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As usual this time of year, activity on OpenSim grids is up as people spend more time inside on the computer, and grids ramp up for holiday events. Compared to last month, the number of active users is up by nearly 1,700. The total land area is down, however, byRead More →

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Update 5/19: AnSky is switching away from Gloebit, possibly to a local currency on the jOpenSimMoney module. The Gloebit payment services is back up this week, kind of, after more than a month of downtime, but many grids and users are still reporting issues with the payment system. “We restoredRead More →

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The Sacrarium grid has taken down illegal content after receiving complains from users through emails and forums, and removed users who allegedly engaged in illegal behavior with child avatars. Neustadt, a region in Sacrarium grid and which was selling naked child avatars and had children avatars moving around naked, wearing BDSMRead More →

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[Editor’s note: Timothy Rogers has been a valued member of the OpenSim community since he launched SoftPaw Estates back in 2012. That evolved into the Zetamex OpenSim hosting company, which has been ranked as one of the top hosting providers since 2013 in our annual reader surveys and is the companyRead More →

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First, I’d like to apologize. I first noticed that Zetamex had posted its OpenSim hosting prices over the summer, and meant to do a story then, even contacting the company and some of its customers for quotes. But then a family medical emergency happened, and I’ve spent much of theRead More →

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OpenSim hosting company Dreamland Metaverse received the highest scores for performance, support, stability and its user interface in this year’s hosting providers survey, followed by DigiWorldz and Zetamex Network. There were 40 responses total to this year’s hosting survey, which asks grid owners about their hosting providers. However, many ofRead More →

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OpenSim developers are getting ready to release OpenSim 0.9.0, and some grids are already experimenting with the new features by downloading the experimental version of the new release — and they are running into some problems. The problem is specific to grids using the new ubOde physics engine, which is includedRead More →

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While most OpenSim hosting companies are cautiously optimistic about the new Gloebit currency, currently in beta testing on Hyperica and ZetaWorld grids, grid owners themselves are split on how they want to see payments evolve. Dreamland, Zetamex testing platform Dreamland Metaverse was one of the early testers of the GloebitRead More →

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Dreamland Metaverse outscored the two other major providers in every category in this year’s OpenSim hosting providers survey, while CloudServe, the new kid on the block, scored a close second. Zetamex scored last in four out of five categories. Zetamex also had an ownership change this past year, and hadRead More →

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Most people who’ve traveled the hypergrid have had the experience of not being able to bring stuff back home, or of mysteriously not being able to take content to other grids. Recently, a number of different OpenSim developers have taken on the fight, and have been reporting progress. Crista LopesRead More →

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For the last couple of years, Zetamex, an OpenSim hosting company, has also been hosting Zadaroo.com, which has a complete collection of Linda Kellie’s OARs, IARs, XML files, and textures. It’s a treasure-trove of content and includes everything most small grid owners need to get going: avatars, clothing, furniture, buildings, landscaping, scriptsRead More →

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Zetamex, a Las Vegas-based OpenSim hosting company, has opened its doors to new customers yesterday, and published their new price schedule for region rentals. The regions are available on ZetaWorlds, Atek, WestWorld, Metropolis or any other open grid. Prices start at $15 a month for a single region capable ofRead 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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The past four weeks have been slow for OpenSim, with the top 40 grids gaining only 153 regions. This is the first time the growth has been under 500 regions since last April. OSgrid was the major culprit this month, losing 133 regions — as well as 318 active usersRead More →

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UK-based virtual currency exchange Podex has teamed up with Last Vegas-based OpenSim hosting company Zetamex to offer a new currency option for OpenSim grids. Today, grids have three choices for in-world payments: a local currency that they create and manage themselves, the multi-grid, hypergrid-enabled OMC — Open Metaverse Currency — fromRead More →

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OpenSim hosting company Zetamex has announced an award for anyone who finishes up work on the Mumble-Whisper open source voice system for OpenSim. Currently, the two main options for OpenSim voice are Freeswitch, an open source platform, and Vivox, a commercial service that also provides voice to Second Life. VivoxRead More →

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The new year begins with both good news, and bad news. The bad news, first. Haven, a small commercial grid, closed as of December 27.  According to a letter by the founder, health issues have cut into both the time and the financial resources she is able to dedicate toRead More →

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I understand that virtual worlds are a new thing, and that companies need to experiment with business models and pricing structures to see what fits the market best. And I’m totally in favor of lowering prices, simplifying pricing structures, or providing more options for customers. But I don’t understand whereRead More →

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Today, OpenSim development moves along at an uneven pace, with an estimated 1,200 bugs that need to be fixed before OpenSim can get to a stable, reliable version 1.0 release and get out of “alpha.” Development is mainly driven by three groups — large organizations like Intel who have paidRead More →

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The results of the 2013 OpenSim hosting  are in, and the biggest surprise was the lack of votes for SimHost, once one of the leading vendors in this space. Another surprise? Vehicle physics tops the list of wanted OpenSim features, just as it did in 2011. Overall, 53 percent ofRead More →

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AviWorlds, a Brazilian OpenSim grid with a history of trouble, seems to be on the outs again. The grid went down on Tuesday night and is officially closed, according to hosting provider Zetamex. “The owner just told us to shut down,” Zetamex founder Timothy Rogers told Hypergrid Business. “Real lifeRead More →

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The results of the 2013 Hypergrid Business OpenSim Grid Survey are in, with 654 votes cast. Just over 90 percent said they would recommend the grid to others, a slight increase from last year’s 87 percent, 8 percent said “maybe” and less than 2 percent said they would not recommendRead More →

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The OpenSim grids are getting ready for the holiday season, with themed events and special promotions. Littlefield Grid celebrates Dr. Who anniversary, Thanksgiving and Homecoming Littlefield grid is celebrating a number of holidays this month, staring with the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who on November 23. There will be aRead More →

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Regions on Second Life are going black, creators pulling out, Renderosity and CG Textures forbidding the upload of their content to Second Life, and a new survey of content creators indicates they expect things to get worse, while OpenSim grids stand ready to welcome another crop of fleeing content creators.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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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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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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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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OpenSim hosting company SoftPaw Estates announced that it is rebranding as Zetamex, and has launched a new grid running on the Aurora-Sim version of OpenSim. In addition to traditional single-region and mini-grid OpenSim hosting, Zetamex now also offers dedicated server packages. “Dedicated packages are for people who want direct controlRead More →

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Latest update: April 8, 2013 This is a primer for folks considering moving into OpenSim who have never used OpenSim before and who don’t have much of a technical background. First look at OpenSim If you want to get into OpenSim in the quickest, easiest way possible, just follow thisRead More →