felt would not only change education but the world beyond. Virtual worlds looked like a utopian technology with lots of zealous folks ready to evangelize the masses. Six years later, grading what may be my last-everRead More →

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If you rent land or own an OpenSim grid, you can now kick from your parcel or grid using your viewer, like in Second Life, thanks to code donated by Avination yesterday to the OpenSim community and expanded to include hypergrid visitors by hypergrid inventor Crista Lopes. Previously, grids couldRead More →

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Will stick with V1 interface Will add support for mesh, media-on-a-prim, server-side baking and export permissions Will continue to support OpenSim Work is resuming on the Imprudence viewer, the developer team announced this week. Imprudence is a popular old-style viewer for Second Life and OpenSim and uses the old-style interface,Read More →

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The Singularity team released a new version of the viewer today that supports the new “export” permission that was announced in March. The viewer — which is designed to work both in Second Life and in OpenSim — also added Server Side Baking and mesh uploads, among other improvements. TheRead More →

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AviWorlds, a commercial social grid, will be going down on Wednesday as it switches from managed hosting by Dreamland Metaverse to running its own servers. AviWorlds has outgrown the management tools available from Dreamland Metaverse,  grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business.  The Dreamland Metaverse management panel offers some options,Read More →

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I’ve written about New World Studio before, and just reviewed their Community and Licensed editions. The following are instructions for how to run the Community Edition the first time, and how to configure it without paying for the Licensed Edition. (Though the Licensed Edition makes the configuration a lot easier,Read More →

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MakeHuman, a free, open source software project that creates mesh avatars, has switched to the least restrictive license possible for the avatars created with its product. Content created with the software is licensed as CC0, which means that it can use used in any way, including commercial. Previously, MakeHuman putRead More →

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As a technology journalist, I get to look at a lot of vendor websites. As a former newspaper and magazine editor, I’ve done my share of layout and design. So as I look at OpenSim hosting websites I can’t help think of all the ways they can be improved inRead More →

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We’re about to see a big increase in the size of the hypergrid. According to my data, there are currently 96 grids that I know of that are hypergrid-enabled, with a total of 16,628 regions and 8,052 active users — though some of those active users might overlap as someRead More →

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The following mistakes are totally and completely a matter of my opinion. I don’t expect grid owners to rush out and redesign their websites because I didn’t like some aspect of it. However, if you’re designing your website for the first time, or planning a make-over of your existing siteRead More →

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Revit and Oculus Rift via Unity3D: Experiencing BIM in Virtual Reality While the vast majority of my work is designing virtual world environments, our studio Crescendo Design, still takes on a new architectural project from time to time. The best part is, our clients get to become test subjects forRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids lost 634 regions this month, for a new total of 23,411  regions on these grids, mostly due to the fact that ScienceSim reported a loss of almost 2,000 regions. The top 40 grids also reported a total of 17, 591 active users, a drop of 470Read More →

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The commercial version of New World Studio is due out soon, and prices start at $20 per year for individual users, $38 for non-profits, and $64 for businesses. The Community Edition is still available for free, but has less functionality. (My review of its preview release is here.) Both editionsRead More →

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Second Life is a killer app for Oculus Rift. Here are ten reasons why — and why OpenSim will get there first. 1. Quality, content and creativity Now, before you skip ahead to post a comment about how Second Life has been overrun by furries and 14-year-olds, take a moment toRead More →

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Yes, it can. I really think it can. So here’s the deal. Personal computer sales are going down the toilet. According to IDC, total sales are down 14 percent for the first quarter of this year compared to last year. There were more than 88 million computers sold in theRead More →

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First impressions of Oculus Rift: Architectural Visualization, Second Life, and beyond I wish I had more time to write out a more extensive review of the Rift, but here are my first impressions: You absolutely feel as if you are transported to another place, to the point where it’s almostRead More →

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I’ve written about Bitcoin before, warning that I was worried about volatility and botnets. Bitcoin has been on my mind again, lately, due to a big bubble spurred in part by the Cyprus financial crisis, worries that Linden Dollars might see increased regulation, and a Kaspersky Labs report about botnets beingRead More →

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Linden Dollar: Another Virtual Currency Affected by FinCEN. Bitcoin has been in the news recently. But bitcoin is not the only virtual currency. Virtual currencies, in one form or another are here to stay. When U.S. Treasury Department’s enforcement arm, FinCEN, issued its interpretive statement, it recognized this much. TheRead More →

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Vivox continues to expand OpenSim support, after offering their voice service for free in December of 2011., when grid owners were asked to personally contact Kamal Jain, Vivox’s director of network operations. Last summer, Vivox set up a dedicated team and email address for OpenSim queries. Now, Vivox has an onlineRead More →

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Last month, Entropia Universe “discovered” a new moon. Today, the company announced that the moon “sold” for $150,000 to a player-led group of investors. This isn’t the first time the company has “sold” virtual property — a virtual setting called “Treasure Island” went for $26,500 in 2004. In 2005, “ClubRead More →

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Press release: Utherverse Launches Newest 3D Internet Version: ‘WebWorlds.com’ Vancouver, BC – Utherverse Digital Inc., the architects behind the 3D internet platform, today announced it is expanding its contribution to the 3D web space with the launch of its newest version, WebWorlds.com. Similar to the company’s 2009 Virtual World WebRead More →

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I beta-tested the latest version of the New World Studio today. It took me exactly five clicks to have a new OpenSim-based world up and running on my computer. And the whole process took five minutes. Though probably half of it was spent taking pictures of my computer screen, resizingRead More →

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Adminotech Ltd., a realXtend vendor, began publicly testing its WebRocket browser-based viewer for its Meshmoon virtual world today. The viewer is in its very early stages, however. It supports text chat and basic movement controls, but has no in-world building tools, avatar customization, user inventories, or voice. “This is not aRead More →

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Press release: WebGL Momentum Creating the Industry’s Most Secure and Portable 3D Platform Multiple WebGL implementations now fully conformant on desktop and mobile; WebGL 1.0.2 being ratified for stricter behavior and functionality extensions SAN FRANCISCO — The Khronos Group today announces that multiple WebGL 1.0.1 implementations are now fully conformantRead More →

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Metaverse security took a big step forward today as Avination donated OpenSim code implementing an “export” permission setting. The company also worked together with Singularity viewer developers to add support for this new permission to the viewer. Today, OpenSim has three permissions — copy, transfer, and modify — that determine whatRead More →

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Only 65 out of more than 110 participants were able to log into an OpenSim scalability test conducted last Friday by the U.S. Army Simulation & Training Technology Center. “Real-time inspection of the logins indicated messages were queuing — getting backed up — by the firewall,” said Douglas Maxwell, the center’s science and technology managerRead More →

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Press Release: U.S. Army and Intel team up making training virtually a reality Orlando, Fla. – The U.S. Army’s Research Laboratory’s, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, Simulation and Training Technology Center (STTC) and Intel Corporation entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to collaborate and optimize research in virtual trainingRead More →

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OpenSim hosting company MyOpenGrid has released the preview version of its free, open source front end for OpenSim grids, called Mwi. It is designed to more easier to install than most other web front ends available today, but with more functionality than the Diva Distro WiFi interface. Mwi is a content management system,Read More →

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When it comes to graphics, I’m not much of a power user. I mostly stick with cropping and scaling in Paint. People who know what they’re doing using Photoshop or its free, open source alternative — GIMP. When I absolutely positively need to use GIMP for something, I Google howRead More →

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Avination, a commercial grid running on the OpenSim software, donated its multi-attachment code today to the OpenSimulator project. Avination rolled out the multiple attachment feature on its grid earlier this month. “Avination’s developers worked hard to clean up and test this code for integration with OpenSim and so it’s possible to makeRead More →

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In virtual worlds, the question of free stuff — free content, free software, free land — comes up a lot. Some people love free stuff. Some people hate it. Some people say that all content should be free because there are no distribution costs. Some people say that content should cost moneyRead More →

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Starting a new company doesn’t have to take a lot of money, and you don’t have to make the big splash on your first day of operations. Instead, you can apply these tips from the world of lean business to start small and grow fast. 1: Identify a market needRead More →

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Sick and tired of the inaccurate statistics in Hypergrid Business every month? You know who you are. You’re sure you can do better. Well, I’m going to help you out. We’re running far behind on updating the Hyperica directory and I was thinking of automating some of the tasks, suchRead More →

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As Linden Lab gradually loses landmass in its virtual world, as shown so graphically in Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey data, the Lab turns again to a dog it kicked repeatedly in 2010: educators. Hamlet Au broke the story that the Lab is “quietly” reaching out to selected schools and nonprofitsRead More →

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The top 40 OpenSim grids gained 1,458 regions this month, for a new total of 24,040 regions on these grids, the second highest total since we began tracking these numbers in the summer of 2009. These grids also reported a total of 18,061 active users.  A total of 224 gridsRead More →

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Looking for an immersive platform for your company, non-profit, educational institution, or government agency? Start with the following list of vendors, all of which have a successful history of serving enterprise customers. Browser-based platforms Running a virtual world in a browser does impose some limitations on the environment. But, onRead More →

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With PixieViewer, we’re closer to the dream of a Web-based viewer for OpenSim than we’ve ever been before. This particular viewer, which is built using HTML 5 technology, solves the biggest usability problem that OpenSim has. It requires no download — no plugins, no Java, no configuration, nothing. You goRead More →

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Learning in “simulated worlds” is not a new idea – but the HP Catalyst team at City Academy in Norwich (UK) has a new approach… and some fascinating insights about its impact on at-risk students. Jerome Thompson, a teacher at City Academy Norwich, is one of the lead developers ofRead More →

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PixieTec, a virtual worlds development company based in Germany, released the preview version of its browser-based PixieViewer today, which allows users to visit OpenSim grids without installing any software or plugins. PixieViewer is based on HTML 5 technology, and runs in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and other modern browsers. It loadsRead More →

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Press release: Coventry University in multimillion pound manufacturing boost using games technology SWINTON, UK — Coventry University’s Serious Games Institute is set to play a leading role in a £1.5 million (US $2.3 million) research project which aims to help manufacturing firms transform their business models using games technology. The project, announcedRead More →

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Avination announced support for multiple attachments today, a feature previously available only in Second Life. Avatars can now wear up to five attachments at each attachment point. “We have long heard from our users that this feature was sorely missed,” said grid founder Melanie Thielker. “Especially non-human avatars were severely limitedRead More →