Category: OSGrid

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OpenSim active users hit all-time-high for the holidays

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.

We usually witness an increase in activity during this season since more people spend more time inside on the computer, and grids ramp up for holiday events. Also, the OpenSimulator Community Conference — which took place this past weekend — reported 326 active users.

You can see all the OSCC23 presentations on YouTube here, and the livestreams from both days of the conference here.

Or watch Maria Korolov’s State of the Metaverse presentation here:

She also gave a talk about how generative AI will change content creation and coding.

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.

The Wolf Territories Grid is the largest grid by land area, with 26,832 standard region equivalents, followed by OSgrid and Kitely.

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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 5,324 active users
  2. Wolf Territories Grid: 4,428 active users
  3. GBG World: 2,230 active users
  4. DigiWorldz: 2,113 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 1,919 active users
  6. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,320 active users
  7. WaterSplash: 1,297 active users
  8. Moonrose: 1,277 active users
  9. Neverworld: 1,080 active users
  10. Littlefield: 1,073 active users
  11. Trianon World: 1,062 active users
  12. AviWorlds: 1,014 active users
  13. Party Destination Grid: 806 active users
  14. Craft World: 780 active users
  15. Herederos Grid: 763 active users
  16. Astralia: 735 active users
  17. Jungle Friends Grid: 712 active users
  18. Kitely: 685 active users
  19. Eureka World: 668 active users
  20. German World Grid: 654 active users
  21. Virtualife: 560 active users
  22. New Life Italy: 546 active users
  23. AvatarLife: 517 active users
  24. ZetaWorlds: 517 active users
  25. Vivo Sim: 510 active users

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).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 600 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Ankabi, Arcadia Asylum, Mister Grid World, Resurgence, Tiffany’s, VR-ESC, and Tropicana Grid.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Closed grids

The following 42 grids were suspended this month: 3D Worldz, Avalonia Virtual, Avequest, Bubblesz, CLC grid, Dark Shadows, Destinationz, Dreamland Metaverse, Dynamic Worldz 2, EthanWorld, Exo-Life, Floyd World, Focus 360, Great Canadian Grid, Holo Neon, Holoneon, Hypergrid City, Ikora’s World, Joe’s Place, Kantarobasta Grid, Lake Kindred Spirit, Linkwater, Lost World, Martin Dimitrov Music, Neogrid 3, Old Europa Metaverse, One Life Grid, Online Plunder, Piggy Bank Grid World, SiLi, SiN Grid, Terranei World, Thug, Troiwia, TSim, Vanessa , and Vrugs Kingdom.

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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.

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OpenSim user activity ramping up for the holidays

As usual this time of year, activity on OpenSim grids is up as people spend more time inside on the computer, and grids ramp up for holiday events.

Compared to last month, the number of active users is up by nearly 1,700. The total land area is down, however, by the equivalent of 5,423 standard regions.

Land area would have increased this month except for the fact that OSgrid, the largest grid in OpenSim, lost 6,684 regions.

That’s due to a regular cleanup carried out this month, grid owner Dan Banner told Hypergrid Business. 

OSgrid is a free-to-connect grid, where people can download the OSgrid region installer software on their home computers and run regions themselves, for free. These regions are only up, however, when those computers are active and connected. OSgrid reserves map locations for region owners but, if they haven’t been up for a while, clears away those map reservations so that other people can use them. Region numbers typically go up again when people reconnect their regions and reclaim their spots — or find new ones.

There were also some outages that affected the stats this month. TheKaz Grid, for example, is currently offline — and had 2,110 regions last month. Active user counts were also depressed by outages. Grids that were down this month include the Floyd grid, which had 133 actives last month, Piggy Bank Grid which had 634 actives, Vivo Sim which had 421 actives, and Goldor Grid which had 163 active users last month.

We are now tracking a total of 2,642 grids, of which 337 are active and 273 published their statistics this month. The rest do not have accessible public stats pages. The metaverse now spans an area of 125,877 total standard region equivalents, 95 percent of which is hypergriddable. There are nearly half a million total users out of which 44,184 are active. 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.

In summary, the Wolf Territories Grid is the new biggest grid by total region count of 26,768, ZetaWorlds is the fastest growing grid after adding 1,546 new regions in a month, OSgrid is the most popular by total active users or 5,265, Endless grid earned the most active users in a month or 448, and Eureka World registered the highest number of users or 565 in a month.

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 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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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 own 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 5,265 active users
  2. Wolf Territories Grid: 4,050 active users
  3. GBG World: 2,312 active users
  4. DigiWorldz: 2,250 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 1,842 active users
  6. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,276 active users
  7. Moonrose: 1,150 active users
  8. WaterSplash: 1,090 active users
  9. Neverworld: 1,035 active users
  10. Trianon World: 928 active users
  11. AviTron: 898 active users
  12. Party Destination Grid: 875 active users
  13. AviWorlds: 838 active users
  14. Littlefield: 794 active users
  15. Craft World: 730 active users
  16. Kitely: 720 active users
  17. German World Grid: 668 active users
  18. Jungle Friends Grid: 639 active users
  19. Astralia: 630 active users
  20. Herederos Grid: 548 active users
  21. Endless : 487 active users
  22. Gentle Fire Grid: 467 active users
  23. DreamNation: 461 active users
  24. ProxyNet: 447 active users
  25. Discovery Grid: 441 active users

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.

Eureka World registered the most users in the past month with 565, followed by OSgrid with 291, AvatarLife with 227, Kitely with 112, and Darkheart’s Playground with 79 new registered users.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids is significantly bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

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.

Kitely Market listing, product variations, and exportables data. (Kitely Market Data.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 600 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 30,031 items both for sale and free.

Neverworld Grid Marketplace is another option for OpenSim grids and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently lists around 100 items for sale to both residents and hypergridders. It is a place for sourcing free and extremely cheap items since most are priced at under $3. In-world delivery for items is not yet available but it is being worked on. Items can be bought and downloaded from the shop.

AvatarLife grid‘s  virtual world marketplace is mainly for gamers and currently lists about 26 items that include skill gaming, furniture, clothing, decor, textures, breedables, animations, art, and complete avatars. It already does in-world deliveries for items similar to Kitely and TAG but is accessible to residents only.

OpenSim grid news

Thanksgiving Day at Littlefield Grid

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.).

Littlefield Grid will host a full-day celebration Thanksgiving Day starting at 3 a.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, November 23, at the Stonehaven Island and Speakeasy regions. Various activities are planned for the day including WLFG radio music sessions every hour on the hour, to recreate the famous WKRP turkey drop at Littlefield Mall, with Les Nesman and Dr. Johnny Fever. WLFG radio will be playing Alice’s Restaurant all day every hour on the hour.

A Thanksgiving dinner will be served all day starting at 6 a.m. Pacific Time at Stonehaven Island and a Thanksgiving Dance Party will take place from 8 p.m. Pacific Time at the Speakeasy Dance Club.

The hypergrid addresses are lfgrid.com:8002:Stonehaven and lfgrid.com:8002:Speakeasy.

Christmas Island region opens at Littlefield in readiness for Christmas and winter events

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.).

Littlefield’s annual Christmas Island will open on Saturday, November 25 in readiness for Christmas-themed events, decorations, and items, grid spokesman Walter Balzic told Hypergrid Business. The Christmas Mall, which is located on the island, will have free decorations, freebies, Christmas gifts, Christmas-themed decorations and other related items that can be picked by all.

Visitors can also find Santa’s Castle, Santa flying Sleighride, Christmas Sleighride, ice skating with free ice skates, and many other attractions.

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.).

The region will also host a Christmas Eve dance at 9 p.m. on Sunday, December 24 and a Christmas Day dance from 8 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday, December 25.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:Christmas Island.

Neverworld offers free prims on new rentals to celebrate eighth birthday

Neverworld just celebrated its eighth birthday on a new region known as NWBB8 which is still up. The grid is therefore offering prims increments on new virtual region rentals. All new regions ordered by December 31 will be awarded free additional prims.

“Each quarter a rented region will complete it will be awarded 5,000 additional prims — up to 15,000 prims more per region for the life of the region on any new sims ordered by December 31,” ” grid owner Govega Sachertore told Hypergrid Business.

The NWBB8 region will be online for a few more weeks so everyone can get a chance to visit, he added. “We have freebies all over the region that are exclusive to the grid. The region has a lot of very detailed region showcases, some of them were shrunk in size to make a miniature rendering of the actual full-sized region. There are landmarks at each showcase parcel.”

Live on Mars at Neverworld grid

(image courtesy Neverworld grid.).

Neverworld grid has recreated the Martian near-future movie Total Recall from the 1990’s at the Virtual Recall region. Grid residents and visitors can now experience what it feels like to live under glass in the region. They can save the planet at the Pyramid Mines, live at the Mars Hilton Hotel, or roam around collecting various freebies at the region which include avatars based on movie characters.

The beautiful Mars Hilton Hotel has apartments available for rent and dwellers can decorate the rooms the way they want, and even add more walls and furniture. They can just sit and watch red dust as it swirls over the dome or walk over to the nearby stores that have themed gifts, clothing, avatars, and furniture. There also is a penthouse sun deck for basking in the hot tub.

The hypergrid address is hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002:Virtual Recall.

World Techno Day on December 9

ZetaWorlds will host a virtual World Techno Day Techno Party at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on December 9 at The Vault — which is the first event venue at the Event region — featuring DJ Tanya playing her famous trance mixes, DJ Mattie with Techno Live series of music for two hours in the afternoon, and DJ Nora playing a Supermix.

The hypergrid address is hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Events.

Techno Day is a day mainly dedicated to celebrating the evolution of the Techno music genre, an electronic dance music that originated in Detroit, Michigan, in the late 1980s. The Techno music is a genre created using electronic instruments, such as synthesizers, sequencers, or drum machines. It features classic acid house to hardstyle and drum and bass. People reflect on the evolution of electronic music over the past few decades during Techno Day, which is celebrated through Techno Parties, exploring new Techno gadgets, and listening to Techno music.

Some of the most famous tracks in this genre include Cosmic Cars by Juan Atkins, Magnese by Surgeon, The Tunnel by Richie Hawtin, Electric Salsa by Sven Vath, Ghetto Kraviz by Nina Kraviz, Subzero by Ben Klock, E Dancer by Kevin Saunderson, Autobahn by Kraftwerk, and The Bells by Jeff Mills.

SilverFox Designs Mall moved to Kishaki grid

SilverFox Designs Mall is now located on the Kishaki grid. It features inventory and textures such as clothes for men and women, for instance for the Gianni avatar, as well as shoes, suits, HUDs, ties, belts, and hoodies for Athena. The team is also due to launch a WinterDream on which visitors will find an animated Train, Skilift, Mountain Cafe, Wintermarket, Ski and Sled, among other things.

The hypergrid address is kishaki.de:8002:SilverFox Designs Mall.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Bradley City, Europa Metaverse, Jaytopia, Kishaki, Kizzys Grid, and Six Sides.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended. Then, after it’s been suspended for a couple of months, we mark it as closed. The following 30 grids were suspended this month: Admeja, Bubblesz, Champions Gate, CLC grid, Dead Frog, Destinationz, Dreamland Metaverse, EthanWorld, Exo-Life, Focus 360, Great Canadian Grid, GridPlay Grid, Joe’s Place, Linkwater, Lost World, Martin Dimitrov Music, Old Europa Metaverse, One Life Grid, Online Plunder, SiN Grid, Terranei World, Thug, Troiwia, Vanessa , Vivo Sim, vLearn Lab, and Vrugs Kingdom.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.

Posted on

OpenSim land area at a new high as grids prep for holidays

OpenSim land area is at a new all-time-high of 131272 standard regions, the fourth month in a row it has set a record. Meanwhile, several grids are hosting Halloween events this month and getting ready for other fall holidays.

OpenSim active users tally is, however, down this month by around 2,000 despite being an active season, which can be attributed to downtime on a number of grids.

Major grids that we did not get stats for this month include Exolife which had 932 actives last month, One Life had 381 actives last month but is currently offline, and Sin Grid, which had 251 actives last month, but offline when we were collecting the stats. In addition, Soul Grid , which had over 1,100 actives this summer, is no longer reporting that statistic.

Other grids that reported significant drops in active users were AviWorlds, Jungle Friends Grid, and Piggy Bank Grid World — the latter saw a drop of more than 800 actives compared to September.

We are now tracking a total of 2,635 OpenSim grids, 329 of which were active this month and 280  of which published their statistics. The rest do not have accessible public stats pages. 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.

Monthly OpenSim land area counts. (Hypergrid Business data October 2023.)

OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely are the three largest grids by land area this month, as they have been for a while now.  The list of the top 40 largest grids by land area is at the bottom of this report.

OSgrid also tops the list of fastest-growing grids after adding 976 new regions this month.

OSgrid offers unlimited free regions to all residents — as long as people run them on their home computers. They have an easy region installer here. No wonder they’re the largest grid in OpenSim.

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 a total of 3,435 unique DreamGrids that have launched since DreamGrid started, according to 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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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 own 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 5,121 active users
  2. Wolf Territories Grid: 3,810 active users
  3. DigiWorldz: 2,233 active users
  4. GBG World: 2,079 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 1,632 active users
  6. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,373 active users
  7. Moonrose: 1,080 active users
  8. AviWorlds: 980 active users
  9. AviTron: 961 active users
  10. WaterSplash: 934 active users
  11. Neverworld: 903 active users
  12. Party Destination Grid: 856 active users
  13. Kitely: 743 active users
  14. Trianon World: 723 active users
  15. Craft World: 658 active users
  16. Piggy Bank Grid World: 634 active users
  17. OpenSim Fest: 569 active users
  18. German World Grid: 561 active users
  19. Littlefield: 558 active users
  20. Jungle Friends Grid: 550 active users
  21. Astralia: 488 active users
  22. Eureka World: 455 active users
  23. Gentle Fire Grid: 454 active users
  24. ZetaWorlds: 446 active users
  25. Herederos Grid: 438 active users

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.

OpenSim Fest grid registered the highest number of active users with 348 due to the just concluded annual OpenSim Fest conference, followed by the Wolf Territories grid with 218, Goldor Grid — a new grid — has 163, The E Grid has 159, and Craft World — which hosted the annual Hypergrid International Expo — registered 150 new active users.

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.

OSgrid registered the most number of users within the past month with 325, followed by AvatarLife with 164, Eureka World with 87, Kitely with 80, and Alternate Metaverse with 77.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids is significantly bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,466 product listings in Kitely Market containing 40,309 product variations, 35,140 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market listing, product variations, and exportables data. (Kitely Market Data.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 601 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 29,950 items both for sale and free.

Some of the items listed for sale on The Adult grid. (image courtesy TAG grid.).

Neverworld Grid Marketplace is another option for OpenSim grids and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently lists around 100 items for sale to both residents and hypergridders. It is a place for sourcing free and extremely cheap items since most are priced at under $3.

Govega Sachertorte

“At the moment the marketplace for in-world delivery is still pending, with a few possible developers interested in doing this project,” grid owner Govega Sachertorte told Hypergrid Business.

The admins are also inviting anyone to list their items on the marketplace.

Neverworld also offers free virtual land to residents who can then set up shop and craft or bring in virtual items for sale or give away at the marketplace. The free parcels measure from 3,000 to 16,000 meters in size and can support up to 5,000 prims.

The grid website is now a jopensim-enabled website. Neverworld also offers a free region server to anyone who wants to self-host a region or grid on Neverworld. To do so, you need to download and install the server software on your machine, ensure the router ports are open as required, and run the .bin file as per instructions on this link then set up a region.

AvatarLife grid launches a marketplace for gaming and other items

(Image courtesy AvatarLife grid.).

AvatarLife grid has opened a new virtual world marketplace which currently lists about 26 items in 24 categories that include skill gaming, furniture, clothing, decor, textures, breedables, animations, art, and complete avatars. There also are Halloween and fall-themed items listed. The market is, however, only accessible to the grid’s residents since it is a closed grid.

Items are priced and traded in the grid currency AV$. The market also does in-world deliveries for all purchases similar to the Kitely Marketplace, said grid spokesperson Bob Young. Visitors can also find freebies, game demos, and scripts, but there currently are no OARs, brand name content creations, or exclusive content listed for sale, he added.

“As we are in very early stages, such content is not listed at this very moment, but hopefully we will have them soon,” Young told Hypergrid Business.

“Aargle Zymurgy, the creator of the famous skill game Zyngo has listed this game and probably future games in our marketplace,” he added. “Zyngo is widely considered to be the game that played a major role in the skill games expansion in Second Life.”

The game currently can not be found on any other marketplace. Another game due for listing on the marketplace is Deep Sting’s fishing game, Crypto Fish. He will be listing multiple new fishing rods for residents to fish with different reward systems on each different rod, AvatarLife CEO Shushant Chandrasekar told Hypergrid Business.

OpenSim grid news

Live Halloween storytelling with StoryLink Radio

StoryLink Radio is offering Halloween-themed stories all month and will host a live story-telling session featuring stories about ghosts from 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, October 19. Read  about the rest of the Halloween-themed stories at StoryLink Radio here. You can follow all the storytelling events on StoryLink Radio’s YouTube channel or in-world on Kitely and SecondLife.

The hypergrid address is grid.kitely.com:8002:Creative Collaborators.

Breakfast movies at the Funsize Dinkies in Alternate Metaverse grid

Movie Park at Funsize Dinkies. (Image courtesy Funsize Dinkies region.).

The Funsize Dinkies region on Alternate Metaverse grid is hosting movie mornings every week during this Halloween season. The Rocky Horror Picture Show will play at the Movie Park at 7:30 a.m. Pacific time on October 15,  Beetlejuice on October 22, and The Addams Family on October 29.

The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Funsize Dinkies.

Everyone is also welcome for the open Autumnfest Fishing event at the same region from 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time on October 24.

Zombie Apocalypse at Spirit Rock Ranch in Discovery Grid

(Image courtesy Spirit Rock Ranch.).

The Spirit Rock Ranch region on Discovery Grid will, from 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time on October 28, host an adventure game that involves participant avatars taking down zombies that are threatening to over-run the region. Gamers choose the weapon of their choice at the region.

Visitors can also play other adventures almost every Saturday morning including surfing, dune buggies, sailing, horse riding, target shooting, big game hunting, and more.

The hypergrid address is discoverygrid.net:8002:Spirit Rock Ranch.

Conectados’ first-ever event will be a Halloween event

Conectados, a relatively new grid, will host a Halloween DJ event at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time on October 27 at the Your Dream region. You can pick a Halloween costume for the event at the grid’s stores.

The hypergrid address is conectados.opensim.fun:8802.  

OpenMic every Saturday at OSGrid

(Image courtesy Parsons Creek Lodge.).

All musicians, singers, poets, and spoken word artists are invited to an OpenMic individual presentations event from 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time on October 28 at the Parsons Creek Lodge region in OSgrid. The region also hosts regular live events at 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. every Saturday morning.

The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Parsons Creek Lodge.

AvatarLife launches single-player Wild Poker game

AvatarLife has introduced a single-player game mode on its Wild Poker game which launched with the multi-player mode in July 2023. With the single-player mode Wild Poker game, one or three people can play against the computer.  The game is based on the Texas Hold’em poker game and players can win prizes in both single and multi-player modes.

AvatarLife to host Halloween Hunt and Party

AvatarLife grid is hosting a Halloween Hunt similar to the Easter Egg hunt. The hunt started about a week ago and will continue until the end of the month. It is taking place on 30 different locations.

It involves hidden gems including 30 quality mesh decor and Halloween-themed furniture to be found. Collect them all to have a complete Halloween set and win prizes. Different clues will be given.

There also will be a four-hour Halloween Bash for Cash party from 1 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, October 21 at the Creep Club’s Gaming Paradise region, hosted by AOS Gaming Paradise, a third-party games provider. It will feature DJ Kris and DJ Kelly and prize money will be given to attendants on the same day.

“We have a starting prize fund of 125,000 AV$ which is about $500,” Young told Hypergrid Business. “Money will be given out every few minutes by a random moneygiver. There will also be a best outfit competition.”

The hypergrid address is avatarlife.com:8002:Gaming Paradise. 

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Assassin Guard, BigOne, CandorsRPWorld, Cristin and Mattt’s Stuff, Dragonz Kin Territories, Endless, Expanse, Falling Love, Goldor Grid, Lagniappe Grid, Omicron Dreams, South Grid, CatGrid, and SunEden Resort.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended. Then, after it’s been suspended for a couple of months, we mark it as closed.

The following 46 grids were suspended this month: Alterlifes, Atacama Desert, AviVerse AlterEgo, Beha Second, BradleyVille, Bubblesz, Chez moi, CosmoPlanet, Costa Isla, Dead Frog, Eenhgrid, EthanWorld, Farm World A Sua Vida Virtual, Gabngio, Galaxy Warz, GridPlay Grid, Hasengang, Horse Island, Immersion Tools, Joe’s Place, Lonetree, Lovely Paradise, Matrix, MetaverseGrid, Micachee, Ocean Grid, Oczko, Online Plunder, Proxy, Rainbow World, Rezmela, Scripted Artwork, Seconds, Serenity, SFgrid, Small Town X, Takland, Tropical Isle, Virtual Ability, Virtualife, vLearn Lab, VR Playground, and WaterSplash.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI 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 2,635 different publicly-accessible grids, 329 of which were active this month and 280 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.

Posted on

OpenSim land area at new all-time-high

OpenSim land area has passed 130,000 standard region equivalents this month, for a new all-time high. This is the second month in a row that OpenSim has set a land record. The total number of regions grew by over 2,000 over the past month. Registered users also increased, by more than 5,000, and active users increased by more than 800.

Traffic is expected to be even higher in the next month because the annual OSFest kicked off today.

We are now tracking a total of 2,620 OpenSim grids, 431 of which were active and 269 of which published their statistics this month. The rest do not have accessible public stats pages. 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.

Oh, the total number of active grids was also a record high this month.

OpenSim land area, in standard region equivalents. (Hypergrid Business Data.)

OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely were the three largest grids by land area this month, as they have been for a while now.

OSgrid, a free-to-connect, non-profit world, now has an equivalent of 29,770 standard-sized regions in total, followed by Wolf Territories Grid with 25,504 regions, Kitely with 18,301, ZetaWorlds with 10,386, and Alternate Metaverse with 9,949 regions.

OSgrid offers unlimited free regions to all residents — as long as people run them on their home computers. They have an easy region installer here. No wonder they’re the largest grid in OpenSim.

ZetaWorlds, on the other hand, offers two-by-two regions with 75,000 prims for €18.99 (US $21) per month with other configuration options also available. Groovyverse land prices start at $25 per month for a region that can be configured to be as big as 16 by 16 standard regions. Both grids also offer free land parcels to residents.

DreamGrid has so far recorded a total of 3,435 unique DreamGrids that have launched since DreamGrid started, according to Micro Technology Services CEO Fred Beckhusen. Micro Technology Services owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz.

Our stats also do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid since these tend to be private grids.

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, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. 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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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 own 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 5,108 active users
  2. Wolf Territories Grid: 3,568 active users
  3. DigiWorldz: 2,196 active users
  4. GBG World: 2,116 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 1,647 active users
  6. Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,493 active users
  7. AviWorlds: 1,283 active users
  8. AviTron: 1,121 active users
  9. Moonrose: 1,091 active users
  10. Neverworld: 998 active users
  11. Exo-Life: 992 active users
  12. Party Destination Grid: 858 active users
  13. Trianon World: 829 active users
  14. Jungle Friends Grid: 787 active users
  15. Kitely: 743 active users
  16. Herederos Grid: 613 active users
  17. Littlefield: 516 active users
  18. Barefoot Dreamers: 516 active users
  19. Craft World: 508 active users
  20. DreamNation: 456 active users
  21. ProxyNet: 448 active users
  22. ZetaWorlds: 438 active users
  23. German World Grid: 436 active users
  24. Gentle Fire Grid: 436 active users
  25. Vida Dupla: 406 active users

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.

Little Big City is this month’s greatest gainer in the number of active users with 406 new active users, followed by the new Herederos Grid with 324 actives, Eureka World and GBG World both with 302, and Trianon World with 272.

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.

Eureka World registered the highest number of users this month with 393 users, followed by OSgrid with 342, AvatarLife with 167, Kitely with 132, and the new Herederos Grid with 90 newly registered users.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids is significantly bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,180 product listings in Kitely Market containing 39,935 product variations, 34,821 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market listing, product variations, and exportables data. (Kitely Market Data.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 598 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 29,950 items both for sale and free.

Some of the items listed for sale on The Adult grid. (image courtesy TAG grid.).

Neverworld Grid Marketplace is another option for OpenSim grids and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently has a few dozen items for sale to both residents and hypergridders. It is a place for sourcing free and extremely cheap items since most are priced at under $3.

(Image courtesy Neverworld grid.).

Neverworld also offers free virtual land to residents who can then set up shop and craft or bring in virtual items for sale or give away at the marketplace. The free parcels measure from 3,000 to 16,000 meters in size and can support up to 5,000 prims, grid owner Govega Sachertorte told Hypergrid Business.

Neverworld also offers a free region server to anyone who wants to self-host a region or grid on Neverworld. To do so, you need to download and install the server software on your machine, ensure the router ports are open as required, and run the .bin file as per instructions on this link then set up a region.

OpenSim grid news

OSFest 2023 kicks off

(image courtesy OSFest.).

This year’s annual OpenSim’s largest hypergrid event OpenSim Fest — which attracts thousands of participants including sponsors, builders, exhibitors, artists, musicians, merchants, grid owners, and OpenSim enthusiasts from around the hypergrid — kicks off at 9.00 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, September 15. The full calendar of events is located on this link.

The final build testing was completed successfully on September 14, but the floor is still open for anyone willing to volunteer or sponsor the event. Details on how to register as an exhibitor, merchant, volunteer, promoter, supporter, and attender are located on this link and you can follow the progress via the host’s Discord group here. OSFest also runs a YouTube page, Facebook page, Twitter page, and OpenSimWorld page from where you can get regular updates on proceedings, and occurrences about the event.

Twenty-nine companies and individuals are sponsoring this year’s event, which usually takes place for 16 days and offers more than 90 hours of live performances and tours of exhibits and merchant stores. Over 140 standard region equivalents spanning a total area of nine square kilometers have been set aside for the various exhibitions, expos, performances, presentations, group and individual tours, and meetings.

In addition to sponsors, grid owners, builders, and merchants exhibiting their items, there are a host of events planned including a 10th anniversary of The Golden Touch theater at 11.00 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, September 16 at Golden Sky Region of the Utopia Sky Grid where the theater is hosted. There also will be group tours to exhibitor stores on Mondays and Wednesdays during the event period.

The hypergrid address to the Welcome region is grid.opensimfest.com:8022:hg-welcome.

Wish Upon a Star at the Grid Genesis Roleplay

The new Pineview Townhouse. (image courtesy Masala Al Kahov.).

The shopping area Masala Al Kahov, translated in English as “wish upon a star,” has launched on Genesis RolePlay grid. It offers original and remodeled freebies built by owners of the mall.

Here you can get, for free, their newest creation the Pineview Townhouse — a very detailed house with a garage, kitchen, living room, den or study, bedroom, bathroom, 3D windows, and a deck. The beautiful mesh is full perm copy, modify, and transfer and you can use it to beautify your grid or regions.

Masala Al Kahov also offers other freebie items like original plants, furniture, boats, English manor houses, pumpkin houses, flax flowers, and small shops. You can get items for all manner of holiday and event decorations.

The hypergrid address is grid.genesis-roleplay.org:8002:Masala Al Kohav.

I Love You Grid up and running despite devastating earthquake

Last week’s Marrakesh earthquake has left a huge loss and disruptions including to power, broadband, and telephony connectivity but I Love You Grid — whose one of the owners, DebzFox, resides in Morocco’s capital — has announced that it has made necessary arrangements to run the grid without interruptions despite the happenings.

The grid offers free land for residents, events every Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday, and shops and a Superstore for those interested in lifestyle shopping. It also runs an open social network for anyone willing to join and radio streams that broadcast for 24 hours each day.

Littlefield held 9-11 memorial

The Memorial Region in Littlefield grid hosted the 9-11 tragedy memorial, as it does every year on September 11 of this month. The region hosts a replica of the Tower of Voices for Flight 93 among many other items that are still accessible to anyone willing to pay a visit.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:9-11 Memorial.

HG Safari group to tour the Luxor region in Wolf Territories Grid

HG Safari social group still continues to visit various OpenSim grids and will visit the Luxor region in Wolf Territories starting at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Wednesday, September 27, and will run for two hours as usual.

Members of the international OpenSim tour group usually first meet at the HG Safari region on OSGrid at hg.osgrid.org:80:HG Safari then proceed to tour together and experience, highlight, and popularize interesting places around the hypergrid. The events are all planned with the host grid owners and it is a great way for grid owners willing to make known their interesting locations, items, and works in OpenSim.

You can know about the group’s upcoming visits or tours through its Facebook page, MeWe, and Discord group, and send a message or notecard to Thirza Ember if you are a grid or region owner who would like to host the group tour in your grid or region.

The hypergrid address is grid.wolfterritories.org:8002:Luxor.

Learn about health and disability issues at the Healthinfo Island and Virtual Ability grid

Healthinfo Island in Second Life. (image courtesy Virtual Ability.).

Virtual Ability’s Healthinfo Island region located in Second Life now has eight displays and exhibits meant to educate and raise awareness about different health concerns. The displays and exhibits address to obstructive sleep apnea, animal zoonotic diseases, managing sadness, coping with intense emotions, rhabdomyolysis, inflammatory bowel disease and Irritable bowel syndrome, Argh emotional meltdown, and red meat allergy.

You can click on the link provided above to teleport to the different exhibit locations, then find different posters with their descriptions about each of the various health conditions.

Virtual Ability is a US non-profit corporation with a mission to enable people with a wide range of disabilities and shares and creates awareness on physical inabilities and related support in the society through the website, Second Life, and its grid in OpenSim. The organization provides information about various health issues and links to different relevant products and services. This month, the organization is helping raise awareness about the sepsis condition now that September is Sepsis Awareness Month.

A survey of people with disabilities in the US states of Arizona, California, Hawaii, and Nevada, and the Pacific Basin is also being conducted by Robyn R Gershon, College of Global Public Health, New York University. According to the organization’s blog, the survey will provide information on how ADA Coordinators are helping people with disabilities in their local communities and how they can further be empowered to do so.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Ansjela Grid, Ares World, Butschiland, CLC grid, Conectados Grid, Escape 2 Reality Grid, Genesis PR, Holo Neon, Humble Grid, Hypergrid City, Lailara Heya, Little Big City, Monarch Gardens, Nekolution, Old Europa Metaverse, SiN Grid, and Troiwia, Vanessa.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended. Then, after it’s been suspended for a couple of months, we mark it as closed.

The following 25 grids were marked as suspended this month: Adult Nation, Adventure Bay, Costa Isla, Eenhgrid, Elords, Etheria Grid, Farm World A Sua Vida Virtual, Happy Hour, Hasengang, Hot Gorean Nights, IBK Grid, Impulse Grid, OpenSim UAb, OpenSims Life, Pleasant Retreat, Proxy, Starfleet, Sweet Life, Troy, VR Playground, WaterSplash, Wonder, Youth Nation, Yow Now Free, and Yuriworld.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI 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 2,584 different publicly-accessible grids, 419 of which were active this month, and 268 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.

Posted on

OpenSim users drop on outages

OpenSim grid stats decreased by 4,927 active users and 1,011 regions this month compared to last month’s tally due to several grids suffering outages or not publishing their statistics this month.

The single biggest change was that Wolf Territories Grid, which had 2,640 active users as of mid-June, did not publish that data this month. In addition, Eureka World, an educational grid, was down by over 500 active users, mostly likely due to the summer holidays. New Life Italy did not report its active user stats this month either — it had over 400 last month. Other grids that had over 100 active users last month but were either down or did not report stats this month include Arkham Grid, Sharing Is Caring Family, Virtual Melody, Calypso, and Impulse Grid.

We are now tracking 2,584 OpenSim grids in total, 424 of which were active this month, and 267 of which published statistics.

OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely are still the three largest grids by land area.

OpenSim virtual land size over years. (Hypergrid Business data.)

OSgrid reported an equivalent of 28,808 standard-sized regions this month, followed by Wolf Territories Grid with 25,472 regions, Kitely with 18,255, ZetaWorlds with 10,099, and Alternate Metaverse with 8,896 regions. OSgrid added the most number of regions at 1,483 this month, followed by Groovy Verse with 487, Perfect Life with 199, Alternative Metaverse with 107, and ArtDestiny with 96 additional standard regions.

OSgrid offers unlimited free regions to all residents — as long as people run them on their home computers. They have an easy region installer here. No wonder they’re the largest grid in OpenSim.

ZetaWorlds, on the other hand, offers two-by-two regions with 75,000 prims for €18.99 (US $21) per month with other configuration options also available. Groovyverse land prices start at $25 per month for a region that can be configured to be as big as 16 by 16 standard regions. Both grids also offer free land parcels to residents.

Another option for people who want free OpenSim land is to use DreamGrid from OutWorldz, a version of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, private company grids, or school grids.

Our stats also do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid since these tend to be private grids.

DreamGrid has so far recorded a total of 10,377 DreamGrids that have launched since DreamGrid started. However, when the grid name changes are accounted for, 3,435 Dreamgrids have been installed as shown by a count of unique, random IDs according to 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. 

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. 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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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 own 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 4,759 active users
  2. DigiWorldz: 1,950 active users
  3. GBG World: 1,633 active users
  4. Alternate Metaverse: 1,569 active users
  5. Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,327 active users
  6. ZetaWorlds: 1,264 active users
  7. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,229 active users
  8. Neverworld: 1,165 active users
  9. Soul Grid: 1,151 active users
  10. AviWorlds: 1,069 active users
  11. Moonrose: 1,056 active users
  12. Exo-Life: 993 active users
  13. Party Destination Grid: 816 active users
  14. Craft World: 783 active users
  15. One Life Grid: 665 active users
  16. Youth Nation: 630 active users
  17. Jungle Friends Grid: 617 active users
  18. Trianon World: 599 active users
  19. Kitely: 582 active users
  20. WaterSplash: 581 active users
  21. ProxyNet: 571 active users
  22. Barefoot Dreamers: 561 active users
  23. Kid Grid: 502 active users
  24. The City: 501 active users
  25. DreamNation: 467 active users

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.

Darkheart’s Playground is this month biggest gainer, having added 369 active users, followed by Jungle Friends Grid with 247 new actives, Piggy Bank Grid World with 207, Dorena’s World with 147, and Caribou Grid with 107.

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.

OSgrid registered the highest number of users with 294, followed by Perfect Life with 102, Kitely with 99, Wolf Territories grid with 93, and Alternative Metaverse with 81 registered users. Baller Nation, which had 1,513 registered users last month, is now closed.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids is significantly bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,020 product listings in Kitely Market containing 39,735 product variations, 34,644 of which are exportable.

Kitely listings, product variations, and exportable history data. (Kitely Market data.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 592 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 29,994 items both for sale and free.

Some of the items listed for sale on TAG grid. (image courtesy TAG grid.).

Neverworlds’ Marketplace, which launched last month, is another option for OpenSim grids, and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently lists a bunch of items for sale to both residents and hypergridders. It is a place for sourcing free and extremely cheap items since most are priced at under $3.

(image courtesy Neverworld grid.).

Neverworlds also offers free virtual land to residents who can then set up shop and craft or bring in virtual items for sale or give away at the marketplace. The free parcels measures from 3,000 to 16,000 meters in size and of up to 5,000 prim limits, grid owner Govega Sachertorte told Hypergrid Business.

OpenSim grid news

Play VR games on Mech Lab; new security shop opens

Vision Pro headgear. (image courtesy Mech Lab.).

Simphony Vive runs a virtual reality-enabled Mech Lab region in OSgrid where people can play VR games, explore VR scenes, and build their custom merchandise. Users who want to build items on the world can find add-ons for the items from the merchant stores such as the Mech Lab Security mini-shop, which opens on Sunday, July 16.

Pro members can also share 360 degrees and VR images with friends at the Mech Lab.

The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Mech Lab.

RRD fashion store to reopen with newer mesh styles

The RRD Fashion Exclusives fashion region store on the My Virtual Beach grid will close for one week at a time to be determined next month and then reopen with newer mesh styles and designs such as Athena, Athena Petite, Legacy, and Legacy Perky.

Trizzy Hunter, the store owner, announced that the currently available styles and designs will also undergo revamping during the closure. She is also open to suggestions and requests on improving the texture and colors of existing meshes and items.

The region hosts mainly clothing designs created for Rayvn’s Roost Designs and those made by Trizaria Hunter. The store also regularly releases new clothing designs and textures.

The hypergrid address is grid.myvirtualbeach.com:8002:RDD Fashion Exclusives.

Social region to open on I Love You Grid

The Sea of Tranquility is the name of a new social adult hypergrid-enabled region set to open on the I Love You Grid, with lots of activities and places for couples to explore. It will host, among other activities, weekly social parties hosted at the Beach Club, which is also set to open in the region. Other activities will include nude sailing for couples and safe moorings.

The hypergrid address is iloveyougrid.net:8002:Sea of Tranquility.

My Virtual Beach grid to close for backups

My Virtual Beach grid will be offline next Thursday, July 20 for a grid-wide backup exercise that is set to take between a few hours and the entire Thursday night, according to an announcement by grid owner Mistress Dalgato.

Al Capone Homes giving away free parcels

Region 002 of Piggy Bank Grid World grid has free parcels of up to 2,000 prims for residents. They can then build or bring in items on the land. Anyone willing to take land can join via this link.

The hypergrid address is al-capone.homes:8002:Free parcels 002.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Beha Second, Friends Grid, Neogrid 3, Farm World A Sua Vida Virtual, and Sparta II.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended. Then, after it’s been suspended for a couple of months, we mark it as closed.

The following 22 grids were suspended this month: Angel Grid, Brillyunt, Chubelz Grid, CopyKat, Destinations, Destinationz, Fresh MetaVers, Grid Network, hg.rocketworld.top, Impulse Grid, KittyBlue, MajHome, Miki Kiti Tiki, NasMaison, PMGrid, Rainbow World, Rocket World, Slanted and Enchanted, Tenebris Mysterium, VirtuaLifeNewGrid, WestWorld, and Pmgrid.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI 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 2,584 different publicly-accessible grids, 424 of which were active this month, and 267 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com. 

Posted on

OpenSim hits new land area record as user numbers spike

The public OpenSim grids reported over 2,600 new active users this month, the biggest increase since last fall. The total land area also hit a record high, of 125,841 standard region equivalents.

All of the growth has been on hypergrid-enabled grids. In fact, there were only 499 active users reported by the 15 non-hypergrid-enabled grids in our database, 467 of them located on a single grid, DreamNation. This was up by two users from last month, but down significantly from a peak of 13,922 active users in 2014. All in all, hypergrid-enabled grids accounted for 98.4 percent of all land area and 98.5 percent of all active users.

We are now tracking a total of 2,576 OpenSim grids, 424 of which were active this month, and 282 of which published statistics.

OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely are still the three largest grids by land area, with Wolf Territories also being the fastest-growing grid by land size having added 4,000 new regions within the last month.

Size of OpenSim Metaverse in Standard Regions over the years. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

OSgrid reported the equivalent of 27,325 standard-sized regions this month, followed by Wolf Territories Grid with 25,520 regions, Kitely with 18,299, ZetaWorlds with 10,156, and Alternate Metaverse with 8,789 regions.

OSgrid offers unlimited free regions to all residents — as long as people run them on their home computers. They have an easy region installer here. No wonder they’re the largest grid in OpenSim.

ZetaWorlds, on the other hand, offers two-by-two regions with 75,000 prims for €18.99 (US $21) per month with other configuration options also available. Groovyverse land prices start at $25 per month for a region that can be configured to be as big as 16 by 16 standard regions. Both grids also offer free land parcels to residents.

Another option for people who want free OpenSim land is to use DreamGrid from OutWorldz, a version of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, private company grids, or school grids.

Our stats also do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid since these tend to be private grids.

DreamGrid has so far recorded a total of 10,377 DreamGrids that have launched. However, when the grid name changes are accounted for, 3,435 Dreamgrids have been installed as shown by a count of unique, random IDs according to 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. 

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. 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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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 own 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 4,914 active users
  2. Wolf Territories Grid: 2,640 active users
  3. DigiWorldz: 1,854 active users
  4. Alternate Metaverse: 1,691 active users
  5. GBG World: 1,611 active users
  6. Neverworld: 1,370 active users
  7. ZetaWorlds: 1,326 active users
  8. Soul Grid: 1,137 active users
  9. Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,120 active users
  10. AviWorlds: 1,116 active users
  11. Moonrose: 1,050 active users
  12. Exo-Life: 993 active users
  13. Craft World: 879 active users
  14. One Life Grid: 834 active users
  15. Eureka World: 823 active users
  16. Party Destination Grid: 810 active users
  17. Kitely: 768 active users
  18. Darkheart’s Estates: 761 active users
  19. Kid Grid: 623 active users
  20. The City: 596 active users
  21. Youth Nation: 586 active users
  22. ProxyNet: 562 active users
  23. Offworld: 538 active users
  24. Trianon World: 524 active users
  25. Barefoot Dreamers: 521 active users

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.

Wolf Territories Grid was the fastest growing this month, adding 470 new active users, following by One Life Grid with an increase of 440 actives, Neverworld with 400, and ProxyNet with 333 new active users.

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.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids is significantly bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,987 product listings in Kitely Market containing 39,671 product variations, 34,581 of which are exportable.

Kitely listings, product variations, and exportable history data. (Kitely Market data.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 587 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 28,293 items both for sale and free.

Products on sale on Tag. (Image courtesy Tag.).

Volunteers needed for OpenSim .Net 6 testing

As the development of OpenSim shifts from Mono to the .Net 6 platform, developers are calling on people who are familiar with .Net or C# testing to join the developers’ weekly meetings at 11 a.m. Pacific Time every Tuesday or make suggestions for testing over the mailing list.

The meeting takes place at the Dev Outreach region of the OSgrid whose hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Dev Outreach.

Volunteering is crucial since there currently is no automated testing set up for OpenSim, said Zetamex Virtual Network CEO Vincent Sylvester.

Vincent Sylvester

“Moving to .Net 6 is fairly simple, installation of the runtime is similar to mono and on most machines is a few commands,” he told Hypergrid Business. “The biggest difference is no longer is the executable used, instead the OpenSim.dll and Robust.dll are used to run the application.”

Meanwhile, a minor bug that affected ban lists has been fixed on the .Net branch to make the ban list flag — the flag that is used to skip checking for entries on the ban list if there are no entries on it — effective even before a manual entry is made to a ban list. Previously, the flag was not changed via script functions and so became effective only if and when a user added an entry to the list. Now, the flag is controlled via script functions, said Sylvester.

“Removing all entries from the list by hand resets the flag, but currently only the reset function will do so for the script equivalent,” he said. “Again, unless backported this fix is only on the .Net branch so for anyone using security systems that rely on those functions, might be a good idea to just add a random user to the list to make sure the flag is active and bans are checked properly.”

You can go here to learn more about the recent changes made to the .Net branch.

WestWorld grid closes temporarily

WestWorld announced that the grid will be offline for about a month to six weeks, then back with a new WestWorld grid and website.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Caribou Grid, Eleutherias, Herederos Grid, IBK Grid, Morada Grid, Shoalwater Bay, Space Life, Whispering Willows.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended. Then, after it’s been suspended for a couple of months, we mark it as closed.

The following 28 grids were suspended this month: AmunRiseN, Bubble Grid, BunnyLand, Cajungrid, Duros Pr, Eenhgrid, Fashionistas, Figment, Fjorgeland, Futurer Luv, Gimisa, Insight Concepts, It, Konecta Radio, KoolPheller Estates, New Hope Grid, P7, PaderGrid, Panda Grid, Phillip’s Grid, Proud Rainbow, Rocket World Grid, TheGrid, Virtual Harmony, Virtual Life Style, Virtual Life Style — HG URI, and WestWorld.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI 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 2,576 different publicly-accessible grids, 424 of which were active this month, and 282 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com. 

Posted on

OpenSim sets record high number of grids, for sixth month in a row

This is the monthly stats report, where we count up all the regions and users on the public OpenSim grids. This month, the number of active public grids hit an all-time high — 428. This is despite the fact that we’re now categorizing many grids as private if they don’t have useful websites, or social media pages, or show other indicators that they’re trying to attract the public.

Land area is also up, to the highest it’s been since last October. We now have the equivalent of 117,869 standard regions on the public OpenSim grids. As a quick comparison, Second Life currently has 27,778 regions, according to Grid Survey. That means that OpenSim currently has more than four times the land area of Second Life, and that’s not even counting private grids. This is mostly due to the fact that OpenSim regions are significantly cheaper, and sometimes free, and OpenSim offers school and companies much greater control, privacy, and security.

However, the total number of OpenSim active users dropped to 41,620 — 566 lower than last month — due to seasonal changes, grid shutdowns, and service interruptions.

We are now tracking a total of 2,563 OpenSim grids, 428 of which were active this month, and 282 of which published statistics.

OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely, are the three most extensive grids by land area, with Wolf Territories also being the fastest-growing grid by land size having added 2,800 new regions in the last month. It is also the fastest-growing by number of actives having added 1,484 new active users in the last month.

Wolf Territories has a very active Discord channel, and you can also follow them on Facebook and YouTube. But one of the most impressive things they offer is their land package — £20.00 a month (US $25) for a two-by-two region that can hold up to 120 avatars and 1.2 million prims. These regions are geographically contiguous, meaning that they are connected via waterways or land area so that you can travel overland to visit your neighbors. Plus, the grid promises that your regions will be ready within ten minutes of the order being placed. And you can rent these giant regions in bulk — £35 a month for two var-regions, and £120 a month for 100. No wonder they’re growing fast.

This is an excellent example of how OpenSim’s infrastructure can be deployed in such a way as to lower costs and improve performance for users.

OpenSim total land area chart over the years. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

ZetaWorlds is second by the number of regions added in the past one month with 1,136 new regions, followed by Groovyverse at 265, and OSgrid with 260 new standard region equivalents.

ZetaWorlds offers two-by-two regions with 75,000 prims for €18.99 (US $21) per month with other configuration options also available. Groovyverse land prices start at $25 per month for a region that can be configured to be as big as 16 by 16 standard regions. Both grids also offer free land parcels to residents.

OSgrid offers unlimited free regions to all residents — as long as people run them on their home computers. They have an easy region installer here. No wonder they’re the largest grid in OpenSim.

Another option for people who want free OpenSim land is to use DreamGrid  from OutWorldz, a version of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, private company grids, or school grids.

Our stats also do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid since these tend to be private grids.

DreamGrid reported last month that it has recorded a total of 10,377 DreamGrids that have launched so far. However, when the grid name changes are accounted for, 3,435 Dreamgrids have been installed as shown by a count of unique, random IDs, said  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. 

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. 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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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 own servers for free using either DreamGrid, or 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 4,847 active users
  2. Wolf Territories Grid: 2,170 active users
  3. DigiWorldz: 1,917 active users
  4. GBG World: 1,718 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 1,520 active users
  6. ZetaWorlds: 1,379 active users
  7. Soul Grid: 1,145 active users
  8. Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,098 active users
  9. AviWorlds: 1,067 active users
  10. Moonrose: 1,056 active users
  11. Exo-Life: 993 active users
  12. Neverworld: 970 active users
  13. Kitely: 861 active users
  14. Eureka World: 840 active users
  15. Craft World: 829 active users
  16. Party Destination Grid: 827 active users
  17. The City: 657 active users
  18. Jungle Friends Grid: 628 active users
  19. Youth Nation: 578 active users
  20. Trianon World: 550 active users
  21. Offworld: 517 active users
  22. Barefoot Dreamers: 486 active users
  23. DreamNation: 468 active users
  24. Astralia: 421 active users
  25. Arkham Grid: 413 active users

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.

Wolf Territories Grid added the highest number of new active users in the last 30 days with 1,484, followed by Impulse Grid with 277, The City with 248, Virtual Worlds Zone with 244, and ProxyNet with 299 new active users. Four other grids also each got more than 100 new actives in the same period.

Regarding surprise decreases in active user numbers which happen mainly due to downtimes and closures, WaterSplash active user numbers went down by 629 users in the past month, followed by Piggy Bank Grid World‘s by 217, and Eureka World by 178.

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.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids is significantly bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,884 product listings in Kitely Market containing 39,337 product variations, 34,254 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market data — total listing, variations, and exportables. (Image courtesy Kitely Market.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 585 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 28,293 items both for sale and free.

Products on sale on Tag. (Image courtesy Tag.).

Neverworlds’ Marketplace, which launched last month, is another option for OpenSim grids, and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently lists 33 items for sale to residents and 44 items for hypergridders. It is a place for sourcing free and extremely cheap items since most are priced at under $3.

Neverworlds also offers free virtual land to residents who can then set up shop and craft or bring in virtual items for sale or give away at the marketplace. The free parcels measures from 3,000 to 16,000 meters in size and of up to 5,000 prim limits, grid owner Govega Sachertorte told Hypergrid Business.

Volunteers needed for OpenSim .Net 6 testing

As the development of OpenSim shifts from Mono to the .Net 6 platform, developers are calling on people who are familiar with .Net or C# testing to join the developers’ weekly meetings at 11 a.m. Pacific Time every Tuesday or make suggestions for testing over the mailing list.

The meeting takes place at the Dev Outreach region of the OSgrid whose hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Dev Outreach.

Volunteering is crucial since there currently is no automated testing set up for OpenSim, said Zetamex Virtual Network CEO Vincent Sylvester.

Vincent Sylvester

“Moving to .Net 6 is fairly simple, installation of the runtime is similar to mono and on most machines is a few commands,” he told Hypergrid Business. “The biggest difference is no longer is the executable used, instead the OpenSim.dll and Robust.dll are used to run the application.”

Meanwhile, a minor bug that affected ban lists has been fixed on the .Net branch to make the ban list flag — the flag that is used to skip checking for entries on the ban list if there are no entries on it — effective even before a manual entry is made to a ban list. Previously, the flag was not changed via script functions and so became effective only if and when a user added an entry to the list. Now, the flag is controlled via script functions, said Sylvester.

“Removing all entries from the list by hand resets the flag, but currently only the reset function will do so for the script equivalent,” he said. “Again, unless backported this fix is only on the .Net branch so for anyone using security systems that rely on those functions, might be a good idea to just add a random user to the list to make sure the flag is active and bans are checked properly.”

You can go here to learn more about the recent changes made to the .Net branch.

XMIR grid now using .Net 6 version of OpenSim

Xmir Grid no longer runs any simulators on mono and is now fully using the platform that is in development version 0.9.3.dev. The grid has a total of 62 public regions plus a robust server, a dedicated database server, and a number of non-public test regions.

The implementation is working well so far and the team has not noted any significant misharps so far, said grid owner Gier Noklebye.

“Performance is good, maybe slightly better than mono on the same hardware, but it is hard to tell unless you actually benchmark it,” he told Hypergrid Business. “Memory use seems to be somewhat down over mono.”

“I am running it and or testing it on anything from modest Intel processors, Xeons, and Apple M1 and M2 processors and there are no processor-specific issues I have discovered. Am running Debian 11, or macOS 12.x and 13.x.”

The limitations, he pointed out, are you can only run Bulletsim physics and the Y-engine scripting engine, so depending on your start point from where you upgrade, you might find issues related to that and not .Net in itself. Plugins such as Opensim search currently don’t work, he added, and if you have grown your own they may need some recoding.

“If people want to test the performance and compatibility the region at grid.xmir.org:8002:Dayturn is a 512 by 512 VAR running on a 10-year-old 1.4 GHz i5 with only 4 Gb memory on the machine,” he said. “The grid mainland at grid.xmir.org:8002 runs on Xeon processors. The grid database is running MySQL 8.0.33 on an Apple Mac Mini with an M1 processor and very fast SSD, which helps.”

Neverworlds grid to host Jerry Garcia Digital archive museum

Neverworlds will launch the Jerry Garcia archive museum with a grand opening on July 6 in a new official collaboration with Jerry Garcia, said grid owner Govega Sachertorte.

“There will be about 100 art pieces in the museum inside and outdoor art garden,” she told Hypergrid Business. “The museum may have changing exhibits to highlight different themes. What many ppl are not aware Jerry was first an artist and he created 2000 pieces during his lifetime.”

The museum will become accessible to the public after the launch.

Neverworlds has also now enabled the Gloebits money system and virtual OpenSim currency. The grid also has a new calendar online. It has also started events with three live singers weekly and a rotation of DJs, as well as a weekly new member social and Never Riders, a weekly bicycle touring group. The group tours sims inside Neverworlds and the schedule will soon be on the calendar.

“The touring group does only Neverworld road tours at this time as we have a really extensive road system,” said Sachertorte. “It’s fun and a way to visit all the sims in the continent. All are invited to join in.”

The group has already toured the Jerry Garcia Foundation.

Virtual Beach has a new owner

Nichole aka Mistress Dalgato, who has been a resident at the Virtual Beach grid, is now the new grid owner. The Virtual Beach grid team is working on a new welcome region, The grid has also launched a few new regions and is planning on a few more features, events, and dinkie parties, said Dalgato.

“We’re hoping we can find some DJs to have monthly parties,” he told Hypergrid Business. “Were are also hoping in the next few months to bring back karaoke but we’ll see. We also have very reasonable land sale prices.”

Although the grid may be a small one right now, he noted, they are like a family.

“We have been getting some new members coming from Second Life who are really good at building,” he said. “If we can get the support and bring some of the old members back, who knows, we could go back to some of the meet and greets we used to do once a week.”

AviVerse AlterEgo now offers Vivox for home regions

AlterEgo grid, which is now known as the AviVerse AlterEgo, provides full Vivox voice support for use on all sims including the virtual regions that users install on their computers at home. Region owners do not need to create an account with Vivox to use the voice system. The choice to make available the voice in this manner was made to help those who can no longer have an account on Vivox, grid admin Gin Ego told Hypergrid Business.

The home-based regions are similar to those that people can get on OSgrid. The service is free, and the installer is available here.

As far as we know, no other grid currently offers free Vivox voice for home-based regions. Email us if anyone else does!

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Alecia Grid, Atlas Grid, Avie Realm, Darkheart’s Estates, Deep Playa, Grid Network, Grid Racers, Happy Hour, Impulse Grid, New Life Italy, ProxyNet, SSG Sacred Grove, The E Grid, Virtual Learning Village, WKD Bucket Grid, and Zodiac.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended. Then, after it’s been suspended for a couple of months, we mark it as closed.

The following 27 grids were marked as suspended this month: Acearia, Admeja, admeja.net, Almost Heaven, AnKaBi Grid, Avi Resurrection, blackswan.dyndns-server.com, Casadamici, Dreamscape, EasterHome, Forlorn Hope, Gabngio, Gyssy, HD Skin World, Insanity Grid, Laguna Bay, Legacy, Matrix, Mreža regij, Nightwalker Services, Nymph Paradise, Old Fuori Grid, Open Dream, Paradwys, Quintonia, Virtual Harmony, and Your World.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI 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 2,563 different publicly-accessible grids, 428 of which were active this month, and 282 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com. 

Posted on

Number of OpenSim grids hits record high

The public OpenSim grids gained nearly 2,000 regions this past month, and more than 1,300 new registrations, but continued to bleed active users as the weather improves and people spend less time inside at their computers.

However, the total number of active public grids has reached a new record high of 421 grids, despite the fact that we’ve cleaned out our database and set many grids to “private” because they didn’t have public websites or other indicators that they wanted people to stop by. The total number of grids we’re tracking is now 2,543, but many of them are school and company grids closed to outsiders, private grids just for family or friends, or personal grids that someone is running on their home computer and not usually accessible to outsiders. Of the public grids, 283 reported statistics this month.

OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely, are the three largest grids by total land area, and OSgrid was the fastest-growing, having acquired an additional 732 new regions since this time last month. Alternate Metaverse gained the equivalent of 412 standard regions, Serenity gained 352, Wolf Territories Grid gained 282, and Discovery Grid grew by 86 regions. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the list of the top 40 grids by land area.

OpenSim total land area chart over the years. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

Our stats also do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz DreamGrid — a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, private company grids, or school grids.

DreamGrid has recorded a total of 10,377 DreamGrids that have booted so far. However, when the grid name changes are accounted for, 3,435 Dreamgrids have been installed as shown by a count of unique, random ID’s, said  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. 

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. 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.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort.

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 own 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter now available

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.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 4,837 active users
  2. DigiWorldz: 1,968 active users
  3. GBG World: 1,739 active users
  4. Alternate Metaverse: 1,568 active users
  5. ZetaWorlds: 1,459 active users
  6. Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,315 active users
  7. Soul Grid: 1,244 active users
  8. Moonrose: 1,225 active users
  9. AviWorlds: 1,132 active users
  10. Neverworld: 1,022 active users
  11. Eureka World: 1,018 active users
  12. Kitely: 995 active users
  13. Exo-Life: 993 active users
  14. WaterSplash: 962 active users
  15. Party Destination Grid: 862 active users
  16. Craft World: 753 active users
  17. Wolf Territories Grid: 686 active users
  18. Offworld: 629 active users
  19. Barefoot Dreamers: 599 active users
  20. Youth Nation: 513 active users
  21. DreamNation: 493 active users
  22. Astralia: 476 active users
  23. One Life Grid: 476 active users
  24. Trianon World: 454 active users
  25. Arkham Grid: 436 active users

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.

Piggy Bank Grid is, for the second month in a row, the fastest growing grid with 260 new active users, followed by Offworld with 197, Moonrose with 176, Trianon World with 148, and Jungle Friends with 145 new actives.

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.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids might actually be bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,804 product listings in Kitely Market containing 39,001 product variations, 33,926 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market data — total listing, variations, and exportables. (Image courtesy Kitely Market.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 581 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 28,293 items both for sale and those for free.

Products on sale on The Adult Grid. (Image courtesy TAG grid.).

Neverworlds’ Marketplace, which launched last month, is another option for OpenSim grirds, and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently lists 33 items for sale to residents and 44 items for hypergridders.

A free Neverworld account also grants access to more free gifts from the marketplace.

Weekly OpenSim developer meetings discuss .Net 6 testing

The latest OpenSim release will likely be the last one on Mono and OpenSim developers and stakeholders who meet on Tuesday of each week are now discussing the future of OpenSim whose future releases will run on .Net 6.

Mono is the open source alternative to Microsoft’s .Net application platform.

OpenSim on .Net 6 will still require some Mono dependencies like LibGDIPlus for dynamic textures to function. This will eventually need to be resolved through creation of a new graphics rendering system built that runs without those dependencies because the future of Mono and its adjacent dependencies is unclear, said Zetamex Network CEO Vincent Sylvester.

“Primarily we are looking for people to help test the .Net 6 version and for some with development experience to look into writing new unit tests to go along with that as the existing tests no longer work with this runtime version,” he told Hypergrid Business.

Zetamex seeks machine learning volunteer

Zetamex Network has posted a job listing for a volunteer position in the field of machine learning. The person will research and test machine learning language models and data, with a goal to applying them in OpenSim and virtual worlds. The internal project has a prospect to benefit the entire OpenSim metaverse when finished, said Zetamex’s Sylvester.

Vincent Sylvester

“The internal project that posting relates to is currently in the planning and research phase, but if it succeeds would vastly improve the interaction of people in virtual worlds in regards to communicating with each other,” he told Hypergrid Business.

He said although using ChatGPT and similar AI-powered chatbots can be helpful in trying to answer general support questions, finding general answers to research questions, and talking to lonely people, they currently offer very little when it comes to technical matters such as OpenSim coding.

“With the limited data they have and a clear lack of understanding of more complex topics in programming there is little they can do, much less in an environment like OpenSim with a code base scattered across so many functions that unless it parses the entire code base ChatGPT will never be able to properly identify structural deficiencies in the code leaving only optimizing single functions,” he said.

Trianon World to launch fun-filled Funzies World next week

The Welcome area of the Trianon World grid. (Image courtesy Trianon-World.).

A fun-filled region is about to launch on the Trianon-World grid next week at 1 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, April 22. It features beautiful scenes that include family picnic areas, cottages, marketplace, a water slide tower, and much more. The region is ready for preview and anyone who wishes to do so before the launch day is welcome, said grid owner Shadow Raven.

Shadow Raven aka MzEssensual.

“Those who can’t wait to experience this special environment, this is an invitation to come and have a preview look,” she told Hypergrid Business. “Although some sites are still in progress there is plenty to see and do.

And don’t hesitate to bring your tall friends on non-dinkie events days. They may bump their heads a bit and have to scrunch into the seats but they can still enjoy everything here.”

Some of the attractions include the Dinkie-scaled cottages available for rent just a few meters past the Welcome area, after which you meet a family picnic area. After this is a dance floor where Dinki Band and DJs will entertain residents and visitors. The latter site is under development, she said, but she promises it will be a winner.

There is also a playing field, which is home to the Dinki Pussball Plate, and a marketplace where you can buy all sorts of items. Clicking a sign on the tall Water Slide tower overlooking the bay takes you to the highest spot in the World where you can admire all the world around you.

(Image courtesy Trianon World.).

“The tranquil bay is open to boating, the beaches that surround the whole area, the magnificent mountains encircling the island, and the stunning Kakabeka Falls with its 1,000-foot sheer drop,” she added. “Perhaps later you will take a boat out to explore, though not too close. Sea dragons have been reported in offshore waters.”

The heart of the Funzies World is the Funzies Emporium which is an all-year-round permanent Midway and hosts a merry-go-round for kids, a roller coaster, and many other rides. The Midway, she said, would not be complete without carnival barkers, soothsayers, and card readers eager to have your business.

(Image courtesy Trianon World.).

GridPlayGrid is back up online

GridPlayGrid has returned online after a long shutdown, which was caused by a lack of time to take care of it and back-end issues, said grid owner Christopher Strachan. He is currently focusing on rolling out more legal content on the grid.

It currently has nine sims online but more will be added later on, spreading across its four servers. It also has its own currency, a custom website, and a focus on the mainland but there will be no selling of private sims. The grid will also soon have Kitely Market enabled.

“We plan to also have our own marketplace website soon, probably similar to the old XStreet that Second Life had, using in-world drop boxes,” he said.

However, hypergrid teleports and asset exports are disabled at the moment, he added.

DreamGrid V5.35 released

The new DreamGrid Version 5.35 features the latest OpenSimulator 0.9.2.2 with Smart Start and many other modules compiled in. This release has a feature that allows anyone to run DreamGrid as a service on Windows, said Micro Technology Services CEO Fred Beckhusen.

“Restarting a PC for any reason such as an update will automatically start DreamGrid,” he told Hypergrid Business. “This includes Robust, all enabled regions, Apache, MySQL, Joomla, WordPress, IceCast, Text-To-Speech, and other services such as the visitor counters and automatic backups. You can log out and DreamGrid will continue to run. You control the service by starting DreamGrid, which will give you control of the regions and access to Robust and region consoles.”

This release also includes a control panel for load testing up to 100 avatars. They can sit, stand, run, and fly, as well as teleport using Smart Start and Smart Boot.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: BradleyVille, Bubble Grid, Cajungrid, Duros Pr, LoboWorld, P7, Science Circle, Society of the Sacred Grove, VirtuaLifeNewGrid, and Vivo Sim.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended.

The following grids were marked as suspended this month: Ardalia, Ardiva, Avi Resurrection, Aviarium, Blackswan, Dreamscape, Fiethiel, Gyssy, HD Skin World, Insanity Grid, Keraith Grid, Laguna Bay, Land of Sinners, Mreža regij, NuGrid, Nymph Paradise, OsDreaming, Outlandish Grid, Paradwys, PrimGrass, Rael’s World, Schutz American School, SKIMI3D Space, TexLand Grid, Thrae, Twisted Grid, TwistedGrid, Vatnfjel, and Your World.

Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address and we don’t notice. If that’s the case, email us and let us know.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,543 different publicly-accessible grids, 421 of which were active this month, and 283 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com. 

Posted on

OpenSim adds more land area, loses active users

The size of OpenSim virtual land just got bigger this month by an additional 996 standard-size regions even as the number of active users dropped by 991, mostly likely due to normal seasonal variations.

OpenSim also added close to 3,000 new registered users this month, reversing the hefty loss of 8,000 registered users recorded last month due to AviTron no longer publishing its statistics.

The public OpenSim grids now have a total of 111,452 standard-sized regions in total virtual land area. We are now tracking 2,534 OpenSim grids, 420 of which were active this month, and 285 of which published statistics.

 

OpenSim total land area chart by the years — OpenSim grids have together added vast land area over the years. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely, were the three largest grids this month by land area, while ZetaWorlds is the fastest-growing grid this month by land area having acquired an additional 757 new regions since we lastly reported these stats. OSgrid gained the equivalent of 595 standard regions, GBG World gained 297, and Tag Grid and Wolf Territories Grid grew by 64 regions each. Browse to the bottom of the page to find the list of top 40 grids by land area.

Our stats also do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz DreamGrid — a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, private company grids, or school grids.

DreamGrid has a total of 8,519 grids all of which have a total land area of 65,638 standard regions according to a January 2023 report from Micro Technology Services — a company that owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz. The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. 

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. They can also use it to easily and quickly manage their grids using graphical interfaces. This includes adding new regions, banning users, deleting regions, auto restarting,  tracking usage stats, and shutting down entire grids or unoccupied regions to save computing power.

OutWorldz offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort. The company reported on January this year that the software has saved its users a combined total of over $35 million in setup and land rental fees in 2022 when compared to the Second Life price equivalents.

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 own servers for free using either DreamGrid, or 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 4,918 active users
  2. DigiWorldz: 2,010 active users
  3. GBG World: 1,732 active users
  4. Alternate Metaverse: 1,705 active users
  5. ZetaWorlds: 1,409 active users
  6. AviWorlds: 1,201 active users
  7. Soul Grid: 1,171 active users
  8. WaterSplash: 1,123 active users
  9. Moonrose: 1,049 active users
  10. Eureka World: 1,036 active users
  11. Neverworld: 1,030 active users
  12. Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,001 active users
  13. Exo-Life: 993 active users
  14. Kitely: 900 active users
  15. Party Destination Grid: 877 active users
  16. Craft World: 773 active users
  17. One Life Grid: 748 active users
  18. Wolf Territories Grid: 686 active users
  19. The City: 565 active users
  20. Kid Grid: 565 active users
  21. Barefoot Dreamers: 562 active users
  22. DreamNation: 487 active users
  23. Astralia: 486 active users
  24. Youth Nation: 471 active users
  25. Dorena’s World: 435 active users

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.

Piggy Bank Grid is the fastest growing grid this month with 434 new active users, followed by One Life grid with 255, La Grilla de Don Javi with 234, Calypso with 153, and Tangle Grid with 113 new actives.

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.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids might actually be bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,924 product listings in Kitely Market containing 38,930 product variations, 33,859 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market data — total listing, variations, and exportables. (Image courtesy Kitely Market.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 577 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 28,293 items both for sale and those free.

Products on sale on The Adult Grid. (Image courtesy TAG grid.).

Neverworlds’ Marketplace, which launched last month, is another option for OpenSim grirds, and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently lists 33 items for sale to residents and 44 items for hypergridders.

News

Neverworlds grid is offering free virtual parcels to all of its residents. The parcels range between 0,000-70,000 meters each and up to 8,000 prim each. Most are in developed areas with waterways and road systems, which means there is no terraforming needed.

To get the parcels, simply visit the Free land tab from the website menu and click the category of land from the list. Once you teleport in, click the mailbox  on any available parcel in the region by looking for the black and gold Available Sign.

Society of the Sacred Grove hosts Gnome Quest

Gnome Quest prizes. (Image courtesy SSG grid.).

Society of the Sacred Grove, a grid that’s new to Hypergrid Business, is ready for the spring. The grid — which focuses on health and well-being of the whole person, body, mind, and soul — will be hosting the Gnome Quest starting from 10 a.m. Pacific Time on March 21.

Residents and hypergridders will, during the event, get free gifts made by local creators . The prizes are virtual items that you can use at your grid or region such as table scene, magic box, ornaments, painting, welcome plague, deck, bench, and shelf. The quest will also take place quarterly in mid-June, mid-October, and mid-December.

More information and maps will be provided at the welcome area.

The hypergrid address is ssggrid.org:18235:SSG Welcome.

Easter market open at Chubelz

Easter Market at Chubelz grid. (Image courtesy Chubelz.).

Chubelz Gid now has an Easter Market ready for the upcoming Easter holidays. The market contains various items both for sale and freebies for Easter celebrations, which you can pick for use back at your grid and region. They include clothing, attire, decorations, eggs, rabbits, and carts.

The grid has various shops where you can find items of varying applications including formal wear, tattoos, shoes, costumes, hair, stockings, wedding attire, jewelry, and avatars.

The hypergrid address is chubelz-grid.de:8002.

New grids

The following grids were added in our list of new grids this month: BradleyVille, Casadamici, Darkheart’s Realm, EscapeLands, Hosting4OpenSim Test Grid, Konecta Radio, Little Whitecat, LoboWorld, Lovely Paradise, One Life Grid, SiLi, Society of the Sacred Grove, Solaria, Vivec, and WKDVR.

Closed grids

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended.

The following 20 grids were marked as suspended this month: Ardalia, Ardiva, Aviarium, Cube Graphics, Keraith Grid, Land of Sinners, NuGrid, OsDreaming, Outlandish Grid, OzKanga Grid, PaderGrid, Pleasure Grid, PrimGrass, Rael’s World, Schutz American School, Sweet Life, TexLand Grid, Thrae, Troy, and Wiccan Grid.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI or website address and we don’t notice. If that’s the case, email us and let us know.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,535 different publicly-accessible grids, 420 of which were active this month, and 288 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com. 

Posted on

OpenSim land area up, number of public grids hits record high

OpenSim land area has this month gone up by a significant 6,622 standard region equivalents thanks to new grids and a significant expansion at other grids. All public OpenSim grids now have a total of 110,458 standard-sized regions in virtual land area.

Speaking of new grids, the total number of public OpenSim grids that we track is now up to 418, a record high. This is even though we’ve recently reclassified many grids as private because they do not have websites or social media pages or other indicators that they’re open to the public.

Please send us a link to your grid’s public page through a direct email or this form in case you find that your grid is marked as private and you want it to be back on our lists.

Active numbers grew slightly, by 444 active monthly users, but the actual growth is probably quite a bit higher. That’s because AviTron stopped reporting their statistics this month, and, last month, they had more than 3,000 actives. If AviTron had reported their stats this month, our active users numbers would have shown significant growth this month.

The AviTron users are probably still there — though their active user numbers have fallen by nearly 1,000 over the past three months.  The grid also recently turned off the hypergrid connectivity.

Hypergrid Business editor Maria Korolov has previously recommended that people do not use an AviTron account as their primary hypergrid avatar because the grid owner has been known to shut down the grid completely with no prior warning.

“He’s also repatedly turned hypergrid connectivity on and off on a whim,” she said. “That creates havoc for anyone trying to run a business or organize events.”

For users, this means that people who depend on hypergrid friend lists or landmarks will lose access to those, and if they depend on their avatar inventories, they will lose access to those as well. Korolov recommends that users use an account on OSgrid or Kitely or another stable grid for their primary avatar and not keep any money or objects in their AviTron avatars that they’re afraid to lose.

We are now tracking a total of 2,527 OpenSim grids, 418 are active public grids, out of which 287 made their stats available for this month’s report.

In summary, AvatarLife registered the highest number of users this month or 422, while Piggy Bank Grid World got the highest number of active users or 331, and or 5,184, in a month since we lastly reported these stats. OSgrid, Kitely, and TAG grids still dominate in terms of land area, usage, and online marketplaces.

Progress in the size of OpenSim virtual land area over the years. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

Wolf Territories Grid was the fastest-growing grid this month by land area, with an increase of 5,184 standard region equivalents. OSgrid was in second place  with 1,861 new regions, followed by Virtual Worlds Grid with 748, German World Grid with 282, and ZetaWorlds with 152 standard region equivalents.

OSgrid maintained its lead in terms of total virtual land area with 25,558 regions, followed by Wolf Territories Grid which has overtaken Kitely in second place, having 18,368 regions. Kitely has 18,325 regions, ZetaWorlds has 8,189 regions, and Alternate Metaverse is fifth biggest grid with 7,339 total regions.

Our stats also do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz DreamGrid — a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, private company grids, or school grids.

DreamGrid reports a total of 8,519 grids with a total land area of 65,638 standard regions. Micro Technology Services owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz. The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. 

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. They can also use it to easily and quickly manage their grids using graphical interfaces. This includes adding new regions, banning users, deleting regions, auto restarting,  tracking usage stats, and shutting down entire grids or unoccupied regions to save computing power.

OutWorldz offers free OARs — complete region files — which you can load to your grid easily and with little effort. The software saved its users a combined total of over $35 million in setup and land rental fees in 2022 when compared to the Second Life price equivalents.

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 own servers for free using either DreamGrid, or 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.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

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.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. OSgrid: 5,164 active users
  2. DigiWorldz: 1,997 active users
  3. GBG World: 1,738 active users
  4. Alternate Metaverse: 1,684 active users
  5. ZetaWorlds: 1,340 active users
  6. AviWorlds: 1,287 active users
  7. Neverworld: 1,145 active users
  8. Eureka World: 1,119 active users
  9. Soul Grid: 1,081 active users
  10. WaterSplash: 1,049 active users
  11. Exo-Life: 993 active users
  12. Moonrose: 971 active users
  13. Party Destination Grid: 923 active users
  14. Kitely: 870 active users
  15. Craft World: 826 active users
  16. Wolf Territories Grid: 686 active users
  17. Barefoot Dreamers: 649 active users
  18. The City: 623 active users
  19. Kid Grid: 623 active users
  20. Piggy Bank Grid World: 621 active users
  21. Dorena’s World: 586 active users
  22. Astralia: 575 active users
  23. Offworld: 548 active users
  24. One Life Grid: 493 active users
  25. DreamNation: 490 active users

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.

Piggy Bank Grid was the fastest growing grid this past month, with 331 new active users, followed by OSgrid with 276, WaterSplash with 268, The City with 239, and Kid Grid with 238 new active users.

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.

Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids might actually be bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,889 product listings in Kitely Market containing 38,834 product variations, 33,764 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market data — total listing, variations, and exportables. (Image courtesy Kitely Market.).

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 576 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

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 seven years.

Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.

In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 28,293 items both for sale and those free.

Products on sale on The Adult Grid. (Image courtesy TAG grid.).

 

Another online marketplace which we will be reporting stats for is the Neverworlds’ Marketplace, which just launched. The site currently lists 33 items for sale to residents and 41 items for hypergridders, but if the project takes off, we hope to be including its stats in this section in the future.

Neverworlds offers free land and new online marketplace

Some of the items being sold on the Neverworlds grid marketplace for residents. (Image courtesy Neverworlds Grid.).

Neverworlds Grid has started two online marketplaces, one for residents and another for hypergridders. The marketplaces currently offer a small selection of items,   including rigged clothing and building supplies.

Unlike the Kitely Market, however, the Neverworlds marketplace also offers freebies.

“All the items offered are made by creators,” Govega Sachertorte told Hypergrid Business. “Members get exclusive items.”

“The members of Neverworld do get premium content, more freebies and reduced prices for anything that costs money,” she added. “The hypergrid area however is still good for free and we believe we have some of the best original content out there and this is also a growing project.”

The grid has also kicked off a continent project which spans across 200 regions. It has integrated road system, water ways, and most of it is made of free parcels. The regions are developed with parcels for residents ranging in size from 12,000 meters to about 45,000 meters, said Sachertorte.

“They are free and the prim limits are 5000 prims per parcel,” he told Hypergrid Business. “We currently have a few dozen parcels and are adding more daily as the need arises. We also do allow self hosted regions to attach to the continent, if they agree to use the same road system and textures.”

Free virtual land on One Life Grid

(Image courtesy One Life Grid.).

One Life Grid, which is a new grid, is also offering free land — specifically, 4096-square-meter, 938-prim parcels to any newly registered avatar. A user just needs to sign up and wait for activation, which happens within 24 hours.

The grid also has shopping areas for different meshes including adult ones.

The hypergrid address is onelife-grid.de:8002.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Casadamici, Darkheart’s Realm, EscapeLands, Hosting4OpenSim Test Grid, Little Whitecat, Lovely Paradise, One Life Grid, SiLi, Solaria, Vivec, and WKDVR.

The following 20 grids were marked as suspended this month: Acearia, Ampleverse, AvatarLife Testing, BritGrid, Encitra Home Grid, HiddenDreams , Jomac Silveras Grid, MajHome, Open Waifu, OzKanga Grid, Planet 3L, Pleasure Grid, PrimGrass, Savannah Grid, Skytec Grid, Tnet Grid, Tnet Grid, Verth, and Wiccan Grid.

After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as closed.

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI or website address and we don’t notice. If that’s the case, email us and let us know.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,527 different publicly-accessible grids, 418 of which were active this month, and 287 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.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.