HG Safari at the JFK Dallas build on 3rd Rock Grid. (Image courtesy HG Safari.)
3rd Rock Grid, the second-oldest grid in OpenSim, will be shutting down soon.
“We have to shut down the grid due to a few circumstances that have technical consequences, making it impossible to further manage the grid,” said 3rd Rock Grid board member Florin Spanachi, who is also known as Eldovar Lamilton in-world.
According to grid residents, the grid had lost a key member of its technical staff when he left suddenly. Then another key member, Kira Tiponi, passed away, leaving the grid without access to a key resource.
3rd Rock Grid is a non-profit, owned by the Netherlands-based Cultural Harbour foundation. According to Hypergrid Business records, it was founded in February of 2008, making it the second-oldest OpenSim grid after OSgrid.
“Technical help is not possible, nor will a fundraiser help,” Spanachi added.
He said that the grid is in contact with its active users to manage the exit as smoothly as possible.
As of this writing, 3rd Rock Grid has 196 active users, making it the 41st-largest by active user count.
It is also reporting a total land area of 872 standard region equivalents making it the 14th-largest grid by land area. It also has 13,615 registered users, making it the grid with the fifth-largest registered user base.
According to 3rd Rock Grid board member Tara Dockery, also known as Thoria Millgrove in-world, saving the grid would require a complete re-build.
“Due to a series of unfortunate events that had technical impact, an inaccessible server, and well over a decade of technical debt in the asset database, we are faced with an unmanageable grid,” she told Hypergrid Business. “There are people investigating ways to move forward and salvage has much as possible, but no firm decisions have been made, other than that we are shutting the existing grid down on May 15.”
OpenSim community dismayed and saddened
The OpenSim community was saddened to hear the news.
Marianna Montenes
“The 3rd Rock Grid holds such special memories for me,” said Marianna Monentes. “I visited as often as possible, and I’m deeply saddened to hear about the passing of one of its key techs. Please accept my sincere condolences to the grid owners and the entire community.”
Monentes is an in-world jewelry designer.
“I am deeply sorry about what happened to them,” said Andrew Simpson, owner of AnSky Grid.
“It goes without saying that it is always sad to see a grid go, regardless of the reason,” said Ansjela Amat, owner of Ansjelagrid, which, like 3rd Rock, is also based in the Netherlands.
“This is sad news,” said Myron Curtis, who said he can make resources available for grid or web hosting. Curtis is the owner of A Dimension Beyond, an OpenSim hosting company, and the founder of Virtual Worlds Grid.
Candy Cane Lane on the Holiday Isle region of 3rd Life Grid. (Image courtesy VisionZ.)
Offers of help
In fact, many grid owners are offering their help.
Terry Ford
One of those grid owners is Terry Ford, the original founder 3rd Rock Grid. Ford now runs DigiWorldz, a commercial grid and OpenSim hosting company, but has continued to provide technical support to 3rd Rock even after leaving.
“I would not like to see 3rd Rock Grid gone as it is a very important part of the OpenSim history,” he said.
3rd Rock was the first grid with a working permissions system and the first grid with a working economy, he said. It has also held a number of great events and fundraisers over the years, including several for Doctors Without Borders.
“There are many current and past members of 3rd Rock Grid, including myself, and some who have now passed away, who put in much effort to ensure it was a great grid to call home,” he said. “I have offered to help in any way I can and have reached out to many of the 3rd Rock Grid members voicing the same.”
Several grid owners suggested that it may be possible to reconstitute the grid by exporting and re-uploading the region files, also known as OARs, of the individual regions. OpenSim also has support for exporting individual user inventories.
Aerial view of Music Village. (Image courtesy 3rd Rock Grid.)
If the grid is not rescued, then residents will have to find new homes.
3rd Rock Grid residents who are able to get copies or their OAR region export files, or their IAR inventory export files, will also have many grids ready to welcome them.
“If any of the residents have the ability to extract their OARs and need a temporary home I am willing to set them up on a temporary basis with a four-by-four region,” said CatGrid owner Mike Cataldo, also known as Michael Timeless in-world. “Most of my residents are older military veterans but we are always willing to help those in need.”
“While my grid is not as large as 3rd Rock Grid, I have spent time there in the past,” he said.
AvatarLife is also offering free land to 3rd Rock Grid residents.
“If they have OAR files of their lands we can get them to AvatarLife without any cost, as lands in AvatarLife are free,” said Sushant KC, CEO of AvatarLife, who said that he was said to hear that 3rd Rock Grid was closing down.
“I offer my technical support 24-7 if they want to start 3rd Rock Grid again from new servers,” said GBG World CEO Nick Mit, also known as Anytos Atlas in-world, who said he was so sorry to hear the news about 3rd Rock Grid.
GBG World also has free home plots available and is offers discounted region hosting to former 3rd Rock residents, he added.
Museum of Natural History on 3rd Rock Grid. (Image courtesy 3rd Rock Grid.)
“We are really saddened by the shut down of 3rd Rock and are happy to see how we can assist both the 3rd Rock team and any users in anyway we can,” said Paul Clevett, also known as Lone Wolf in-world. He is the director of Wolf Software Systems Ltd., the company that owns OpenSim’s largest and most popular world, Wolf Territories Grid.
He has previously told Hypergrid Business that he’s happy to help other grids with technical issues.
He said that he’s already been approached by some 3rd Rock residents. “We’re keen to help,” he said. “If they rent regions we are going to give them some bonus prims and also keep them together in the same area so they can keep their community.”
As a grid that dates all the way back to the earliest days of OpenSim, though, those technical issues can be significant.
Keeping grids active over many years requires a lot more work than people realize, said Kitely co-founder and CEO Ilan Tochner. “The longer grids are active the more technical expertise is required to overcome all the issues that accumulate over time.”
And the loss is even more devastating to the community when those grids close.
Ilan Tochner
“It’s tragic when grids close and their residents lose their home and all the content they’ve collected in their inventories,” he said. “It’s especially saddening when those grids are ones that have been an important part of the OpenSim ecosystem for as long as 3rdRock Grid has.”
Kitely, in addition to being one of the biggest commercial grids in OpenSim, also runs the largest online marketplace for OpenSim, the Kitely Market.
Tochner said that if any customers bought content and had it delivered to 3rd Rock Grid, there’s a tool that can help merchants easily re-deliver content to all those customers.
“This Kitely Market feature is designed to enable merchants to easily and reliably help people recover the items they lost when their grid shuts down,” he said.
Could Mark Zuckerberg’s lust-driven quest to own VR, AR and mixed reality end up costing Meta at the end of the day?
That’s a question being posed after The Information reported recently that Google had approached Meta partner with its new software platform — Google Android XR — that is being developed for virtual reality. While rumors have Meta talking to hardware companies like LG Electronics about building new devices using Quest’s software, there’s nothing to indicate Zuckerberg’s vision of shifting from using an open-sourced version of Google’s Android OS.
In fact, you could argue there’s even a little bit of bad blood in what is otherwise a solid working relationship.
“Zuckerberg believes he still has a significant market advantage, which he does,” said Rolf Illenberger, CEO of VRdirect, who has been instrumental in deploying VR and AI solutions for major enterprise clients like Nestle, Siemens, and Lufthansa. “Not only that, but Meta and Google both launched platforms back in 2018 — and while Google abandoned theirs, Zuckerburg has taken a lot of heat, and put a lot of dollars into developing Oculus and its audience over the last six years.”
“So, while there’s give and take, there’s far more to Meta wanting to plant its flag in VR,” he added.
That give and take is simple. Despite what would be described as a cordial and friendly working relationship, Google doesn’t let Meta offer the full range of apps on its headsets and working together. If they partnered more formally on Android XR, Google would be willing to offer greater access to those apps.
Meta addressed this in a statement blaming Google’s restrictive terms.
“After years of not focusing on VR or doing anything to support our work in the space, Google has been pitching AndroidXR to partners and suggesting, incredibly, that we are the ones threatening to fragment the ecosystem when they are the ones who plan to do exactly that,” said CTO Andrew Bosworth in a post on Threads earlier this month. “We would love to partner with them. They could bring their apps to Quest today!”
It would be a win for their developers and all consumers, he added, and said that Meta plans to keep pushing for it.
“Instead, they want us to agree to restrictive terms that require us to give up our freedom to innovate and build better experiences for people and developers,” he continued. “We’ve seen this play out before and we think we can do better this time around.”
It appears that Samsung will be the first hardware maker to use the Android XR and, according to The Information, Google has been pitching it to other hardware makers.
“One of Apple’s biggest go-to-market advantages with VR was its integrated ecosystem around the OS,” says Illenberger. “They have made the OS and development of apps around the VisionOS part of their priority, even with a first-generation Vision Pro that has a price point designed not to captivate a consumer market just yet.”
And if that weren’t enough, bickering between Meta and Google over software with Apple looming in the background brings up another thing — how something as simple as an app can move markets with these three involved, like iMessage.
“If you write someone a text, photo, or video on the Apple Vision Pro and it’s going to someone else in that ecosystem, whether on a phone, Watch or iPad, the bubble is still going to be blue,” Illenberger said. “Not that we’ve found the device to be particularly useful for it. But it’s amazing how something as simple as the color of a text bubble on a messaging app can move consumer interest between these three tech mega giants.”
A monthly social event on Wolf Territories Grid. (Image courtesy Wolf Territories Grid.)
In a move that promises a faster, smoother, and more responsive virtual world experience, Wolf Territories Grid has migrated to a new server cluster at a data center in Frankfurt, Germany.
The upgrade is expected to significantly enhance performance and reliability for the grid’s thousands of users, who can now enjoy lightning-fast teleports, quicker rezzing of objects, and an overall more responsive environment.
The switchover incurred minimal downtime for the grid — just 14 minutes.
Paul Clevett, also known as Lone Wolf in-world, is the director of Wolf Software Systems Ltd., the company that owns the grid. It was hosted at the Myloc Data Centre in Dusseldorf for the past three years.
“We had a hodge-podge of servers from Ryzen 5’s to Ryzen 9’s in the old cluster that we built up over the years,” he told Hypergrid Business. “Plus that data center had all our servers split over different networks. What this effectively meant was that the traffic between the servers would have to route around the data center. Plus, there was no high availability.”
The new server cluster boasts an impressive array of hardware, including AMD Ryzen 9 processors with 32 cores, at least 128GB RAM, and 2TB Server Grade NVMEs in RAID one configuration. There was no price increase for people who rent land on the grid.
“We were a pretty much lag free grid before, but this takes us to the next level,” Clevett said.
Users have already noticed the difference, with comments like, “It’s much more wizzy!,” he said. The improvements go beyond just reduced lag, with teleports now being nearly instantaneous and objects rezzing at a much faster rate, he added.
The grid’s large map, which previously took some time to load despite fast-loading tiles, has also seen a significant improvement.
“Because we have a huge map it used to take a while to load it in,” Clevett said. “You’d click on a region and it would take some time to bring up the region name. That is completely fixed by this upgrade.”
The migration process, while complex, was made possible through the efforts of the Wolf Territories Grid team, including grid administrators DJ Illusions and Luna Stormfeather, as well as the tech team comprised of Clevett himself, Busty, and Daja.
“From a technical perspective, it was not easy and without the help of Busty and Daja we definitely wouldn’t be where we are,” said Clevett. “The key really was making sure the cluster design was right and that it met our needs. What we had in our old cluster was something we kind of built as we learned.”
The grid also now has its own network in the data center, he added.
“Everything is faster because we’re not having to route our data round the data center,” he said. “There are noticeable speed differences, especially in heavier regions. This means the whole grid is way faster and ready for the future.”
Despite all the improvements, the cost of running the new cluster is about the same as the old one, he said, although the grid has incurred a large one-time cost this month due to running both clusters simultaneously during the transfer process.
Clevett said he’s open to helping other grids with similar projects — even if they might be considered competitors. He’s assisted other grids with technical issues in the past, he said, including providing server resources during emergencies and even helping revive grids that were on the brink of closure.
“I just think we’re better working together on this incredible OpenSim project,” Clevett said.
The entire Wolf Territories Grid team, including the friendly AI robot “Bobby,” is excited to welcome users to the improved virtual space, which is now better equipped to handle the grid’s goal of reaching 100,000 regions and 100,000 registered users, he added.
According to Hypergrid Business data, Wolf Territories Grid, founded in 2021, surpassed OSgrid in land area in November of last year, becoming the biggest grid by land area. It has held that spot ever since.
Wolf Territories has also been growing rapidly in active user numbers as well. In this month’s stats report, it was only five active users behind OSgrid, the most popular grid in OpenSim.
The grid had 5,271 active users in March, and the equivalent of 28,496 standard regions.
Here at Hypergrid Business, I use “standard region equivalents” as a measure of land size, instead of named regions, because OpenSim allows for regions of various sizes. So, for example, in OpenSim, you can have four Second Life-sized regions, each with, say, 15,000 prims — or a single two-by-two region with, say, 60,000 prims. From the perspective of a visitor to that grid, the two-by-two setup will look the same as four individual regions, except that border crossings would be easier — and it will be labeled as a single region on the map. But also, I’m the boss here. If you want to measure land in some other way, start your own blog.
I’m serious, please start your own blog! We don’t have enough publications covering OpenSim! I’d love to help in any way I can, and will run free ads for you, and introduce you to all the grid owners.
Back to Wolf Territories.
The grid offers regions in four-by-four, eight-by-eight, and 12-by-12 configurations, with a maximum capacity of up to 1.2 million prims.
“We may go crazy and see how a 32-by-32 performs but that’s for testing,” said Clevett.
Prices start at US $25 a month for a four-by-four region — the equivalent of 16 standard Second Life regions — with up to 20,000 prims total. The prices go up to $76 a month for the 1.2 million prim configuration, and there are discounts for bulk orders.
I just went and checked the latest stats. As of this writing, the grid reports 5,361 active users and 28,512 standard region equivalents. OSgrid, the previous leader, reports 5,280 active users and 27,985 standard region equivalents.
So Wolf Territories is now in the lead by both metrics.
The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 132,969 standard regions this month, an all-time high — and the third month in a row that OpenSim land area has broken records.
There was an increase of 1,089 standard region equivalents compared to last month. Meanwhile, the total number of registered users went up by more than 1,338. The number of active users fell, however, by over 2,100, partly due to grid outages. ProxyNet, for example, which reported over 400 active users last month, was down this month. And two other grids that reported drops of more than 500 active each may have had database issues, including Vivo Sim and Darkheart’s Playground.
I’m now tracking a total of 2,654 public grids, of which 308 were active, and 244 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.
Also, I’m no longer sending out a monthly email blast reminding OpenSim grid owners to send me news and updates for this report. If you have news, please email me before the tenth of the month if you want a short item included in this monthly wrap-up. For longer news, feel free to send me press releases at any time.
OpenSim land area for March 2024. (Hypergrid Business Data.).
Our stats do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid which is a distribution of OpenSim since these tend to be private grids.
OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.
Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.
Top 25 grids by active users
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.
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.
Screenshot from VWBPE 2023 spotlight presentation.
The seventeenth annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference, beginning on Thursday, March 14, 2024, will be an online distributed conference happening in multiple virtual spaces. This conference focuses on the use of immersive virtual environments for educational purposes including virtual and augmented reality.
This year we are returning to our Earth build. Each region represents a different terrestrial biome, including wetlands, desert, badlands, grasslands, and forests. Conference attendees will be among the first to be able to explore!
To the best ability possible, VWBPE provides educational and networking opportunities that are relevant to educational curriculum development utilizing virtual environments and “best practices.” These include
helping to build community through extension of learning best practices to practical application of those ideas and techniques;
providing networking opportunities for educators and the communities that help support education; and
providing access to current innovations, trends, ideas, case studies, and other best practices for educators and the communities that help support education
One of the key challenges faced by the educational community is how to make the best use of new immersive technologies in a way that is sustainable and accessible based on limited budgets available to both instructors and students. Platforms that are free or open source, or that can be shared across a broad audience are showcased, including methods and research around best practices in their use and applicability.
Our theme for this year is Mythic Origins.
(Image courtesy VWBPE.)
Mythic stories can provide a way to engage students in critical thinking and analysis, as well as developing their creativity and imagination. Mythic origins can provide students with a deeper understanding of their own cultural heritage and how it has evolved over time. It allows us to explore the origins of our socially constructed myths and legends that have inspired educators and their various works.
Join us as we all share experiences and successes in how virtual technologies used in the classroom have helped shape education for the better.
This year’s keynote speakers are Wagner James Au and Dr. Nellie Deutsch. Invited speakers include representatives from Linden Lab, and the 2020 Thinkerer – Renne Emiko Brock.
The VWBPE conference keynote speakers and their respective presentations are featured on the conference website, along with a program of exciting presentations, social activities, and networking events that will set extraordinary discussions in motion.
The VWBPE Immersive Experiences showcase unique and interesting work being conducted across the metaverse. We invite you to join us as we explore eleven interactive and engaging locations across five virtual environments. The Immersive Experiences are scheduled from March 9th through 31st (exclusive of the conference dates). Details and access instructions for the experiences are found on our program page.
Additionally, this open and free conference would not be possible without the generous contributions of our VWBPE sponsors.
The Rockcliffe Registration Portal is open for people to register new Second Life® avatars and find out more about the VWBPE conference in-world. Go to https://www.enroll.onl/secondlife.php . The instructions are there to get you and your friends started at this educator-friendly newcomers’ region in Second Life.
All of the conference events will be in Second Life this year, and the locations are included in the listings. When you click on a conference event and click Add to Calendar, you can add the event to your own calendar.
A starting frame for a platform video game generated by Genie. (Image courtesy Google.)
I cover artificial intelligence at my day job. Every week, I talk to the experts building the technology and deploying it, and to companies already finding value in it. The AI-powered transformation is bigger than anything I’ve ever covered before, in my two-plus decades of technology journalism. And it’s moving faster than anything I’ve covered before. And, unlike some other tech trends, companies are almost universally already seeing value in it.
I’m not going to argue here about whether it’s good or bad — I’m going to save that for another essay. Neither am I going to talk, today at least, about the copyright issues and the job displacements and the potential destruction of civilization. Those are all real concerns, but let’s put a pin in them right now and come back to those later.
Today, I’m going to talk about AI and world building. If you build worlds — or want to get into the world-building business, either as a game designer, artist, or writer, or OpenSim creator — here are three ways generative AI will change everything.
Can AI build worlds?
Generative AI is bad. Often laughably bad. It can’t do hands. It’s attempts at writing code fail most of the time. We all know this, we laugh at it, we roll our eyes at people saying that AI is going to change anything except dupe dumb people into falling for even more stupid political spam.
Except — and this is super important — except that AI is learning continuously and evolving fast.
Let me remind you again how far image-generators came in just one year:
Evolution of Midjourney, from version 1 to version 4. (Images by Maria Korolov via Midjourney.)
In 2023, the same thing happened with text. We went from silly little poems written by ChatGPT to AI writing part of an award-winning sci-fi novel. We point to something bad that AI has generated and pat ourselves on the back for being able to spot it so easily. Yes, we can spot bad AI. But we can’t spot good AI.
This year, we’re seeing the same progression happening with video. Remember Will Smith eating spaghetti?
Here’s today’s state-of-the-art, from OpenAI’s Sora model:
So what’s going to happen next?
First, AI is getting consistent. It’s getting a long-term memory. Early versions of AI couldn’t remember what they did before, so text and images and videos were inconsistent. Characters and backgrounds morphed. Stories went in crazy and contradictory directions. Today’s cutting-edge AIs have context windows of up to 10 million tokens. Yup, Google’s Gemini 1.5 model has been tested to accurately handle up to 10 hours of video or enough text for all of the Harry Potter books, seven times over.
Second, generative AI is going multi-modal. That means it’s combining video, audio, text and code into a single model. So, for example, it can write the text for a story, create a scene list for it, create a story book for it, create a video for it, and create audio for it, with the result being an entire coherent movie. Yeah, that’s going to happen. The tech companies already have preliminary models that can do most of this, including that Google AI I just mentioned.
Third — and this is the key part of it — the next generation of generative AIs will be able to simulate the world. OpenAI, said just as much in a research paper released shortly after its Sora announcement: “Our results suggest that scaling video generation models is a promising path towards building general purpose simulators of the physical world.”
Now, today’s models don’t fully understand physics. They don’t know how glass breaks, the direction of time, or that, say, mass is conserved. We can point at this and laugh and think that these models will never understand these things — just like they don’t understand the concept of human hands.
Well, some of the AIs have become really good at making human hands.
You might think that physics would be a bigger challenge. But Google, the company making Gemini, has all of YouTube to train it on. Plus, all our physics textbooks. And all the rest of human knowledge.
According to the OpenAI paper, developing accurate world simulators is mostly a question of making the models big enough.
From the researchers:
We believe the capabilities Sora has today demonstrate that continued scaling of video models is a promising path towards the development of capable simulators of the physical and digital world, and the objects, animals and people that live within them… We find that video models exhibit a number of interesting emergent capabilities when trained at scale. These capabilities enable Sora to simulate some aspects of people, animals and environments from the physical world. These properties emerge without any explicit inductive biases for 3D, objects, etc.—they are purely phenomena of scale.
The authors call this “emerging simulation capabilities” meaning that they appear on their own, without any specific training or interventions. And they list several emerging capabilities, including 3D consistency, long-range coherence and object permanence, and accurate physical interactions.
And it gets better. The authors say that its model is already able to create digital worlds.
Sora is also able to simulate artificial processes–one example is video games. Sora can simultaneously control the player in Minecraft with a basic policy while also rendering the world and its dynamics in high fidelity. These capabilities can be elicited zero-shot by prompting Sora with captions mentioning “Minecraft.”
What does this mean for creators?
Generative AI, like other technologies before it, is a force multiplier. If you can do something, you will be able to do more of it, faster, and, possibly, better.
If you can’t do something, it will give you the ability to do it.
For example, most of us can’t chop down a tree with our bare hands. Give us a knife, and it might take us a while, but we’ll eventually get there. With an axe — we’ll get there faster. With a chainsaw, we can chop down lots of trees. With a swing boom feller buncher you can cut down an entire forest.
I’m not saying that cutting down entire forests is a good thing. Or that you’d want a forest-clearing bulldozer accidentally rolling through your backyard. I’m saying that the technology gives you power to do things that you couldn’t do before.
Yes, we need laws and regulations about cutting down forests, and not letting bulldozers accidentally drive into people’s houses. And yes, these machines did reduce the number of people needed to cut down each tree. I’m not disputing that. All I’m saying is that these machines exist. And if you work in the timber industry, there’s a good chance the company you work with will be using them. And if you’re an individual, you’ll probably still be using your bare hands to pull up tiny saplings in your back yard, or gardening shears to trim bushes, or a chainsaw to cut down full-grown trees.
Similarly, generative AI will dramatically expand the tools available to people who create world for a living. You will still be able to do things the old way, if you want, but the companies you work for — and their customers — will increasingly start demanding them. And, if customers right now are saying things like, “no, never!” tomorrow they’ll be flocking to AI-generated landscapes, AI-powered interactive characters, storylines more intricate than anything possible today.
Future Tools tracks 38 different AI-powered tools for creating video games. TopAI has 70.
Google has released a preview of its own thing, an AI called Genie that automatically generates playable platform games.
(Animation courtesy Google.)
Here are just some of the generative AI tools that are on their way, or are already here:
Terrain Generation: AI algorithms can procedurally generate realistic and diverse landscapes, including mountains, rivers, forests, and cities. This can save world builders countless hours of manual terrain sculpting and enable the creation of vast, detailed environments.
3D Asset Creation: Generative AI models can create 3D models, textures, and animations for objects, characters, and creatures. This could greatly expedite the process of populating worlds with diverse and unique assets, from furniture and vehicles to flora and fauna.
NPC Generation: AI can help create non-player characters (NPCs) with unique appearances, personalities, and behaviors. This includes generating realistic dialogue, responsive interactions, and adaptive quest lines. AI-driven NPCs could make worlds feel more alive and immersive. For OpenSim grids, NPCs could provide tours, answer questions, and help populate interactive stories.
Dynamic World Events: AI systems could be used to generate and manage dynamic events within the world, such as weather patterns, natural disasters, economic fluctuations, and political upheavals. This would create a more unpredictable and evolving world that responds to player actions. This could be especially useful for educational grids running simulations.
Procedural Architecture: AI could generate buildings, cities, and entire civilizations procedurally, complete with unique architectural styles, layouts, and decorations. This would enable the rapid creation of diverse and detailed urban environments. I think this could also be useful for building automatic themes for new grid owners. Today, many hosting companies offer starting regions. With generative AI, these regions can be redesigned quickly in different styles. At first, I don’t think this should be done in real-time — the environments will still need human tweaking to be livable. But, over time, the AI-generated stuff will be better and will increasingly be used as-is.
Localization and Accessibility: AI-powered tools could help automate the localization process, translating text, speech, and cultural references to make worlds accessible to a wider audience. AI could also be used to generate subtitles, audio descriptions, and other accessibility features. OpenSim grids have already been using automating translators, for example, with multi-lingual audiences. With generative AI, these tools just keep getting better and faster.
I personally don’t believe that these tools will hurt the video game and virtual world industries. Instead, they will put more power in the hands of designers — making games and worlds more interesting, more immersive, more detailed, more surprising. And bigger. Much, much, much bigger. And it will open up the industry more for indie designers, who’ll be able to produce increasingly more interesting games.
In the long term, at least.
In the short term, there will be disruption. Probably a lot of it. And during these tech disruptions in the past, the jobs lost aren’t the same as the jobs gained — creative jobs, in particular, take time to start paying off.
For example, when newspapers and magazines started laying journalists off after the Internet came along, most journalists found new jobs. Some moved to traditional outlets that were still hiring. Some went into marketing and public relations. A few found new media jobs. And some launched their own publications — they used this Internet thing and launched blogs and podcasts and YouTube channels. A few of them made money at it. But it took years for the new media to gain any respect and credibility and for people working in it to make any money.
In fact, many of the people who made it big in new media were not traditional journalists at all, but new to the field.
Sometimes, people who do things the old way don’t want to change. They don’t think it’s fair that their hard-won skills are no longer as useful. They think that they new ways are lazy or low quality. They might even think that it’s unethical or immoral to do things the new way. That people who, say, cancel their newspaper subscription and get their news online are morally bankrupt and that journalists who enable this are helping to destroy the industry. There are still journalists who feel this way.
We’re probably going to see something similar happening in the age of AI. New tools will pop up putting more power in the hands of more people — power to create art, music, software, video games, even entire books. And you won’t need to spend years learning these skills. Sure, the stuff they create will be bad at first, but will quickly get better as the technology improves, and the skills of people using the tools improve as well. Some of these people will make money at it. Most won’t. But, eventually, best practices will emerge. The sector will gain credibility — money helps. And, eventually, with the exception of a few curmudgeons, we’ll adapt and move on. It will become a non-issue — like, say, using a word processor, or using the Internet, or doing a Zoom call instead of a face-to-face meeting.
Don’t forget that this mix of excitement and apprehension is nothing new. Whenever groundbreaking technologies emerge, they’re met with both enthusiasm and anxiety.
I’m sure there used to be people sitting around a fire saying, “Kids these days. All they want to do is look at cave paintings instead of going out and hunting. Mark my words, these cave paintings will destroy civilization.” Or, “Kids these days. Writing stuff down. In my day, we used to have to memorize odes and sagas. You had to actually use your brain. Mark my words, this writing thing will destroy civilization.” Or, “Kids these days with their fires. Back in my day, we ate our meat raw and were happy about it. Mark my words…”
Yes, there’s a small but non-zero chance that AI will destroy civilization, as was the case with nuclear power, electricity, and even fire.
But I think we’ll get past it, and look back at the curmudgeons fondly, from the safe perspective of a future where we were mostly able to deal with AI’s downsides, and mostly benefit from its upsides.
Things to watch out for
Speaking of downsides, in addition to job losses, there are other potential risks of using generative AI for games and virtual worlds.
They include:
Homogenization of Worlds: If many world builders rely on the same AI tools and datasets, there’s a risk that worlds could start to feel generic or samey. The distinct style and creative fingerprint of individual artists and designers might be lost, leading to a homogenization of virtual environments. On the other hand, we’re already seeing this in OpenSim with the same free starter regions popping up on all the grids, and the same Creative Commons-licensed content showing up in all the grid freebie stores.
Unintended Biases: AI models can inherit biases from their training data, which could lead to the perpetuation of stereotypes or the underrepresentation of certain groups in generated content. This could result in virtual worlds that inadvertently reinforce real-world inequalities and lack diverse representation. On the other hand, AI could also help create greater variations in, say, starter avatars and skins. It all depends on how you use it — but is definitely something to watch out for.
Privacy Issues: In a virtual world, a user’s every interaction with the environment can be recorded and analyzed. Then AI can be used to tailor experiences specifically for each user, creating a more immersive, captivating world. But also — creepy invasion of privacy alert! OpenSim grid owners should be very transparent about what information they collect and how they use it.
OpenSim grids and AI: a plan for action
First, start experimenting with generative AI for the low-hanging fruit: non-vital marketing images, marketing text, social media content, that kind of thing.
Don’t use AI to generate images of what your world looks like in order to deceive people. That will backfire in a big way. Use it to generate logos, icons, generic background illustrations — things that don’t matter to your customers but make your content a little nicer to consume.
Don’t use AI to generate filler text. Use it to turn information into readable content. For example, if you have an announcement, you can take your list of bullet points and turn it into a readable press release. If you’re a non-native-English speaker, turn your ungrammatical scribbles into an engaging, properly written blog post. If you have a video tutorial, turn the transcript into a how-to article for your website — or turn your how-to article into a video script.
Then use AI to turn those useful, informative blog posts, press releases and videos into social media content.
One piece of advice: when creating this content, don’t be generic and impersonal. Add in your personal experience. Show your real face, give your real name, explain how your personal background has led you to this topic. Even as you use AI to improve the quantity and quality of your content, also lean into your human side to ensure that this content actually connects with your audience.
You can also ask ChatGPT, Claude, or your preferred large language model of choice for business and marketing advice. Remember to give it as much information as possible. Tell it what role you want it to play — experienced financial advisor? small business coach? marketing expert? — and provide it with background on yourself and your company, and tell it to ask you questions to get any additional information it needs before giving your advice. Otherwise, it will just make assumptions based on what’s most likely. As the old saying goes, if you assume, you make… and garbage in, garbage out.
Many OpenSim grids have plenty of room for improvement when it comes to business management, marketing, and community building. The AI can help.
Next, start looking for ways that generative AI can improve your core product. Can it help you write scripts and code? Create 3D objects? Create terrains? Generate interactive games? Suggest community-building activities and events? Create in-world interactive avatars?
These capabilities are changing very quickly. I personally stay on top of these things by following a few YouTube channels. My favorites are Matt Wolfe, The AI Advantage, and Matthew Berman.
If you know of any other good sources for up-to-date generative AI news useful for virtual world owners, please let us know in the comments! And are there any specific AI-powered tools that OpenSim grids are using? Inquiring minds want to know!
The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 131,880 standard regions this month, an all-time high, with an increase of 369 standard regions compared to last month. Meanwhile, the total number of registered users went up by more than 2,100 and the number of active users rose by over 2,200.
I’m now tracking a total of 2,653 public grids, of which 316 were active, and 251 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.
Also, I’m no longer sending out a monthly email blast reminding OpenSim grid owners to send me news and updates for this report. If you have news, please email me before the tenth of the month if you want a short item included in this monthly wrap-up. For longer news, feel free to send me press releases at any time.
OpenSim land area. (Hypergrid Business Data.).
Our stats do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid which is a distribution of OpenSim since these tend to be private grids.
OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.
Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.
Top 25 grids by active users
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.
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.
The organizers of OSFest 2024, an annual festival that will be held this coming October, recently opened voting for this year’s theme to their Discord community. Festival participants can vote by reacting with a specific emoji to indicate their preferred theme from a selection of options, either via the OSFest Discord server or by sending an email to opensimfest@gmail.com.
Voting closes on January 24.
“For OSFest 2023, we took a poll to decide which theme we had that year,” said Lisa Laxton, OSFest director and founder of the Infinite Metaverse Alliance and Laxton Consulting. “Since the community liked this approach giving them a voice for this hypergrid community event, we are doing it again for OSFest 2024 but early in the planning based on feedback from last year’s participants.”
An email announcement went out this month with details on the festival dates from October 4 to October 20 and welcoming merchants, exhibitors and performers to take part. The festival takes place on the OSFest Grid, with some free land parcels provided to qualifying merchants and exhibitors.
Suggested themes for exhibitors this year include “Futurism,” “Silk Road and Asian history,” “Burning Man and Woodstock expressions,” “Hypergrid community unity,” “creative art and architecture” or no set theme. Performers and merchants are not required to follow the selected theme.
“Participants asked for a longer lead time and theme so they can plan and create their builds months before the grid is open for them to transfer builds from their home grids,” Laxton said.
Organizers plan to allow voting until January 24 before deciding on this year’s official theme.
“For two full weeks, including weekends, we’ll have music, dance, art, and merchant expos in one place,” said Laxton. “This is an all volunteer effort with a limited number of free parcels for exhibitors and merchants provided by the grid sponsors.”
OSFest organizers are also looking for greeters, performers, artists, builders, scripters, merchants, and promoters.
“The more volunteers we have, the more time we each get to spend visiting exhibits and stores as well as attending events within the OSFest Grid,” Laxton said.
The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 131,511 standard regions this month, an all-time high, on an increase of more than 1,000 standard regions compared to last month. However, the total number of active users went down by over 3,500.
Part of the decrease was due to the fact that the OpenSim Community Conference was last month, driving up those numbers. A few grids also failed to report stats this month, or had outages, or closed, but nothing major — for the most part, the decrease was due to lower numbers across the board, possibly due to the winter holidays.
Scaling back for 2024
You might notice that this article is substantially shorter than previous’ months. I’m scaling back my OpenSim coverage this year to make more time for other projects. If you have a press release, you can send it to me, but the closer it is to publishable format, the quicker I’ll be able to post it on the site.
I’m now tracking a total of 2,653 public grids, of which 334 are active and 258 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.
Monthly OpenSim land area counts. (Hypergrid Business data October 2023.)
Our stats do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid which is a distribution of OpenSim since these tend to be private grids.
OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.
Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.
Top 25 grids by active users
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.
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 active users are up by 3,220 this month, reaching a new all-time high of 47,343. It was the biggest one-month increase in active users since May of 2022.
The number of regions on all OpenSim grids is also up by 3,021, the biggest monthly increase since this past June, for a new total of 130,366 standard region equivalents.
Meanwhile, the number of total registered OpenSim users tumbled by a massive 8,055 this past month, mostly attributable to the indefinite closure of AviTron, which had 10,179 total registered users and 898 actives last month at this time.
We are now tracking a total of 2,652 public grids, of which 340 are active and 274 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.
Total OpenSim virtual land area in standard regions over time. (Hypergrid Business Data.).
Our stats do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid which is a distribution of OpenSim since these tend to be private grids.
DreamGrid has so far recorded more than 3,000 unique DreamGrids that have launched since it was launched, according to this year’s update from Micro Technology Services CEO Fred Beckhusen. Micro Technology Services owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz.
Fred Beckhusen
The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. Anyone can easily add their grid to this list from the same page.
With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, anyone can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature on their home computer. They can also use it to easily and quickly manage their grids, including adding new regions, banning users, deleting regions, auto restarting, tracking usage stats, and shutting down entire grids or unoccupied regions to save computing power. Learn here how to create and host a new Dreamgrid on your home computer using the software.
OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.
Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.
Top 25 grids by active users
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 active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know. The most popular grids are also not necessarily the most active.
The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.
Online marketplaces for OpenSim content
There are currently 20,500 product listings in Kitely Market containing 40,366 product variations, 35,192 of which are exportable.
Product variations, exportables and non-exportables on the Kitely Market. (Kitely Market data).
As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past eight years.
Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties on Littlefield
(Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.).
There will be four holiday-themed parties, the first starting at 6 p.m. on December 23, a Christmas Eve party from 9 p.m. on December 24, and a Christmas Party from 8 p.m. Pacific Time on December 25, at the Christmas Island in Littlefield grid.
There also will be a New Year’s Eve formal dance at the grid’s New Year’s Island starting at 9 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, December 31.
(image courtesy Littlefield.).
All events will feature music, dancing, DJs, and Ball Drop and Fireworks every hour on the hour. Free tuxedos and gowns for the events are available at the grid’s formal wear shop located in the region, grid co-owner Walter Balazic told Hypergrid Business.
The region also hosts the Christmas Mall where visitors can find free Christmas decorations and other types of freebies. The region also hosts Santa’s Castle, Santa’s Flying Sleighride, Christmas Sleighride, ice skating with free ice skates, and many other Christmas-themed attractions.
The hypergrid addresses are lfgrid.com:Christmas Island and lfgrid.com:New Years Island.
Holiday party this weekend on Kitely
Kitely will host a holiday party starting at 12 noon Pacific Time at the Kitely Events Center, featuring skating, snowball fights, dancing, and music with DJ Rosa. The event is open to hypergrid visitors. If you want to give a gift contact Kimm Starr or Koshari Mahana for details.
The hypergrid address is grid.kitely.com:8002:Kitely Events Center.
AvatarLife grid plans mobile app
AvatarLife is currently developing a mobile-based viewer for the grid which will see AvatarLife members playing all types of games on the mobile devices by next year, AvatarLife co-owner Sushant Chandrasekar said.
“We are working with them to make this possible,” he told Hypergrid Business. “By September 2024, we should be on mobile. We are keeping the mobile app purely for gameplay, roleplay, and entertainment. Creators who want to create content on AvatarLife will still need to do it from their computers. The objective of the mobile app is to open the virtual worlds to a lot of younger generation users who prefer to use mobile apps as compared to a desktop viewer.”
AvatarLife already has a working prototype but mesh and texture rendering is still pending. It is partnering with the Crystal Front Viewer team in the project. The team will continue to build for Apple Vision Pro and other immersive VR devices in the future once the mobile app is complete and shows traction. The company also has a new CTO, Alok Singh Mahor, who is heading the technology department.
The grid will also launch premium membership this month starting at $6 per month. Premium members will get weekly stipends of in-world currency, and marketplace discounts, as well as other benefits.
Neverworld has a new role-play continent, Gloebit bonuses and free land
Lucidus, a multilevel city created by Nexus Storm. (image courtesy Nexus Storm.).
Neverworld is currently developing a new continent for role-playing games, named Neverrealms, and is seeking role-player coordinators. The role play area currently includes Lucidus and Stilwater, two large cyberpunk post-apocalyptic sims. The role play will center around land grabs by warring factions, grid owner Govega Sachertorte said.
“We will be adding other sims we have such as three Fallout-inspired sims, combat sims, and zombie hunt areas,” she told Hypergrid Business. “Also some fae and elven regions. The area is already the size of 32 standard regions and we have plans to actively expand this in the new year.”
The grid is also offering Gloebits bonuses and free regions for new creators and DJs, particularly creators who can offer original creations including clothing, skins, hair, builds, scripts, and vehicles, she said.
The grid has also been running a promotion where anyone who buys new land gets free additional prims on the purchased land. Each new region order gets a 5,000 prim increase at the end of each quarter up to 15,000 extra prims in total until December 31 this year, said Sachertorte.
Additionally, there are hundreds of free premium parcels available for new members joining the grid. Most are homestead-sized, 16,000 meters and up.
AviTron closed indefinitely again
AviTron grid is currently offline following a Facebook post last month from owner Alex Ferraris discussing yet another closure. He’s previously closed AviTron or his previous grid, AviWorlds, more than twenty times. There’s no information available about how residents can get their content out or get refunds.
The grid came back up online in October from yet another indefinite closure. A few people have sent us emails complaining about it but the majority of the 10,000+ residents the grid claims to have, seems to have no complaints at all about the many business closures, most of which are not even planned or announced in time. The grid numbers may also be another attempt by Ferraris, who also runs a blog about several other things including cryptocurrencies, to market his grid.
If you are into virtual worlds and are planning to rent a region or create a region, we recommend a bit more predictable grids where the content will not disappear without a warning from the owner.
The three oldest grids in OpenSim that are still active today are OSgrid, founded in 2007, 3rd Rock Grid, founded in 2008, and AnSky, founded in 2009. In addition, Kitely and Digiworlds are two other extremely well-regarded grids that have been continuously operational for years and rent land. Kitely has been around since 2011 without any major outages, and DigiWorldz has been around since 2015 and is also well-known for its stability. Hypergrid Business editor Maria Korolov recommends Kitely for anyone just starting out and looking for an extremely low-cost, reliable, and high-performance region and OSgrid for people who are interested in running a region on their home computer for free.
OpenMic Arts this Saturday at Alternate Metaverse
(Image courtesy OpenMic Arts.).
The OpenMic Stage is seeking bands, singers, musicians, poets, storytellers, comedians, free-stylers, and other artists who are interested in showcasing their talent during the OpenMic Arts event which will happen from 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, December 16 on the OpenMic Arts region. The event happens every Saturday and is hosted by Chris Dayellis.
The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Open Mic Arts.
The Open Mic Arts and the Arts regions were created by Cataplexia Numbers and host all things arts including an art gallery that has exhibitions from artists from all around the hypergrid, the Arts Magazine which also accepts 2D and 3D art submissions including photography, a live performance stage, and an annual arts festival during the summer.
Win Amazon gift card at Omnopolis
The Ithilien gaming region of the Omnopolis grid is hosting a Hi/Low game contest in which one player with the highest score will win a $25 Amazon gift card. The rest can win in-game tokens. The game has been ongoing since August but will conclude at 11 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, December 24 when the winner takes home the prize.
The region, which is already winter and Christmas-themed, hosts free-play games in which players earn free game tokens.
The hypergrid address is omnipolis.com:8002:Ithilien.
Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address — if that’s the case, email us and let us know and we’ll update our database.
Top 40 grids by land area
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,642 different publicly-accessible grids, 337 of which were active this month and 273 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.
