Earlier this year, augmented reality (AR) hardware company DreamWorld sought to compete with the big names in AR and mixed reality (MR) such as Microsoft’s HoloLens by launching an affordable AR headset called DreamGlass. Now time is running out for consumers and developers to get the device at its discounted ‘Early bird’ price.
Currently developers and consumers can purchase the DreamGlass AR headset directly from the DreamWorld website for $399 (USD). This offer is set to expire on 5th December, 2018. After that, the price will take a jump up to $619.
The DreamGlass AR headset offers users a 90 degree field-of-view, along with 2.5K resolution, 3 Degrees of Freedom (3DoF) head tracking and hand gesture recognitions. The device is said to be about half a pound in weight and can tether to either a smartphone or PC.
The tethering can be done using a USB Type-C connector, which lets users interact with the AR content displayed on the headset by using the smartphone as a controller. Similarly, the device can also be connected to a PC, which is useful for development and prototyping of AR and MR content.
The company heave created a software development kit (SDK) which is based on the Unity engine. Unity is commonly used in all avenues of videogame development, and has a number of tools for creating AR and MR content, and is supported by both Windows and Android.
The creators of DreamGlass hope that by making the SDK easy to use, it will encourage developers to create new and innovative AR and MR content. The discounted early price is intended to encourage smaller and independent developers who might lack the resources of larger studios to purchase the DreamGlass and commence creating content.
DreamWorld says that all DreamGlass orders will be shipped within three days. Further information can be found on the DreamWorld website.
For future coverage of AR and MR hardware, keep checking back with VRFocus.
Langsam kommt Schwung in die Augmented Reality. Das Startup DreamWorld bietet ab sofort das DreamGlass AR Headset an und möchte erste Exemplare bereits Ende Juni ausliefern.
DreamGlass AR Headset für PC und Smartphone
Die DreamGlass AR-Brille sieht auf den ersten Blick wie eine Meta 2 aus, doch die Brille hat eventuell ein paar Tricks auf dem Kasten, die seinem deutlich teureren Konkurrent fehlen. Die neue AR-Brille von DreamWorld kostet für Early Adopter nur 399 US-Dollar + ca. 40 Euro Versand nach Deutschland und kann sowohl mit dem PC als auch mit dem Smartphone verbunden werden. Dafür wird die Brille jedoch nur 3-DOF-Tracking beherrschen, was ihren Nutzen für Entwickler etwas in Frage stellen dürfte.
Dennoch klingt eine 2,5K-Auflösung und ein Field von 90 Grad nicht schlecht und der Preis sollte für das System angemessen sein. 60Hz klingen hingegen nach nicht besonders viel und aktuell steht lediglich ein Plugin für Unity bereit. Zudem kann nicht jedes Smartphone der Brille Leben einhauchen. Folgende Modelle sind kompatibel:
Though augmented reality (AR) has been growing steadily in popularity, most people only experience it through smartphones, as the majority of the available AR headsets are in a price range that is out of reach of most consumers. DreamWorld hope to correct this, and other problems with current commercially available AR headsets with the launch of the DreamGlass.
The DreamGlass headset includes 2.5K resolution and 3DoF (degrees of Freedom) head tracking and can be tethered to a smartphone or PC, allowing for easier development.
Using a USB-C connector, the DreamGlass headset can be connected to a smartphone, allowing users to interact with the AR content in the headset by using the smartphone touchscreen as a controller.
The DreamWorld SDK is based on Unity, and is supported by both Windows and Android. The SDK has been designed to be simple to use, to encourage new developers to create content. To further emphasise its accesibility to ordinary consumers and small or independent developers, DreamWorld are pricing the DreamGlass headset at $399 (USD), which puts it at considerably cheaper than devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens.
DreamWorld Founder & CEO, Kevin Zhong states, “There is so much potential in Augmented Reality, but the hardware limitations and steep price points of headsets available today have not made it easy for developers to fully contribute to the ecosystem. Through the DreamGlass, we hope to be the guiding light for all developers- providing them with an accessible top-quality platform to create top quality content. Only then, will they be empowered to bring a more genuine realism to augmented reality. We want to close the gap between reality and the augmented digital world.”
The company has stated its belief that by providing an affordable, high-quality AR headset, developers and creative people will have more opportunities to bring content to life and provide the push needed to bring AR into the mainstream.
Further information on the DreamGlass can be found on the official DreamWorld website. For future coverage of DreamGlass and other AR projects, keep checking back with VRFocus.
OpenSim land area fell by the equivalent of 8,820 standard regions, and active users dropped by 1,968 due to combination of school holidays and fewer grids reporting stats than in the last couple of months.
This month had the lowest total land area since January of 2017 and the lowest active user numbers since last September.
OpenSim land area has been falling since November last year. (Hypergrid Business Data.)
The largest gainer in land mass in the last month was OSGrid whose land increased by 412 standard equivalent regions, followed by HGLuv with 65 more and Adreans-World with 32 additional regions.
OSgrid is the largest grid in size with 19,333 standard region equivalents, followed by Kitely with 17,325, Metropolis with 6,744 and Lost Paradise with 4,354.
Virtual Worlds Grid, Metropolis and DigiWorldz were the largest losers in land area this month, having lost 842, 199, and 75 standard region equivalents respectively.
Kitely was the most valuable grid this month when it comes to bringing in new users with 1,404 new registrations. It was followed by InWorldz with 1,349, and education-focused grids Emilac with 745, OSgrid with 509 and Virtual Brasil with 448.
There are 1,278 grids in our database in total, with 265 being active and 191 reporting statistics this month, down from 199 grids last month.
These stats do not include most of the mini-grids running on the DreamWorld distribution of OpenSim, or private company or school grids. According to the latest DreamWorld stats, there are more than 1,139 grids, out of which about 29 percent are mini-grids created with this installer alone so far.
OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.
You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz. OutWorldz also provides OpenSim users with free mesh items, OARs and free seamless textures that you can download and use on your grids.
Popularity
When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is: the busier, the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience… you get the idea.
The Hypergrid Business database currently tracks 1,277 grids, of which 269 were active this month.
OutWorldz has another system for tracking grid counts, and has currently counted a total of 1,139 grids so far with only about 328 being online. The total tally includes 29.6 percent or 97 DreamWorlds or grids created with the DreamWorld software owned by OutWorldz.
The software allows users to easily create and run grids at home as well as to connect to other OpenSim grids.
Out of the total tally by OutWorldz, only about 140 appear to be hypergriddable or having capability to at one time or the other.
The test to determine whether sims are online runs every hour and offline grids tested every four hours.
Any grid owner can add their grid into the list on the OutWorldz website if OutWorldz is not currently tracking its online status.
Kitely delivers to 245 grids
There are currently 11,124 product listings in Kitely Market containing 21,176 product variations, of which 16,263 are sold with export permission.
Kitely Market has delivered items to 245 OpenSim grids to date.
Exportable products on Kitely continue to increase. (Kitely Market Data.)
Ever since Kitely turned on the hypergrid export functionality, exportable content has been growing at a much faster rate than non-exportables, as merchants increasingly become comfortable to selling to the hypergrid.
VirTec, a network of vending machines that work on multiple grids and support a variety of currencies, reported that there was a decline in revenue of two percent in December and the number of merchants fell slightly, from 40 to 38.
This is the lowest number of merchants reported on the network.
Value of transactions on VirTec Network started to rise last month since (VirTec Data.)
DigiWorldz bans use of Athena Mesh shapes
DigiWorldz grid last week banned use of Athena Mesh shapes on its grid due to copyright issues.
“Today, we contacted the creator of the Lara body in Second Life and asked them specifically if the Athena mesh bodies found in OpenSim grids was a direct copy of the Lara body,” DigiWorldz grid owner Terry Ford wrote in the explanation. “The answer was yes. We asked if she had given permission for these bodies to be in OpenSim, the answer was no.”
OpenSim users interested in having a mesh body are encouraged to use Shin Ingen‘s female Ruth 2.0, a new mesh avatar shape specifically designed and licensed for OpenSim.
“I’ll be honest and say I do not know much about the project as I am not directly involved with it, but it is getting much praise from many users,” Ford told Hypergrid Business.
Mesh bodies can look nicer than the “system” shapes available to OpenSim users, which are modified using sliders. However, mesh bodies also require custom-made clothing and accessories, and costs can add up if the base mesh bodies are proprietary and creators and users have to pay for the models.
Using Ruth 2.0, creators will be able to make clothes, shoes and other apparels and accessories and develop their very own fashion lines supporting their own fashion models. Many people has praised the Ruth 2.0 project because it improves many things
Ford said Shin Ingen has been transparent throughout the whole process of creating Ruth 2.0. The creator previously requested for help from the community as we reported earlier and other people have joined the project.
“I’m hearing users are also using this avatar inside closed grids as well, including Second Life and InWorldz,” Ford said.
There is also a male version of the body, called Roth.
Great Canadian Grid offers free land for 60 day trial
Great Canadian Grid has brought back the 60 day free trial offer on its Free Housing region for anyone who wants to try and check what the grid is all about.
Anyone interested can get land and set up a house for free for trial in 60 days. Email Roddie Macchi for more info at greatcanadiangrid@yahoo.com.
Tangle grid to host Sci-Fi Expo next month
Shores Estates at Tangle grid. (Image courtesy Tangle grid.)
The Sci-Fi themed expo will take place from February 5 to March 5 and invites anyone willing to showcase space-themed regions or products.
“The site will be available to participants, builders and merchants as of next week, so they have time to get things ready until opening,” Elbereth Elentari, the grid’s head of media relations, told Hypergrid Business.
The event will once again be accompanied by a Sci-Fi picture contest which will, from next week, invite entries that can be voted to win a free region at the end of the Sci-Fi Expo.
Participants from other grids are welcome, said Elentari.
“I have reached out to the space or sci-fi themed regions around the hypergrid,” she said.
Meanwhile, the grid has free land offers at the Shores Estates regions of Shores Oasis and Shores Haven. Anyone interested can get free parcels with 478 prims. Anyone who claims the free land will only need to tap the rental box once a month to keep their home plot.
Genesis Metaverse renamed to GeVolution
Genesis Metaverse is being renamed to GeVolution. The grid, whose co-owner Candi Genesis left to form a new grid, moved residents assets including currency balances, friend lists to the new grid.
“Residents have been notified there is been no losses as all assets got sent to new one including inventories friends list,” grid spokesman Vincent Rhys-Owain told Hypergrid Business.
The new loginURI and hypergrid address is grid.gevolutionworld.com:8002. Both the grid and the website may be undergoing some maintenance during the transition.
Rumours of Candi leaving Genesis Metaverse started in October last year when the grid moved from DigiWorldz grid hosting service to set up their own hosting.
Transitions
We added only one grid, Panthera Grid, to our database this month.
Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.
And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.
By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.
In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be under-counted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.
January Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,278 different publicly-accessible grids, 265 of which were active this month, and 191 of which published their statistics.
All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.
Many school, company or personal grids do not publish their numbers.
OpenSim land area grew by the equivalent of 6,437 standard regions last month — enough to pass the 90,000 milestone for the first time in history.
The public grids reached 90,757 regions despite the fact that several large grids have stopped publishing land area stats, including InWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, and The Adult Grid.
Active user numbers went up only by 484, to 32,593. Growth was depressed somewhat by the closing of ZanGrid, which had 342 active users last month.
The massive growth in land area in the month was led by OpenSim Life which added a total of 2,458 standard region equivalents since we last collected the data in September. Next was OSgrid which added 1,404 regions, GreekLife with 857, Kitely with 228 and Atek with 164 new regions.
Growth in OpenSim land area. (Hypergrid Business Data.)
These stats do not include most of the mini-grids running on the DreamWorld distribution of OpenSim, or private company or school grids.
According to the latest DreamWorld stats, more than 2,521 mini-grids have been created with this installer alone so far, out of which 38 percent or 959 are hypergrid enabled.
This month, OSgrid still remained the largest grid with a total of 30,350 standard region equivalents, followed by Kitely with 17,111, Metropolis with 6,989, Atek grid with 6,270 and DigiWorldz with 5,253. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the list of top 40 grids by land area.
Kitely was also OpenSim’s most valuable grid this month when it comes to bringing in new users. It reported 1,361 new accounts this month, followed by InWorldz with 1,149, Emilac with 840 users, EdMondo with 607 and Island Oasis with 597 users. Emilac and EdMondo are both education-focused grids, and regularly bring in large numbers of new users every semester.
OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.
You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz. OutWorlds also provides OpenSim users with free mesh items, OARs and free seamless textures that you can download and use on your grids.
Popularity
When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is: the busier, the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience… you get the idea.
YrGrid: 345 active users (HG grid.yrgrid.com:8002)
Eros Resort: 336 active users (HG opensim.bci3d.com:8002)
Nextlife World: 313 active users (HG nextlife-world.de:8002)
3rd Rock Grid: 304 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
GreekLife saw the most growth in active user numbers in the month with 677 new active users followed by Eureka World with 503 users and Genesis MetaVerse with 314. Virtual Life EU had 196 and Kroatan grid closed the top five spot of the most active grids with 166 users.
Of the top 25 most popular grids, only DreamNation was not hypergrid-enabled.
In fact, hypergrid-enabled grids accounted for 96.4 percent of all reported active OpenSim users on the public grids. However, one large closed grid, InWorldz, no longer publishes its active user numbers.
Dreamworld stats
The Hypergrid Business database currently tracks 1,271 grids, of which 267 were active this month.
OutWorldz has another system for tracking grid counts, and currently has a total of 2,521 grids. This is up by 339 from last month.
The total tally includes 17 percent of DreamWorlds or grids created with the DreamWorld software that allows users to easily create and run grids at home as well as to connect to other OpenSim grids.
Of the 2,521 grids, only about 379 grids are online, of which 56 are hypergriddable. The test to determine whether sims are online runs every hour and offline grids tested every four hours.
Any grid owner can add their grid into the list on the OutWorldz website if OutWorldz is not currently tracking its online status.
Kitely adds 300 more products
Kitely added close to 300 new products this month and now has a total of 10,913 product listings, containing 20,634 product variations, of which 15,855 are sold with the export permission.
Kitely Market has delivered items to 228 OpenSim grids to date, up by five grids this month.
Kitely exportables have been rising month by month. (Kitely Data.)
Ever since Kitely turned on the hypergrid export functionality, exportable content has been growing at a much faster rate than non-exportables, as merchants increasingly become comfortable to selling to the hypergrid.
Expenditure on VirTec network by various grids. (VirTec Data.)
Grids registered a nine percent increase in spending on the VirTec network compared to last month. This was the largest increase since May this year.
VirTec is a vending machine network owned by DigiWorldz which can be used to create and manage sales across many OpenSim grids, both on and off the hypergrid, and supports multiple currencies.
OpenSimulator Community Conference to be held next month
OpenSimulator Community Conference, an annual event for OpenSim developers and the user community, will open doors next month from December 9 and 10 on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid.
The event will focus on the latest software releases, visions for the future, and technologies or content today that are shaping the future of the OpenSim platform. The organizers are still looking for volunteers, presenters and sponsors. The event will feature short presentations, panels, performances, and workshops.
The Hypergrid International Expo grid just completed its first load test last Wednesday, November 8 in preparation for the The Hypergrid International Expo that happens on December 16 and 17.
The expo will feature presentations from various grids, conference and training sessions. The multi language conference will feature presentations in French, German, Italian and Spanish, with English translation. The grid is dedicated to the Expo courtesy of Phaandor Pertwee and has only five regions.
The hypergrid address is: hie.ddnss.org:8006
Metropolis deletes infringing content, plans more bans
Metropolis grid announced this week that they have deleted several freebie regions that were violating copyrights, including Adachi that had “repeatedly violated” the grid’s Terms of Service.
The grid has now decided to delete Adachi owner’s inventory on the grid and issue a ban on grid usage, grid founder Lena Vanilli wrote in a Google Plus post.
The action will send a strong signal that the need to take serious copyright issues and to respect grid Terms of Service that discourage infringement, although it would not be received well by some people, read the statement.
Adachi has been at the center of copyright violations and related controversies in the recent past, with complains against it flying from every side. Metropolis grid, last month, called upon anyone with complains about copyright infringement on the grid to send an official complain.
Nine other regions are also associated with the same IP and since Metropolis must assume that there could be further damage from the IP, they might delete all the regions associated with that IP to prevent further damage, unless the company hosting Adachi region sends Metropolis a statement saying that they have discontinued hosting the region from their server as that would assure Metropolis that the IP would not pose further risk.
Former ZanGrid residents open a mini-grid in DigiWorldz
The Orchid Height community, which is a community of former ZanGrid residents, will open its doors to public as an enclave on the DigiWorldz grid. The grand opening will be at noon Pacific time on Saturday, November 18.
“We are still building up, but the main region Orchid Heights is ready to go and for this event we like to celebrate our landing in DigiWorldz,” former ZanGrid owner Suzan Moennink told Hypergrid Business.
ZanGrid closed last month after half a decade of OpenSim service as the owner went for further studies.
Those wanting to join the new Orchid Height community group can create an account at the website and when they login to OpenSim, they will land on the Orchid Heights welcome region and not the DigiWorldz welcome region.
“As a grid within a grid we also will offer regions to people who would like to own a region,” she said. “They will have full owner ship of those regions.” Orchid Heights will promote those regions on their webpage and on social media.
The community is formed by a group of people who were formerly at ZanGrid and who wanted to stay together and were searching for a new home grid.
“As grid owner of ZanGrid I helped them by giving the owner of DigiWorldz the filtered IAR and OAR files of those people, so he could load them on their avatar and on their regions in DigiWorldz,” Moennink said. “Soon Orchid heights will have all their regions on their own server in DigiWorldz.”
Alchemy to have better currency support
The latest release of Alchemy OpenSim viewer released a few days ago features Gloebit’s proposed currency extensions for the first time.
Developers of Singularity and Alchemy viewers last month confirmed they would implement the module although they said they would need to do some changes on the patch code.
The patch, which was developed by the Gloebit team led by its CEO Christopher Colosi, will bring multi-currency support in OpenSim and eliminate the need for Gloebit users to do complicated coding and configuration for their grids and regions to support various money modules.
Phoenix Firestorm project manager Jessica Lyon also said in a post that allowing Firestorm users to purchase Gloebits currency on multiple grids via the viewer was a big step forward.
However, the team needed some legal advice before they can go ahead with the implementation of the patch in the Firestorm viewer.
For example, would be any complications for Firestorm if an unethical OpenSim grid owner exploited users’ money on their grid while the user is purchasing currency, or when the grid collapses, and the user takes the grid to court?
“And while we would most likely not be held accountable since we can prove we had no control over or interception of said transactions, we would still have to prove it and in doing so endure legal costs, travel expenses and a lot of headaches,” she said.
Get sensational at Sensation City Black Millenium 2017
Sacrarium Grid region Sensation City will host the Sensation Black Millennium dance on November 23. Entertainment will be by Hard Techno and Hardstyle.
The small village is located on mountains and overlooking the sea so you get good sea views as well as enjoy good natural scenery.
Participants can also visit the beach where there is a store offering freebies, a club, Christmas market, and entertainment with DJs.
The hypergrid address is: sacrarium24.ru:8002:sensation city.
Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.
And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.
By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.
In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be undercounted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.
November Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,271 different publicly-accessible grids, 268 of which were active this month, and 198 of which published their statistics.
All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.
Many school, company or personal grids do not publish their numbers.
Last summer, Fullmoon set up a private mini-grid on a home computer, renamed the default avatar to “Gemini Fullmoon” and then traveled to a couple of other grids to test it out.
“It was pretty kool at the time I have to say,” Fullmoon said. “Once I figured out how to do it I quickly lost interest and pretty much stopped playing with Sim-on-a-Stick.”
However, that was enough time for the “Gemini Fullmoon” avatar name to get attached to copybotted inventory items uploaded by totally unrelated people, and, last month, Fullmoon’s name came up in a discussion about illegal content on the OpenSim Virtual community on Google Plus. One of Fullmoon’s alts, “Alex Reese99,” also had the same problem.
Allegedly stolen content discovered on various freebie shops. (Image courtesy Moonrise Azalee.)
“I would just like to warn people not to make the same mistake I did and also to get the word out that I’m not a copybotter,” said Fullmoon.
The problem is that the default avatars that come with the Diva Distro or Sim-on-a-Stick, software people use to create free OpenSim mini-grids on their personal computers, all have the same avatar UUID. That’s like a Social Security number for avatars. So when someone using a default avatar travels to another grid via hypergrid, their new avatar name becomes associated with that UUID in the new grid’s database — even if someone else had that UUID previously.
And the original copybotter avatar with the same UUID doesn’t even have to visit those grids personally — they might have ripped and uploaded the content then shared it with other users, who, unknowingly, took it to other grids.
“It appears if there is an item on a grid with that UUID but that avatar that actually created never landed on the grid it will retain its name until someone actually lands on the grid and then the name may switch out magically to the new person after an unknown amount of time passes,” said Chris Mac, known as Lite House on the Great Canadian Grid, who helped Fullmoon investigate the issue.
That means that the names of innocent users can show up — incorrectly — as owners of other people’s content. That’s a security issue for the other grid, since someone who isn’t the actual owner is now showing as the owner of the content. And if that other content is pirated, that can be a PR nightmare for the innocent user.
How not to share your UUID with a copybotter
It’s easy enough to keep the same thing from happening to you in the first place, just by creating a brand new avatar when you first set up your mini-grid.
“Using any new avatar during the start up on Sim-on-a-Stick would not create this issue since it hashes out a new UUID each time randomly,” Mac told Hypergrid Business.
But once the damage is already done, getting it fixed is extremely difficult, experts say.
Now, not only can your avatar name show up on other, random content, but your own content might wind up coming up as belonging to someone else.
However, you can keep it from getting worse. If you are using Sim-on-a-Stick, Diva Distro, or any version of OpenSim that uses the mySQL database, you can create a new grid and start over from scratch.
Or you can follow the following steps, as suggested by DreamWorld owner Fred Beckhusen:
Save backups of all regions using OAR files
Save backups of all inventories using IAR files
Delete the contents of the folder mysql\data\opensim\*
Delete the mysql\data\* files
Leave the folder mysql\data\mysql alone, along with an empty \mysql\data\opensim folder
Start Mowes.exe
Start Opensim.exe
It will rebuilt a blank system with new UUIDs after prompting you for the name of your master avatar
Mini-grid owners can also switch to the DreamWorld version of OpenSim, which is more up-to-date and, more importantly, is currently being supported. The Diva Distro hasn’t been updated since 2015, and Sim-on-a-Stick hasn’t been updated since 2014.
Diva Distro creator and hypergrid investor Crista Lopes did not respond to a request for comment.
DreamWorld, like the Diva Distro and Sim-on-a-Stick, is also a distribution of OpenSim that allows people to easily set up a mini-grid on their home computer. However, DreamWorld creates a brand new avatar, with a random new UUID, when the grid is first set up, Beckhusen told Hypergrid Business. That means that users don’t have the shared UUID problem.
Problem hard to solve for big grid owners
For owners of the big social grids, where random users upload a lot of random content, shared UUIDs are a much thornier issue.
Deleting all content with that UUID, and banning all avatars with that UUID, will hurt a lot of innocent people who use those default avatars by accident. And there is only so much that bans can do, since users may still continue to bring in content labeled with the problematic UUID.
“You can ban an avatar by UUID, but I don’t know of a way to ban an inventory UUID,” said Beckhusen.
And it won’t stop folks who deliberately create duplicate UUIDs for their avatars — or for their content — in order to mess with permissions.
That could create PR problems for social grids, since they could be accused by users of violating their content rights.
OpenSim does allow for avatars and inventory items to improperly share UUIDs, confirmed Metropolis grid manager Lena Vanilli.
But grids aren’t responsible for the problem, she told Hypergrid Business.
“This is not a bug but is related to the standard behavior of a viewer which is optimized for Second Life, with one database, not for OpenSim with many different databases and duplicate UUIDs,” she said. “We are not responsible for the way Sim-on-a-Stick creates UUIDs.”
In general, no grid — and that also includes closed grids like Second Life and InWorldz — can guarantee perfect security for their content. And most creators understand that they have to prepare themselves for the possibility of theft. After all, even the biggest Hollywood studios can’t protect their movies from piracy, content that they spend millions of dollars to create.
Dierk Brunner
If someone has the technical skills, and runs their own grid, they can intentionally edit ownership of items inside a grid to appear as creators, Dreamland Metaverse CEO Dierk Brunner, also known in-world as Snoopy Pfeffer, told Hypergrid Business.
“In general it is always possible to intentionally create user accounts with an UUID used by someone else on another grid,” he said. “Then when objects of that creator are loaded the chances are high that at the other new location this user account with the same UUID is seen as creator.”
And, of course, grid owners can give their avatars “god powers” or edit their own grid databases.
Thieves who do not manage their own grids also have other options, including copybot tools.
“There is no 100 percent security unless encryption would be used up to the graphics cards,” Brunner said. “Currently it is only possible to make clear legal statements and to enforce them at court, if necessary.”
Shared UUIDs pose challenges for copyright enforcement
The UUDI problem also makes it difficult for content creators to track down the actual copybotters who originally stole and distributed the content.
Fred Beckhusen
“No one knows who actually uploaded the items when two or more people share the same UUID,” said DreamWorld’s Beckhusen. “So accusing one person of stealing, without better proof, is potentially libelous. There are multiple people running around with the same UUID, so how would you know?”
Beckhusen investigated the issue personally, setting up a new Sim-on-a-Stick minigrid, changing the default avatar name to “NotAlex Reese99” and teleporting to his own Outworldz grid.
The default avatar UUID, for those out there who are technically inclined, is “26ecc3a5-9243-470e-b8d9-4afcacdecf58,” he reported.
After that one visit to Outworldz, Beckhusen checked his grid’s database.
(Image courtesy Fred Beckhusen.)
“I scanned through the inventory tables and found a mountain that had been uploaded by this UUID,” he said. “It is now magically created by NotAlex, who literally was created today.”
Folks who have access to the OpenSim management console can take advantage of this security hole, said Beckhusen, since they can create new avatars with any UUID they want.
Creating a new avatar with OpenSim.exe. (Image courtesy Fred Beckhusen.)
Beckhusen then took his “NotAlex” avatar to other grids, and confirmed that the ownership and creation issues came up elsewhere, as well.
Chris Mac was also able to confirm the problem when traveling to other grids.
The avatar shape seen as created by NotAlex Reese99 to Beckhusen appears as created by brasiltropical.owner to a Craft resident. (Image courtesy Fred Beckhusen.)
One thing that might help, to some degree, is to clear viewer and inventory caches, Metropolis grid’s Vanilli told Hypergrid Business.
However, the cache is there to make things load faster, and clearing it will slow down performance.
The viewer cache saves local copies of content, and it also creates a situation where different creator or owner names show up for the same content for different users, or at different times.
“It might appear as Alex Reese now but later it will be another name or another user that gets cached,” OSgrid president Dan Banner told Hypergrid Business. “They might see the Simona Stick avatar as their own name because that is how it’s cached to them.”
One thing that content creators may consider is attaching a notecard to their content describing who the owner is, and how the content can be used. If the creator has a store or website, the notecard may also include directions for where to get more content. A brief summary can be included in the item’s description, as well.
In the OpenSim Virtual discussion thread about the issue, for example, Beckhusen notes that some of the content has an incorrect name for the creator, but the attached notecard shows that it was originally distributed by “Gladiatrix Athena SHAREORDiE.”
A notecard, or a description line, won’t keep criminals from stealing the content, of course. Notecards and descriptions are easy to change. But they will give legitimate users information about the content.
In addition, content owners could make it easier for their legitimate customers to check whether content is legal by putting up notes on their websites describing where the content is available for sale, whether or not free copies are available, and, if relevant, explaining the shared UUID situation. Then double check that a Google search for, say, “Gemini Fullmoon content” brings people to that page. (You can help improve that page’s search rankings by linking to it in your signature, store listings, and social media posts.)
Augmented reality startup Meta is suing a competitor called Dreamworld for alleged intellectual property misappropriation in a case that mentions fake identities and this very publication.
Stay with us.
A few months ago, I took a trip to San Mateo to visit a new AR startup called Dreamworld. One of their founders, a man who identified himself as Kevin Zhong, invited me to come out and see the tech ahead of its official unveiling at CES Asia. Codenamed Dreamworld Glass, these AR specs packed a respectable amount of performance into a smaller frame than most of its competitors. I was told not to take photos.
The hardware reminded me of another AR headset I’d tried manufactured by Meta that is currently on sale for $949. I noted the similarities in my article but, as it turns out, these similarities may add up to more than competition for Meta.
Meta filed suit against the younger company, claiming that the Dreamworld Glass was built using misappropriated trade secrets. Zhong himself is named as the primary perpetrator, with the suit alleging he is in fact a former employee of Meta and that he started Dreamworld immediately after departing the company.
Specifically, Meta is filing suit out of a belief that:
“The renderings of the DreamGlass device, along with various other statements made on Dreamworld’s website and to UploadVR, strongly suggest that Zhong and Dreamworld have also misappropriated Meta confidential and trade secret information relating to other critical components of the technology stack needed to generate a functional AR device or may do so imminently. “
The Meta suit alleges Kevin Zhong is not actually Kevin Zhong. The suit suggest his real first name may in fact be Zhangyi. It is not uncommon for entrepreneurs moving to the United States to adopt Americanized names in order to more easily establish themselves in Western business circles. Still, check this out from the complaint filed by Meta:
“Furthermore, on information and belief, Zhong has taken steps to disguise his identity and involvement in Dreamworld. From approximately April 9, 2015, until his abrupt departure from Meta on July 22, 2016, Zhong told Meta employees that he also went by the nickname ‘Johnny.’ However, upon information and belief, since his departure from Meta and involvement with Dreamworld, Zhong has changed his nickname to ‘Kevin,’ presumably to hide the fact that he was the same individual as the former Meta employee ‘Johnny’ Zhong.”
In other words, Meta is claiming that the Kevin Zhong I met with months ago is actually Johnny Zhong who is in fact Zhangyi Zhong — a former Meta employee.
The Meta 2 AR headset is a larger take on AR with a similar screen-reflection system to the Dreamworld Glass.
I reached out to the person who identified himself as Kevin to see what he and his company make of these allegations. I asked him if he was ever employed by Meta, and if there is any truth to the allegations from Meta including his changed name. He didn’t directly answer my questions, instead writing over email “all the claims alleged by Meta Company are completely baseless and without merit. Dreamworld USA Inc. and myself are discussing this matter with our attorney and will take actions to respond in due course. ”
My original article is referenced by Meta in its complaint, and included as an additional exhibit in the court filing. According to the filing:
“Since the publication of the UploadVR article, Dreamworld has claimed on its website, that the field of view of the DreamGlass is approximately 100 degrees.
Meta is informed and believes, based on Meta’s years of research and development into creating a wide field-of-view optical engine – in which Zhong played an integral part – that there is no means by which Zhong and Dreamworld could have designed and created a prototype of a wide field-of view off-axis optical engine with a $350 price point within a less than one-year development period unless they used both Meta’s affirmative trade secrets and its negative know how. “
Meta declined to comment further and instead referred us to the text of their complaint. We will update this story if we receive any further comments from either company. Here’s a PDF of the complaint if you want to take a look.
OpenSim lost land area and active users this month — on paper, at least — as one large commercial grid did not report its stats this month, and another grid suffered an outage.
The total OpenSim land area fell by 442 regions this month, to reach 72,978 standard region equivalents. This is the third month in a row that that saw drops in both the total reported OpenSim land area and total active users.
Last month, Great Canadian Grid had 748 regions, 5,450 registered users, and 1,162 active users, so it more than covered the loss in area, and was responsible for a good chunk of the loss in active users. If those stats had been available, the public OpenSim grids would have gained land area this month.
The grid deliberately decided not to publish its numbers.
“You know where my feelings are when it comes to stats and competition,” grid founder Roddie Macchi told Hypergrid Business.
InWorldz had been seeing steady declines in all its number for the past year.
The Great Canadian Grid showed increases last month — but it hasn’t fared as well for the year as a whole. At this time last year, the grid had 1,162 regions, and 1,626 active users, for a net drop of 414 regions, or more than a third of its land area. Its active users fell by 464 over the past year.
Meanwhile, in land gains, newly-launched Furry World added a total of 1,049 standard region equivalents to our stats this month. Kitely grew by the equivalent of 318 regions, and OpenSim Life by 92 regions.
OSgrid continues to be the grid with largest land area at 22,594 regions, followed by Kitely with 15,534 regions and Metropolis with 6,042 regions.
Land area of OpenSim’s public grids, in standard region equivalents. (Hypergrid Business data.)
OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.
When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is: the busier, the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience… you get the idea.
Virtual ABDL Grid was not on the list this month due to an outage. Last month, it had 415 OpenSim active users. InWorldz and the Great Canadian Grid would likely both have been on this list if they had published their numbers.
Eureka World, an education-focused grid, was also down 245 active users compared to last month, OSgrid was down by 134 users, Island Oasis was down by 125, and Kitely was down by 122.
The biggest gainers this month were OpenSim Life, which nearly doubled its active users to 429, AllCity, which gained 182, and Neverworld, which opened a fashion district and gained 138 active users. Other gainers included Logicamp, with 132 more actives, and Genesis Metaverse, with 106 new active users.
Kitely Market lists over 9,000 products
There are currently 9,400 product listings at the Kitely Market, which contain 18,026 product variations, 13,346 of which are sold with the export permission.
Kitely has delivered to a total of 191 OpenSim grids to date.
Growth in exportable and non-exportable content on the Kitely Market. (Kitely data.)
Ever since Kitely turned on the hypergrid export functionality, exportable content has been growing at a much faster rate than non-exportables, as merchants increasingly become comfortable to selling to the hypergrid.
Gloebits crossed the 200,000 Gloebits transaction volume mark this past month, to reach a new all-time high of 425,540 Gloebits in transactions, which is the equivalent of US $1,702.
Gloebits also added 124 user accounts in April.
Gloebits transactions and user account figures. (Gloebits Data.)
3rd Life to host car race this weekend
3rd Life grid will host a Car Race starting at 12:00 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, May 20 at the Raceway Region. The race is open to local and hypergrid residents, and because it will coincide with the Armed Forces Day race, there will be different tanks and a hum V that can be used for racing, 3rd Life grid owner Tommy Seetan told Hypergrid Business.
“We have four races that day where the winner of the first three races will race in the forth race to see who is first, second and third place winners and they will get a trophy and there name up on the winners boards,” he said.
All cars will have same script for fairness. (Image courtesy David Kariuki.)
Each trophy will be a standard cup trophy with the winner’s name, date of race and place they come from. All the race vehicles will have a similar script to keep the race fair.
The hypergrid address is 3rdlifegrid.com:8002:Raceway.
Logicamp opts for Podex currency
Logicamp has decided to go with Podex to provide its in-world currency, grid owner Didier Preudhomme told Hypergrid Business.
“You can go to the sandbox to create new objects and then rent a plot in a frequented place to put them on sale,” Preudhomme said. “You can export them, print them in 3D or put them on sale in Second Life or the Kitely Market or export your objects on another grid.”
Creators can use items from Sandbox and the Free Zone 1 and 2 to build and decorate their creations. (Image courtesy Logicamp.)
The hypergrid address for the Sandbox is logicamp.org:8002:sandbox.
The grid has also repaired the password recovery feature but is advising members to create a new avatar.
Podex, Gloebits, and self-operated currencies are currently the three main options for commercial grids looking to create an in-world economy. Podex provides the infrastructure that allows each grid to have its own currency symbol, and then allows users to trade currency between different grids. However, Podex currencies are not hypergrid-enabled, and cannot be used for shopping on foreign grids like Gloebits can.
OutWorldz now tracking grids
OutWorldz owner Fred Beckhusen is now tracking up time for OpenSim grids and the list is available from the Known Grid Space database. It currently lists 278 grids of which 37 are hypergrid-enabled mini-grids created using the easy-to-use DreamWorld OpenSim installer. (Read our review here.)
Online grids are checked every hour while offline grids are checked once every four hours.
The data is gathered using the Hyperica grid crawler and the Dreamworld version of Opensim’s Dynamic DNS and diagnostics system.
You can also add your grid to the list here by submitting the loginURI and a short description.
Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.
And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.
By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.
In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be under-counted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.
May Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,238 different publicly-accessible grids, 280 of which were active this month, and 207 of which published their statistics.
All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.
Many school, company or personal grids do not publish their numbers.
OutWorldz has released a beta version of the DreamWorld OpenSim installer for home-based mini-grids — it now supports free DNS services like No-IP, DuckDNS, and and Dynu and allows people to easy add regions to their grids.
The free DNS support means that users aren’t stuck with a numeric hypergrid address — and don’t have to pay for their own domain name, OutWorldz owner Fred Beckhusen told Hypergrid Business.
Fred Beckhusen
“The IP addresses of home routers change often, which breaks landmarks and breaks your friendships,” said Beckhusen. “A DNS name costs money to register each year, and companies such as No-IP offer dynamic DNS services that change the DNS system around dynamically to match your ever-changing IP address.”
Other users will also be able to find the grid by searching for the domain name, he added.
“If you click the ‘make it public’ switch, then your sim will appear in an online destination guide I am working on,” he said.
The new release also supports the easy creation of new regions. Previously, users needed to manually edit INI files.
“INI files are always difficult and fragile,” said Beckhusen. “Even I have had to hire experts to help solve INI stuff I have done to my own grid, and I first came to OSgrid more than seven years ago and am a professional programmer.”
Martin Slade is one of the users of the DreamWorld installer. He recently moved from Second Life to OpenSim because of the ability to a virtual world on his own computer. He is now running a mini-grid on a laptop and has used it for about four weeks now, he told Hypergrid Business.
“I have built nine more regions in the last week, which I hope to build on,” said Slade. “One region is a castle region, which I hope to extend with some interior regions like a hall, a library, and so on.”
(Image courtesy Martin Slade.)
He hopes to create some regions that are exciting to visit as he explores his interest in medieval fantasy and science fiction.
“I feel the separate grids on OpenSim could do with more connectivity, including group tags showing no matter what grid you are visiting and the likes of a main Shoutcast server region which works net wide and allows purchasing of a server for DJ-ing and music performances,” he said.
The latest DreamWorld upgrade also improves hypergrid connectivity by automatically opening region ports in the uPNP after re-running Network Diagnostics. Loading and saving OAR region backup files is also easier.
I recently tested the latest version of DreamWorld, a new OpenSim installer that lets you run your own mini-grid on a home computer. If everything goes right, installing the software, setting up a new...
