Category: OSGrid

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OpenSim metaverse land shrinks, but usage grows

The total land area of the public OpenSim metaverse shrank by over 2,000 regions over the past month. Nearly all of that loss can be attributed to ZetaWorlds — which lost 2,336 regions due to maintenance on the grids. The total number of both active monthly users and registered users increased.

The land area of all the public OpenSim grids that reported their stats this month was 99 748 standard region equivalents, a drop of 2,344 from this time last month. The total number of registered users is 466,736, an increase of 2,871. The total number of active monthly users is now 38,059, an increase of 758.

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

The top land gainers this month are Wolf Territories Grid which added 438 new regions, Serenity with 351, OSgrid with 245, Alternate Metaverse with 183, Tag Grid with 68, and GridPlay Grid with 62 new regions. In addition to ZetaWorlds‘s land drop, Creatrix World lost the equivalent of 303 standard regions, Logicamp lost 291,  Outworldz lost 165, and MisFitz Grid lost 81 regions.

OSgrid remained the largest grid in total land size with 36,057 regions, Kitely was in second place with 18,863, and ZetaWorlds third with 7,943. Scroll at the end of the report to find the list of top 40 grids by total land area or check out our full monthly stats export.

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid, which is a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, or private company grids, or school grids who used other installers.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform similar to Second Life that allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and to teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region. A list of 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: 4,695 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. DigiWorldz: 2,032 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  3. AviWorlds: 1,736 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  4. Metropolis: 1,648 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  5. ZetaWorlds: 1,491 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  6. AviTron: 1,237 active users (HG avitronlogin.avitron.net:8002)
  7. Kitely: 1,031 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  8. Alternate Metaverse: 1,000 active users (HG alternatemetaverse.com:8002)
  9. Party Destination Grid: 990 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  10. Exo-Life: 908 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  11. GBG World: 861 active users (HG gbg-world.cloud:8002)
  12. Craft World: 844 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  13. Neverworld: 794 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  14. Eureka World: 702 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  15. Astralia: 568 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  16. DreamNation: 552 active users
  17. Little Breath: 527 active users (HG little-breath.club:8002)
  18. Free Life: 515 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002:Free Life Central City)
  19. Moonrose: 483 active users (HG moonrose-grid.de:8002)
  20. Arkham Grid: 481 active users (HG grid.arkhamgrid.org:8002)
  21. Soul Grid: 474 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
  22. The City: 457 active users (HG thecity.inworldz.net:8002)
  23. Discovery Grid: 428 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  24. Fire and Ice Grid: 423 active users (HG fireandicegrid.net:8002)
  25. Freedom Grid: 398 active users (HG freedomgrid.world:8002)

The above are top 25 grids in terms of total active users over time of 30 days. We compare this figure with the previous month’s tally for each grid to generate a list of most active grids or a list of grids that gained most active users in the last 30 days.

The above, however, are not necessarily the most active grids in terms of number of active users gained during the past month.

This month, Moonrose gained 424 new active users, OSgrid gained 285, The City gained 189, Alternate Metaverse gained 157, and AviTron gained 178. Full details are available on this month’s grid stats link.

The actives 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 active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport 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 or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, 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

(Kitely Market Data.)

There are currently 19,273 product listings in Kitely Market containing 38,289 product variations, of which 33,189 are sold with the export permission.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 535 OpenSim grids to date, which includes both public grids listed here as well as private grids that are not accessible to the public, don’t report their stats, and don’t make it into our reports.

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 on 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 five 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 own online marketplace.

The Tag grid marketplace, the only other OpenSim marketplace comparable to the Kitely Market, also lists apparel, avatar accessories, avatar appearances and other items across 26 categories. This month, the market has listed a total of 28,244 items. From the marketplace website, anyone is able to list their products or items on the marketplace to promote them either for sale or as a freebie, but the content can only be purchased and used within the Tag grid and can’t be taken or delivered to other grids.

Virtual Life World giving away free regions

Virtual Life World  is giving away free regions measuring 512 square with free mesh, voice, texture upload, shopping and 100 residents each. You need to contact the grid and web maintenance administrator Valtino in-world to find get the new region. You can then get free content or shop for skin avatars, clothes, mesh, and building at the grid to help fill them up.

The hypergrid address is virtuallifeworld.tk:8002.

DigiWorldz hosting weekly building classes

DigiWorldz is hosting a series of events to train people on prim building, art, collaboration, and communication. Specifically, the Metaverse University at the DigiCenter is the place to be every week if you want to learn from expert instructors on how to build in OpenSim virtual worlds. It hosts the following events.

The Prim Building With Nebby is a bi-weekly event for newbies in prim creating. It will next time take place from 4 to 5 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, February 25. Nebby will trains you how to copy, manipulate, move, and texture prims. Lets Get Our Art-On! With Noxluna takes place every Sunday starting 1 to 2 p.m. Pacific Time. It is a class introducing art and building. The Taris EZ Prim Building Class, which also trains people on building prims, takes place from 3 to 4 p.m. Pacific Time every Monday.

Join Samantha Simmons every Wednesday starting from 2 to 3 p.m. Pacific Time for the Collaboration And Communication class and gain in-world collaboration and communication skills. You can also catch up with Country Bob every Monday at 7 p.m. Pacific Time for the How to Broadcast in OpenSim class.

The hypergrid address is digiworldz.com:8002:DigiCenter. 

DigiWorldz seventh birthday is next month

DigiWorldz will be hosting the BIG DigiWorldz Birthday bash on March 12 to celebrate the grid’s seventh birthday. Not much is known about the event yet but you can watch out for the grid’s announcements for more information.

Craft-World’s Territorial Network meeting happens next week

Craft World will be hosting a second meeting of the Territorial Network from 12 p.m. Pacific Time on February 21 at the Artemaestra region and via Google Meet. The network is facilitating collaboration between landowners who deal with art, music, poetry, books, theatre, and services.

The hypergrid address is craft-world.org:8002:Artemaestra.

The grid will also host an Indian Night starting at 1 p.m. Pacific Time on March 10 at the Taj Mahal region, with DJ Arianna. This event will feature Indian themed costumes and scenery.

There also will be a Cartoon Party starting at 1 p.m. Pacific Time on March 1, at the Fashion region, featuring DJ Corsaro.

Get a free parcel and start building for the OpenSim Fest exhibition

(Image courtesy OpenSim Fest.)

OpenSim Fest — a festival that celebrates creative talents on virtual worlds — will run from July 8 to 25 this year. Building on the host OpenSim Fest grid is expected to be complete on June 30. There also will be a preview party on July 1 and build testing from July 2 to 7. The event is hosted by the Infinite Metaverse Alliance.

The organizers, who include entertainers, merchants, tech architects, code maintainers, and graphic artists, are offering free parcels for exhibitors and merchants to start building their exhibits. To get a free parcel, contact the organizers via Facebook, Twitter, or their Discord group. Musicians, DJs, poets, and entertainers wishing to perform at the event can also contact the organizers.  The group is also calling for sponsors and volunteers to join them in hosting the event.

Alternate Metaverse opens Memorial region, launches new advertising Telehub

Alternate Metaverse now allows you to advertise and promote your builds, regions, and items on their grid-wide Telehub. You can do this simply by adding a picture of the item, landmark, and an optional notecard describing it. You can also list other regions, schedules, events, and even contact information on the notecard. The content and descriptions can also be changed at will by the owner.

The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:AMV Real Estate. 

You can also memorialize a lost loved one at the grid’s Memorial, which has beautiful nature spaces, a small country chapel and trees surrounding the grounds. You can place their photos, names, candle flowers, statues, or anything else, but you have to have a grid tag to place those. You can even pick free items like candles, bouquets, and statues by the landing point for placing.

The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Memorial.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Blendioptera Grid, Carima Welt, Cooperation Creative, Cozy Comforts Grid, and GridPlay Grid.

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.

Do you have any updates about these grids? 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 1,739 different publicly-accessible grids, 384 of which were active this month, and 308 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.

Posted on

OpenSim usage stats down due with outages, closures

The number of active public grids hit a record high of 382 this month, but usage stats were down across the board. The number of active users dropped by 3,844 since this time last month, to 37,301.

This is mainly because several grids, including German World Grid and 3rd Rock Grid were undergoing maintenance, and other grids seem to be closed, including Amaryllis, Enchanted, Chimerus, and Gevolution.

In addition, there is often a seasonal drop in usage during the winter months.

Meanwhile, the total area of the public OpenSim grids fell by 748 standard region region equivalents, to 102,092.

OSgrid was the biggest gainer in land area this month, growing by the equivalent of 534 standard regions, followed by ZetaWorlds with 247 new regions, Littlefield with 237, Alternate Metaverse with 137, Metropolis with 76, and Tag Grid with 68 new regions.

OSgrid’s growth helped it retain it’s spot as largest OpenSim grid, at 35,812 regions. OSgrid is a non-profit, free-to-connect grid that allows users to attach home-based regions for free. It’s nearly twice as big as the next biggest grid, Kitely, with 18,911 regions. Kitely offers on-demand, cloud-based regions that are put to sleep when nobody is on them, allowing them to offer high-powered commercial-grade regions at a relatively low cost.

Scroll at the end of the report to find the list of top 40 grids in total land area or check out our full monthly stats export.

(Hypergrid Business Data.)

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid, which is a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, or private company grids, or school grids who used other installers.

OutWorldz is now tracking thousands of other unique DreamGrids. The Hyperica robot has crawled over 6,000 grids of any type since the start of this year since we received an update about it. These items are tracked in a different database. OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete pre-built regions — and free IARs — user inventory files — as well as mesh objects and textures which OpenSim users can download and install on their own regions on any grid that permits those kinds of uploads.

The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers.

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of 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: 4,410 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. DigiWorldz: 1,916 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  3. AviWorlds: 1,666 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  4. ZetaWorlds: 1,620 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  5. Metropolis: 1,589 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  6. AviTron: 1,059 active users (HG avitronlogin.avitron.net:8002)
  7. GBG World: 987 active users (HG gbg-world.cloud:8002)
  8. Party Destination Grid: 975 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  9. Kitely: 920 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  10. Exo-Life: 905 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  11. Alternate Metaverse: 843 active users (HG alternatemetaverse.com:8002)
  12. Eureka World: 796 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  13. Craft World: 787 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  14. Virtual Dream: 786 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
  15. Neverworld: 706 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  16. Little Breath: 587 active users (HG little-breath.club:8002)
  17. Discovery Grid: 513 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  18. DreamNation: 507 active users
  19. Soul Grid: 503 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
  20. Astralia: 491 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  21. Free Life: 483 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002:Free Life Central City)
  22. Littlefield: 462 active users (HG lfgrid.com:8002)
  23. OpenSimulator Community Conference: 410 active users (HG cc.opensimulator.org:8002)
  24. Barefoot Dreamers: 395 active users (HG login.barefoot-dreamers.com:8002)
  25. Arkham Grid: 390 active users (HG grid.arkhamgrid.org:8002)

The above are top 25 grids in terms of total active users over time of 30 days. We compare this figure with the previous month’s tally for each grid to generate a list of most active grids or a list of grids that gained most active users in the last 30 days.

This month, grids that gained the most active users were Zone Nations with 137 new active users, Sharing Is Caring Family with 127 new actives, A Virtual World with 105, Discovery Grid with 94, and Freedom Grid with 82 new active users.

The actives 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 active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport 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 or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, 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

Kitely Market Data. (Image courtesy Kitely.)

There are currently 19,089 product listings in Kitely Market containing 37,902 product variations, of which 32,812 are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 530 OpenSim grids to date, which includes both public grids listed here as well as private grids that are not accessible to the public, don’t report their stats, and don’t make it into our reports.

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 on 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 five 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 own online marketplace.

The Tag grid marketplace, the only other OpenSim marketplace comparable to the Kitely Market, also lists apparel, avatar accessories, avatar appearances and other items across 26 categories. This month, the market has listed a total of 28,244 items. From the marketplace website, anyone is able to list their products or items on the marketplace to promote them either for sale or as a freebie, but the content can only be purchased and used within the Tag grid and can’t be taken or delivered to other grids.

Phantom Rose Grid celebrates its third anniversary

(Image courtesy Phantom Rose grid.)

Phantom Rose grid will celebrate its third anniversary on January 24. The celebration will involve a host of interactive activities on different regions of the grid. There will be three hunts, three adventure quests, two interactive fantasy magic circles, a maze, seasonal ballets, a year-round ice skating, extensive underwater diving and Mer Folk, surfing, as well as many trails and outdoor activities such as rock climbing, kayaking, white water rafting, hang gliding, and horse back riding.

Lannorra Sion

Created on January 24, 2019, Phantom Rose private and non-commercial grid has been steadily growing and now offers more experiences and free gifts for visitors. The events and activities will be hosted on different regions including Steampunk, 1890s Egypt, Regency, Bayou, and the yet-to-be opened medieval fantasy region. There also will be free gifts to be given to visitors during the event and which are made specifically by the grid owner Lannorra Sion. Some of these gifts are outfits for both men and women, crystal stemware, cake plates with petit fours, and also vampire and demon hunting kits in the Dark Nights area, Sion told Hypergrid Business.

“My goal has been to offer activities for individuals that are fun and interesting,” she said. “I also want the grid to be a place where people can come and get legal free items. I offer Linda Kellie’s Clutterfly Mesh Mall and her original mall, where I have added a few stores for other free legal gifts creators, such as Selea Core. These free gifts are a great starting point for anyone new to the OpenSim or for customizing into other items.”

The hypergrid address is PhantomRose.Outworldz.net:8002.

3rd Rock Grid down for maintenance

3rd Rock grid is carrying out a server software version migration which has caused some of the web interfaces to be down at the moment, but the migration is on-going well, grid’s spokesperson Tara Dockery, also known as Thoria Millgrove in-world, told Hypergrid Business.

Speculoos switching payment system

Speculoos World is in the process of testing and migrating from Gloebit to Podex payment system and currency exchange service as a result of the lack of support from Gloebit and its CEO Chris Colosi. For more than half a year now, users have not been able to register their Gloebit accounts, see their balance or use it, said grid owner Gudule Lapointe.

“Months after being aware of a certificate issue, it still seems unsolved — nearly no communication on their website or social accounts, while the solution seems obvious to me though I might be wrong — simply buy a commercial-grade certificate from a major, old issuer, instead of the new, free LetsEncrypt,” he told Hypergrid Business. “This would have fixed their main issue in less than 24 hours. LetsEncrypt is a great achievement in internet security and we use it in dozens of websites we made but, it’s not intended for commercial use let alone financial operations, which should require a higher level of certification.”

Speculoos World originally chose Gloebit because it is a small grid with no commercial activity and Gloebit allows a grid to use an external independent currency, said Lapointe.

“The main advantage of Gloebit was that it is grid independent,” he said. “So people buying Gloebits can use them immediately in any other grid using Gloebit. While Podex users can transfer money to their alt account on another grid, I don’t know yet if they can directly buy things with their foreign avatar on another grid.

The grid is currently adapting flexible helper scripts to add cost estimation and a clear redirect for people trying in-world purchases. This was already adapted in the past with an option for Gloebit currency and it will be integrated soon in the W4OS plugin when ready.

The lack of responsiveness has been on-going and reported by multiple grid owners. Last month, AviTron grid also switched to using Podex and own money system as a result of Gloebit inconveniences and outages.

Chimerus grid closes down

Chimerus grid is closing its curtains this month, effective January 26, grid owner Eliopod Beaumont told Hypergrid Business. The reason for closing down is low traffic, low attendance to events, which is mostly related to health reasons.

“Only larger grids can manage these days,” Beaumont said.

Pre-Valentines party at Alternate Metaverse grid

The Alternate Metaverse grid will be hosting a pre-Valentines party from 10 a.m. Pacific Time on February 13 at the Funsize region. Come and celebrate love and love tunes with your partner or if you are single and ready to mingle.

Starting from 9 a.m. to 12 noon Pacific Time on March 2, the same region will also host the Farm Tractor Race and After Party event. You can either join the racing on the track to compete against others with your favorite racer or watch from the stands as drivers race against each other to the finishing line. Tractors will be provided for the racing to those interested. Head over to the region and talk to the admins if willing to participate.

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

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: 4Creative, Castello Incantato, CosmoPlanet, Floyd World, MAGA Grid, PrimGrass, Scripted Artwork, Shameenas Welten, Technic World, Two World, Virtual Life World, Western Prairies and Grid Play.

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.

Meanwhile, the following grids were marked as suspended: A New World, AlterLife, Amber Grove, Angel Grid, Gevolution, MajWorld, Nymph, Perfection Grid, Polish Arena, Savannah Grid, Second World, Soloton Grid, Taffy Grid, Virtualife, Virtuelle Welt, and Youniverse Grid.

Do you have any updates about these grids? 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 1,733 different publicly-accessible grids, 382 of which were active this month, and 313 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.

Posted on

OpenSim users hit a record high this month

Active users passed 40,000 for the first time in history, hitting 41,145, up more than 2,000 compared to last month.

This despite a number of grids not reporting their stats this month including Tag Grid, which typically has more than 1,500 unique monthly logins.

The number of registered uses also went up, by more than 3,000. Total land area tipped slightly compared to last month but is still near all-time record highs.

The top land gainers this month are OSgrid with 1,190 new regions, Kitely with 143, ArtDestiny with 72, Alternate Metaverse with 61, and Serenity with 56 new regions.

(Hypergrid Business Data.)

OSgrid is the largest grid in total land area with 35,278 standard region equivalent, followed by Kitely with 18,916, ZetaWorlds with 10,032, Discovery Grid with 6,118, and DigiWorldz with 4,191 regions. Scroll to the bottom of the article for the list of the 40 largest grids by land area, or check out our full monthly stats export.

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid, which is a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, or private company grids, or school grids who used other installers.

OutWorldz is now tracking thousands of other unique DreamGrids. The Hyperica robot has crawled over 6,000 grids of any type since the start of this year since we received an update about it. These items are tracked in a different database. OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete pre-built regions — and free IARs — user inventory files — as well as mesh objects and textures which OpenSim users can download and install on their own regions on any grid that permits those kinds of uploads.

The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers.

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of 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: 5,733 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. DigiWorldz: 1,964 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  3. AviWorlds: 1,708 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  4. ZetaWorlds: 1,648 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  5. Metropolis: 1,633 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  6. Kitely: 1,119 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  7. Party Destination Grid: 1,059 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  8. AviTron: 1,040 active users (HG avitronlogin.avitron.net:8002)
  9. GBG World: 1,015 active users (HG gbg-world.cloud:8002)
  10. Alternate Metaverse: 978 active users (HG alternatemetaverse.com:8002)
  11. Virtual Dream: 913 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
  12. Exo-Life: 903 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  13. Eureka World: 843 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  14. Craft World: 783 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  15. Neverworld: 699 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  16. Little Breath: 616 active users (HG little-breath.club:8002)
  17. Soul Grid: 559 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
  18. Moonrose: 518 active users (HG moonrose-grid.de:8002)
  19. Fire and Ice Grid: 507 active users (HG fireandicegrid.net:8002)
  20. DreamNation: 490 active users
  21. Arkham Grid: 480 active users (HG grid.arkhamgrid.org:8002)
  22. Free Life: 454 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002:Free Life Central City)
  23. Astralia: 439 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  24. The City: 421 active users (HG thecity.inworldz.net:8002)
  25. Discovery Grid: 419 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)

OSgrid gained the most number of active users this month with 1,010 new active users, followed by the Great Canadian Grid with 294, OpenSimulator Community Conference with 242, Virtual Dream with 219, and Fire and Ice Grid with 113 new active users.

The actives 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 active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport 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 or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, 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 19,012 product listings in Kitely Market containing 37,688 product variations, of which 32,601 are exportable.

Product listing, variations, and exportables in Kitely. (Kitely Market Data.)

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 527 OpenSim grids to date, which includes both public grids listed here as well as private grids that are not accessible to the public, don’t report their stats, and don’t make it into our reports.

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 on 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 five 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 own online marketplace.

The Tag grid marketplace, the only other OpenSim marketplace comparable to the Kitely Market, also lists apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. From the marketplace website, anyone is able to list their products or items on the marketplace to promote them either for sale or as a freebie, but the content can only be purchased and used within the Tag grid and can’t be taken or delivered to other grids.

Kitely Market keeps expanding despite many listings removed

There were thousands of items that were removed over the past year as some merchants closed their stores, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business.

“Tragically, a common reason was a family member requesting the stores be closed after the merchants themselves have passed away due to Covid19 or other diseases,” he said. “Even so, there was net growth in the number of products listed in Kitely Market.”

The Kitely Market has sold more than US$300,000  worth of items to date, close to 86 percent of which were in US dollars via PayPal and the rest using Kitely Credits, he said.

The top 10 merchants in Kitely Market have all had more than US$5,000 worth of sales to date, he added, with the top 50 each having more than $1,000 in sales.

Over the past year, 36 percent of Kitely Market sales revenues were from orders that were delivered to Kitely users, with the rest being from sales that were delivered to other grids. After Kitely users, OSgrid users were the most active buyers from Kitely Market, with 10 percent of revenues, 6 percent of revenues were for DigiWorldz deliveries, and 5 percent was for DreamNation.

Top sales categories over the past 12 months:

  • Landscaping and plants: 22.5 percent
  • Structures: 17.4 percent
  • Building components: 14.7 percent
  • Avatar appearance: 8 percent
  • Clothing: 7.3 percent
  • Vehicles: 5.1 percent
  • Other Categories: 25 percent

Grids announce Christmas events, freebies, hunts, and activities

The following are highlights of upcoming holiday events. For the full list, check out this article: Grids announce holiday events, hunts, freebies, and activities.

North Pole Mall. (Image courtesy Hidden Christmas.)

Littlefield Grid has already opened its Christmas Region since last month. The region will remain open through December 31. It will host multiple activities including Santa’s Castle, Sleigh Ride, and Santa’s Sleigh Ride through the air.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Christmas Island.

This year’s Discovery Grid merchant-sponsored 2021 Winter Market opens on December 18 through December 30 in Discovery City region. It opened with 20 stores and merchants are showcasing their new and old products in a winter-decorated winter scene and activity.

The hop URL is discoverygrid.net:8002:Discovery City.

Santa Big has lost your Christmas presents from his sleigh and are called upon to save Christmas by helping him fish out the lost presents from the waters around Green Hill Zone region of the Mobius grid, until December 31. The Christmas hunt started on December 12.

When you approach Big, he will start talking to you. Click the hyperlinks underlined in text in the messages he sends to continue the dialogue until he gives you the folder containing the games instructions, the Games HUD and the fishing rod. You must wear both the HUD and the fishing rod to play. You may right click these hyperlinks and click Run this Command if you are on some viewers such as Alchemy Viewer.

The hypergrid address is main.mobiusgrid.us:80:Green Hill Zone.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: AI Grid, Destinations, Edge of Reality Grid, Esfera Split, Planet 3L, and Unbetween.

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.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,721 different publicly-accessible grids, 373 of which were active this month, and 309 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.

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Grids announce holiday events, hunts, freebies, and activities

Christmas is coming up and so are the other winter holidays, and OpenSim grids have a lot of holiday-themed events, Christmas hunts, contests, freebies, shops, and winter activities for you.

(Image courtesy TanGleGrid.)

Christmas Ball Hunt kicks off next week in Tangle grid

Tangle grid is hosting a Christmas Ball Hunt adventure that starts on December 15 and runs through January 15, 2022 where users can play and win T$5,000 by searching and collecting a total of 200 Christmas Balls from regions across the entire grid.

Regions participating in the hunt get an item pack containing items such as free Christmas hats, Christmas balls, Christmas Hunt huds, and links they can place on their regions and which visitors can click to collect points, take home, or find information on the hunt.

Participants will have to collect the Christmas Balls score HUD from the Hunt stand, then wear it in order to collect the balls. The first one to collect all 200 special Christmas Balls wins the prize.

(Image courtesy TangleGrid.)

The event is open to hypergrid visitors but to win they must make an account with Tangle. The winner will be free to spend the money on land and other items or request a cash out to their PayPal account.

To start, visit tanglegrid.net:8002 HG Station 1 via the hypergrid.

Christmas and New Year parties at Wyldwood Bayou

Wyldwood Bayou grid and Rockin’ the Blues club will be hosting parties on Christmas Eve on December 24, Christmas Day on December 25, on New Year’s Eve on December 31, and Yule celebrations on December 19 at the Wyldwood Bayou region.

Christmas Eve kicks off at 6 p.m. and runs until 9 p.m. Pacific Time. It will feature an evening of Blues and Christmas tunes played by DJ Riker and DJ Kith. DJ Kith will host the Christmas Day celebrations starting at 6 p.m. Pacific time, featuring an evening of Christmas tunes, and Rockin’ the Blues.

Tiara Beningborough or in-world known as Harmony.

“This evening will be a gathering of friends wishing to have someone to spend the holiday with, and will feature wonderful Blues music, fun, and friendship,” grid spokeswoman Tiara Beningborough told Hypergrid Business. “We wish everyone safe, joyous, and blessed holidays and a wonderful New Year filled with love and warmth, happiness and prosperity!”

The hypergid address is wyldwoodbayou.com:8002:Wyldwood Bayou.

On Dec. 19, the Wyldwood Bayou Roleplay Group’s Winter Solstice — also known as the Yule ceremony — kicks off at  11 a.m. Pacific Time in Grove.

“The holiday marks the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and celebrates the rebirth of the sun and the beginning of winter,” she said. “It is one of the oldest winter celebrations known. The winter solstice is the longest night and shortest day of the year.”

“Medi-Fantasy attire is appreciated but not required. Colors are gold, silver, red, green, and white,” she added.

The hypergrid address is wyldwoodbayou.com:8002:WWB Roleplay Hub.

Then, on Dec. 31, starting at 6 p.m., visit the grid to ring in the New Year with the Blues Tribe. DJ Rosie, DJ Riker, DJ Ray and DJ Kith will be entertaining the audience on the night of laughter, music, and friendship.

“Dress is comfy casual to glittering formal,” said Beningborough. “Rockin’ the Blues is the place to be on New Year’s Eve to usher out 2021, witness our very own fabulous ball drops courtesy of Blues Tribe member Xaria Aubrey, and welcome the brand new year.”

The hypergid address is wyldwoodbayou.com:8002:Wyldwood Bayou.

Twisted grid holds Christmas build contest

Christmas builds are to be set up at the red zones. (Image Aurora Georgetown.)

Twisted Grid‘s Aurora Georgetown region, Northern Ontario-themed, is hosting a Christmas build contest for anyone from around OpenSim. Participants will need to build a Christmas scene either from scratch or comprising items from other places in OpenSim. The contest runs through Dec. 15 and the top three builds will be chosen, voted, and awarded at noon Pacific Time on Dec. 20.

Apart from the contest, you can also visit the beautiful Christmas-themed scenery and shop for Christmas items at the stores in the grid. You can also get a shop for free to host and sell Christmas items in the region.

The hypergrid address is login.twistedgrid.xyz:8002:Aurora Georgetown.

Winter and Christmas decor at Encantada in OSgrid

Christmas wreaths at the region. (Image courtesy Encantada.)

OSgrid‘s Encantada region is full of Christmas and winter decor. Available decor items include Light Ball that has a menu to vary lighting and color. Some say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas. Other items are Santa stuck in a chimney of a tiny house, Christmas wreaths or flowers — some with and others without ornaments on which you can alter bow or ornament colors.

And visit the region to enjoy winter environments like the frosty Round Greek Pavilion, time in the snow and with snowmen, and of course the polar bears and sculptures. You can also find frozen Ball Fountains, campfires in the snow, and other items.

The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Encantada.

Winter and Christmas shopping at the Hidden Christmas Mall

(Image courtesy Hidden Christmas.)

The Hidden Christmas Mall at the Hidden Christmas region has been relocated but still in OSgrid and hosts more than 200 Christmas dresses in the mall, as well as hats, sweaters, jeans, boots, scarves, and candles, wreaths, trees, and figurines. These can be used to decorate your in-world home. You also find gift shops with multiple gift items for the season, Christmas villages, and live animals.

North Pole Mall. (Image courtesy Hidden Christmas.)

The North Pole Mall hosts a themed collection of holiday dresses, winter coats, hats, and men’s clothing. You also can find magical winter scenes like the cold Arctic sea scenery and pair of skates, Santa Claus at the North Pole, polar bears, penguins in the snow, gnomes, and elves.

The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Hidden Christmas.

Winter and Christmas scenery at Snow Dream

The Snow Dream region of the OSgrid has beautiful winter snow-covered villages and Christmas-decorated scenery for you to explore. Once you land in the region, you can choose to walk around or pick a sled with which you can drive through the village to explore the scenery which hosts polar bears, penguins, and woods. You can also take a chair lift up to the toboggan run then descend a valley using a sled or ski.

If you do not wish to travel across the region, just sit and relax in a sauna and pamper yourself with a massage, or just decide to shop for winter. The region also hosts ice skating.

The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Snow Dream.

Eastern Canada’s seasons at the Novale in CreaNovale grid

Novale region in CreaNovale grid. (Image courtesy Novale.)

The Novale region in CreaNovale grid is themed for the winter, this year showcasing Eastern Canada’s seasons. Starting with the landing area, there is a snow globe where you can spend some time for easy loading, then take the laser bridge and walk toward the greenhouse hub that shows you the different winter, Christmas, or other destinations at the grid.

Wanderers, photographers, and levelers who love Eastern Canada and winter habitats, sites, landscapes, and stories are welcome. Added to the list of items to explore this year includes the Christmas Market, skating and dancing on ice facilities, and a newly improved seven kilometers Cross-Country Grand Tour area.

Those who love winter sports can enjoy cross-country and downhill ski tracks, sleigh rides with Santa, skating, snow saucer, and toboggan rides.

The hypergrid address to the region is hg.creanovale.ca:8052:NOVALE.

You can also attend the Virtual Dream Tour starting at noon Pacific on Dec. 14 in the region. To participate in the tour, visit the tour team at the Virtual Dream grid’s welcome area.

The hypergrid address to the Virtual Dream Tour team is virtualdream-grid.com:8002:VirtualDream Accruell.

Christian Christmas tunes at I Love You in ZetaWorlds

(Image courtesy Karen Mansour.)

The I Love You region in ZetaWorlds  grid will celebrate the journey of the wise men from the East going to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus at noon Pacific time on Dec. 23. The Yuletide celebrations feature Christian songs.

The hypergrid address is hg.zetaworlds.com:80:I Love You.

Christmas freebies and gifts at the ArcadiaShop in OSgrid

(Image courtesy ArcadiaShop.)

The ArcadiaShop region in OSgrid has mesh item freebies designed from scratch by Aaack Aardvark, including Christmas-themed gifts like the Xmas Lights.  These are a simple add-on for your Christmas tree comprising a set of lights that can be resized to adapt to any cone tree. It has several light modes and lighting options. You can pick this item and take it to your sim for the Christmas decorations.

Other freebies include the French Beret, which is a non-rigged mesh with six colors and which can be fitted to an avatar and tinted to match any outfit. There’s also a Panda Hoodie for girls, Arcadia’s Weather System, and a Simulator Statistics Indicator.

The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:ArcadiaShop.

Christmas gifts at Dallas in AviWorlds

(Image courtesy Dallas.)

The Dallas region of the AviWorlds grid has gift items like Christmas trees for visitors every day until Dec. 27. New gifts are added each day. The region also hosts the German World Grid mall which has winter-themed items for both men and women.

The hypergrid address is login.aviworlds.com:8002:Dallas.

Freebies at the Arkham city in Arkham grid

The Arkham City region of the Arkham grid is decorated for winter and Christmas for holiday experiences. The Snowfall Expanse hosts the Christmas market, a castle, and the house of Santa Claus, which not only host wonderful Christmas scenery but also have freebies you can take to your home grid after visiting. Freebies include an animated Christmas carousel that you can copy, mod, transfer, and share freely. You also get a Christmas coat, dresses, balls, and trees. Visitors can also shop for Christmas-themed furniture featuring the Kingman Furniture Design.

The Snowfall Expanse also hosts winter experiences, scenery, and items you can take to your home grid. For instance, the winter-themed Birch Forest building module is available for copy, mod, transfer, and free sharing. You can also do skating and have fun in the snow on the ski slopes and mountains.

The hypergrid address is grid.arkhamgrid.org:8002:Arkham City.

Christmas Jewelry from Monentes shop

Christmas Frost earrings. (Image courtesy Monentes Jewelry.)

The Monentes Jewelry shop at the Continuum Grid is adding new Christmas jewelry for the holidays. They are free and full perm and customizable. The items include Christmas Frost earrings pictured above.

The hypergrid address is continuum.outworldz.net:8002:Monentes Jewelry.

Christmas decoration items at Holiday Haven

(Image courtesy Holiday Haven.)

The Holiday Have region on Twisted Grid has lots of full perm and free items for Christmas and other holidays including, castles, trees, outbuildings, leaves, fogs, wreaths, lights, landscaping, animals, ruins, and houses.

The hypergrid address is login.twistedgrid.xyz:8002:Holiday Haven.

Freebies at Christmas Island in Littlefield Grid

(Image courtesy Christmas Island.)

Littlefield‘s Christmas Island has multiple Christmas decorations and freebies for residents and visitors at the Santa’s Workshop, as well as ice skating, hot cocoa, Santa’s Magic Sleigh ride, and other holiday attractions. Freebies include buildings, wreaths, and castles.

The region is also hosting the musical WLFG’s Holiday Stream featuring favorite Christmas tunes and music, 24 hours each day, until 23 January. The stream can be played at holiday.littlefieldgrid.com:8050.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Christmas Island.

The Speakeasy region of the grid is also decorated for Christmas and will be playing Christmas music.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Speakeasy.

Christmas gifts at the Christmas Dreams on My Virtual Beach

(Image courtesy Christmas Dreams.)

The Christmas Dreams region on the My Virtual Beach grid hosts freebie market shops and a Santa’s workshop with free Christmas gifts. The gifts include new dresses, shoes, trees, and wreaths. You can also visit Santa’s Elves on Elf Mountain.

The hypergrid address is grid.myvirtualbeach.com:8002:Christmas Dreams.

Winter World and Christmas Market at Poseidon Clubworld

(Image courtesy Poseidon Clubworld.)

OSgrid’s Poseidon Clubworld region opened its doors on Dec. 3 and comprises various event venues and clubs. In addition to these, you can enjoy Snowski, Tube Sleds, Cross Country Ski, snowball fights, Husky Sleds, Extreme downhill Ski, and many other winter activities. You can also shop for Christmas gifts and get freebies at the Christmas Market.

The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Poseidon Clubworld.

Skating and photo with Santa at Phantom Rose Grid

(Image courtesy Phantom Rose.)

The Phantom Rose grid‘s Welcome Region offers winter events such as skating with friends at the Skate Mountain and near Swan Lake, hot chocolate, and holiday music. You can also take photos with Santa in addition to getting free gifts for your Christmas decor.

The grid’s Phantom Rose Bayou region has a Christmas-themed Opera House open 24 hours a day throughout this season. In addition to its magical and gaming offerings, the house has Christmas gift items and Santa.

The hypergrid address is phantomrose.outworldz.net:8002:Phantom Rose Bayou.

Christmas wedding venues at Country Rhodes in AviWorlds

(Image courtesy Country Rodes.)

AviWorlds‘ Country Rhodes region has Christmas and winter-themed wedding venues in addition to its usual hangout areas, cave hideouts, beach, ballroom, and country-themed areas. Do not miss visiting Santa and his Elf’s at the magic Toy Workshop and the reindeer.

The hypergrid address is login.aviworlds.com:8002:Country Rhodes.

Candy Cane Christmas outfit in Japan in Otterland grid

Candy Cane Christmas. (Image courtesy Suzan Von Otter.)

The Japan region of the Otterland grid has a beautiful Candy Cane Christmas outfit made by Suzan Von Otter.

The hypergrid address is grid.otterland.de:8002:Japan.

Free Christmas music

(Image courtesy OSWRS.)

The OSWRS or OpenSim Working Radio Streams region in the Metaverse Depot grid has several commercial and free radios for the December holdouts from the Christmas spirit. These can be copied and used with full perms to change them however and whichever you want and use them at your grid or region.

The Christmas radio stream objects support different music types and can be found at 192.96.205.59:7000, 77.75.16.229:443, 68.168.101.146:8584, bitsmitter.com:9008, 167.114.64.181:8232, 151.80.6.108:8000, and 184.164.135.70:8263.

The hypergrid address is grid.metaversedepot.com:8002:OSWRS.

Christmas Radio. (Image courtesy GWG Winter Magic.)

German World‘s GWG Winter Magic region hosts Christmas Radio, which is playing Christmas music and tunes for this season.

The hypergrid address is germanworldgrid.de:8002:GWG Winter Magic.

Are we missing any holiday events or destinations? Let us know in the comments or email me at david@hypergridbusiness.com.

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Hypergrid Safari tours resume in January

HG Safari at the jfk Dallas build, 3rd Rock Grid. (Image courtesy HG Safari.)

The Hypergrid Safari tours will resume in January after more than three years off. The safari, which involves travel to arranged grids, will kick off at the brand new HG Safari region on OSgrid at 12 noon Pacific time on Wednesday, January 12.

The group plans ten trips during the first three months of 2022, to Avacon, OutWorldz, Craft Grid, Kitely, OSgrid and other grids. During the ten week season, the group will also meet with OpenSim luminaries Lyr Lobo, Ai Austin, Crista Lopes, and the godfather of HG Safari, John “Pathfinder” Lester himself, said Hypergrid Safari organizer Thirza Ember.

 

HG Safari at the Seanchai region on Kitely. (Image courtesy HG Safari.)

“There will be two destinations for each of the ten Safaris in this, the first short season of Safari,” she told Hypergrid Business. “The group meets on HG Safari sim on OSgrid, and we head out to the first destination at 12 noon Pacific Time and will go to the second destination at about 1 p.m. Pacific Time.”

The visits will stick to the traditional time of Wednesdays at 12 noon Pacific Time. If you can’t make that time, the landmarks will still be available on the HG Safari sim, so anyone can make the tour on their own at their own convenience.

Those interested in participating can join the Hypergrid Safari group on Facebook, the group’s Discord group or visit their in-world HG Safari region on OSgrid. The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:hg safari. Details of the itinerary will be published on the group’s pages a day before the event.

“We welcome people who are new to hypergridding and we will do our best to make sure you don’t get lost, and help you to rejoin the group if you crash,” said Ember. “If you are new to hypergridding, we suggest you make your avatar as simple as possible, and keep your graphics or draw distance low at first. It will make the experience less stressful. The emphasis is on fun and friendship, so don’t be shy.”

Between the time when Hypergrid Safari started in 2014 and when trips were temporarily suspended in 2018, its tourists had visited 120 grids and over 300 themed regions. The travel also included educational talks, immersive experiences on art regions, treasure hunts, and dances with live music.

“The Safari visited all kinds of grids, taking in the vast wealth of difference in technical ability, building style, and purpose that the hyperverse has to offer, from one grid to the next,” said Ember. “Over the four year period about two hundred different avatars from a wide range of grids joined the adventures, stress testing the system, learning the tips and tricks of successful hypergridding, and making new friends and contacts.”

HG Safari on Cherry Manga sim in Francogrid. (Image courtesy HG Safari.)

Grid owners who would like HG Safari tourists to visit them can contact Thirza Ember on OSgrid, or on the HG Safari group on Facebook. Reservations are already being taken for the Second Short Season of Safari, later in 2022.

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Despite outages, OpenSim land and actives users up sharply this month

After a slow start in the fourth quarter of 2021, most OpenSim stats are fully recovered with 3,710 new active users this month and 3,511 new standard region region equivalents.

The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids is now over 100,000 again after three months below that threshhold, and is now at 102,941 regions — with 98% of the land accessible via hypergrid teleport.

This despite the fact that the following grids did not report their stats this month:

  • Virtual Life, which had more than 500 active users last month, because its stats page has been reporting server issues.
  • Tag Grid did not report its active user numbers — it typically has more than 1,500 unique monthly logins.
  • World-DC, which had more than 500 active users at its peak, seems to be gone.
  • UllsWater, which had more than 200 users in September, seems to be gone.
  • Youniverse Grid, which had 143 actives last month, has been down for the last couple of weeks.
  • Caledonia, which had more than 100 actives in August, has a new site which doesn’t report stats.
  • Enchanted Grid has shut down, possibly permanently, after former owners deleted servers and backups.

There were eleven grids this month that gained 100 active users or more, including education-focused Eureka World, Little Breath, OSgrid, ZetaWorlds, GBG World, Soul Grid, Alter Kater, Moonrose, Party Destination Grid, Freedom Grid, Alternate Metaverse, and Dorena’s World.

(Hypergrid Business Data.)

The top land gainers this month are OSgrid with 1,541 new regions, ZetaWorlds with 643, Alternate Metaverse with 366, OutWorldz with 164, and Tomi’s World with 100 new regions.

OSgrid continued to top the list of largest grids in total land area with 34,088 regions, followed by Kitely with 18,773, ZetaWorlds with 10,210, Discovery Grid with 6,068, and DigiWorldz with 5,552 regions. Scroll to the bottom of the article for the list of the 40 largest grids by land area, or check out our full monthly stats export.

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid, which is a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, or private company grids, or school grids who used other installers.

OutWorldz is now tracking more than 2,787 unique DreamGrids in total. The Hyperica robot has crawled over 6,300 grids of any type since the start of this year. These items are tracked in a different database. Hyperica stores online DreamGrids, regions, parcels, regions, objects, and hypergrid events provided the region or item is set for “Show in Search” in-world.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete pre-built regions — and free IARs — user inventory files — as well as mesh objects and textures which OpenSim users can download and install on their own regions on any grid that permits those kinds of uploads.

The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers.

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of 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: 4,723 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. DigiWorldz: 2,049 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  3. AviWorlds: 1,856 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  4. ZetaWorlds: 1,670 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  5. Metropolis: 1,633 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  6. Party Destination Grid: 1,174 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  7. Kitely: 1,076 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  8. GBG World: 1,003 active users (HG gbg-world.cloud:8002)
  9. AviTron: 954 active users (HG avitronlogin.avitron.net:8002)
  10. Alternate Metaverse: 925 active users (HG alternatemetaverse.com:8002)
  11. Exo-Life: 903 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  12. Eureka World: 796 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  13. Craft World: 735 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  14. Virtual Dream: 694 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
  15. Little Breath: 677 active users (HG little-breath.club:8002)
  16. Neverworld: 646 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  17. Soul Grid: 588 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
  18. Discovery Grid: 540 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  19. DreamNation: 485 active users
  20. Arkham Grid: 484 active users (HG grid.arkhamgrid.org:8002)
  21. Astralia: 477 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  22. The City: 471 active users (HG thecity.inworldz.net:8002)
  23. Moonrose: 461 active users (HG moonrose-grid.de:8002)
  24. 3rd Rock Grid: 417 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
  25. Barefoot Dreamers: 415 active users (HG login.barefoot-dreamers.com:8002)

These are grids with the total number of active users or the most active grids this month.

The actives 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 active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport 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 or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, 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 18,945 product listings in Kitely Market containing 37,645 product variations, of which 32,580 are exportable.

 

(Kitely Market Data November 2021.)

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 524 OpenSim grids to date, which includes both public grids listed here as well as private grids that are not accessible to the public, don’t report their stats, and don’t make it into our reports.

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 on 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 five 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 own online marketplace.

The Tag grid marketplace, the only other OpenSim marketplace comparable to the Kitely Market, also lists apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. From the marketplace website, anyone is able to list their products or items on the marketplace to promote them either for sale or as a freebie, but the content can only be purchased and used within the Tag grid and can’t be taken or delivered to other grids.

AviTron ends content exports

AviTron users can no longer take content from the grid — including their own creations or freebies.

The same month that Enchanted Grid shut down, costing hundreds of users their regions and inventories, AviTron has shut off content exports. That includes the region backups that the grid had promised to region owners.

Alexsandro Pomposelli.

“Our backups are for region restoration in case something goes wrong,” grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli told Hypergrid Business. “It is not for exports. We have to protect the grid’s content and if we allow regions OARs to leave the grid, other people’s creations may be compromised.”

Other grids, including Kitely, offer filtered backups, where content that’s been marked as “no export” by original creators is not allowed to leave the grid, but exportable content and the users’ own creations, can.

Without region exports, the only other recourse content creators have is to use the built-in export options in the viewer and download one item at a time to their local computer.

Local users and hypergrid visitors will no longer be able to take content to other grids — again, including their own creations.

Given that Pomposelli has shut down his grids more than a dozen times over the past few years, usually without any warning, it is not recommended that users invest any more time or money in AviTron than they can afford to lose.

When creating new content, use a home-based grid like DreamGrid, or a grid that allows region exports, like Kitely or OSgrid.

And do not invest more money in avatar inventories than you can afford to lose. The best option is to keep your primary avatar on a more stable grid, such as Kitely, DigiWorldz, or OSgrid.

Fire and Ice residents can now backup their avatar inventories

(Image courtesy Fire and Ice grid.)

Local residents of the Fire and Ice grid can now use their website user accounts to make backups of their avatar inventories, or to restore their inventories from backup. Full details here.

However, each avatar is restricted to a single backup and restoration every 90 days to prevent slowing server performance. Anyone who wants to do additional backups beyond this limitation can contact the grid administration for a free one-off request, or pay a fee for additional backups.

These specific backups are for users’ peace of mind, grid owner Sara Payne told Hypergrid Business.

“As a grid, we back up the region database, asset database, and script state daily to multiple locations,” she said. “Inventory is a little different. At grid level, restoring an individual’s inventory to a specific date would be complex and time consuming, but not impossible.”

Annual Thanksgiving Celebration on Littlefield grid

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.)

Littlefield Grid will be holding the grid’s annual Thanksgiving celebration starting from 3 a.m. Pacific time on November 25 on the Littlefield, Stonehaven, and Speakeasy regions.

“We will be recreating the WKRP Turkey Drop every hour on the hour in the Littlefield Mall at the WLFG radio station,” grid co-owner Walter Balazic told Hypergrid Business. “We will also be playing Alice’s Restaurant on the WLFG radio stream every hour on the hour along with other Thanksgiving favorites.”

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Littlefield.

There also will be a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone from 6 a.m. Pacific time on the same day at the Stonehaven on the Stonehaven Patio.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Stonehaven.

Then a Thanksgiving dance party will be held from 8 p.m. Pacific time same day at the Speakeasy Dance Club.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Speakeasy.

Littlefield is also opening the grid’s Christmas Region on Saturday, November 26 and the region will remain open through December 31. It will host multiple activities including Santa’s Castle, Sleigh Ride, and Santa’s Sleigh Ride through the air.

The region will also host the huge freebie Christmas shopping area, a Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dance on the eve of Christmas Day on December 25.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Christmas Island.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: 3D Life, AlterLife, AnKaBi Grid, Art Destiny, Coffee Grid, Czech Welcome Centre, Destiny Grid, Forgotten Worlds, Gentle Fire Grid, German World, Hasengang, HCC Lab, Ilion Grid, Kitty Island, Metaverse Dimensions, Moonrose, Nova Space, Oczko, Polish Arena, Prerramos, Rocket World, Saar-Harzer, Snowdrop Grid, Taffy Grid, The Destiny Galaxies, VirtuaWorld, Wolf Territories Grid, and Youniverse Grid.

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.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,715 different publicly-accessible grids, 366 of which were active this month, and 299 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.

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OpenSim area, active users all up this month

All OpenSim stats were up this month. Despite Tag grid not reporting its user numbers, OpenSim actives were up by 107, while land area increased by the equivalent of 673 standard regions. In addition, OpenSim’s public grid registered 875 new users.

Most of the regions added this month are hypergridabble, which brings the tally of hypergrid-enabled OpenSim regions to 96,872 or 97 percent of all the land area for which we track stats.

 

(Hypergrid Business Data October 2021.)

OSgrid leads the list of grids that added the most regions this month with 443 new regions, followed by Kinky Haven with 164, Great Canadian Grid with 135, Boys Grid with 105, and Virtualife with 72 new standard region equivalents.

OSgrid also topped the list of largest grid in terms of the total number of regions with the equivalent of 32,547 standard regions, followed by Kitely with 18,798, ZetaWorlds with 9,567, Discovery Grid with 6,084, and DigiWorldz with 5,559 standard region equivalents.

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid, which is a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, or private company grids, or school grids who used other installers.

OutWorldz is now tracking more than 2,787 unique DreamGrids in total. The Hyperica robot has crawled over 6,300 grids of any type since the start of this year. These items are tracked in a different database. Hyperica stores online DreamGrids, regions, parcels, regions, objects, and hypergrid events provided the region or item is set for “Show in Search” in-world.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete pre-built regions — and free IARs — user inventory files — as well as mesh objects and textures which OpenSim users can download and install on their own regions on any grid that permits those kinds of uploads.

The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers.

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of 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: 4,455 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. DigiWorldz: 1,974 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  3. AviWorlds: 1,890 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  4. Metropolis: 1,631 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  5. ZetaWorlds: 1,417 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  6. Party Destination Grid: 1,063 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  7. Kitely: 1,035 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  8. Exo-Life: 903 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  9. AviTron: 879 active users (HG avitronlogin.avitron.net:8002)
  10. GBG World: 840 active users (HG gbg-world.cloud:8002)
  11. Alternate Metaverse: 820 active users (HG alternatemetaverse.com:8002)
  12. Neverworld: 723 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  13. Craft World: 718 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  14. Virtual Dream: 695 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
  15. Virtualife: 576 active users (HG grid.virtualife.cloud:8002)
  16. DreamNation: 482 active users
  17. Discovery Grid: 455 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  18. Soul Grid: 448 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
  19. Eureka World: 433 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  20. Arkham Grid: 428 active users (HG grid.arkhamgrid.org:8002)
  21. Barefoot Dreamers: 427 active users (HG login.barefoot-dreamers.com:8002)
  22. Astralia: 409 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  23. 3rd Rock Grid: 390 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
  24. Littlefield: 386 active users (HG lfgrid.com:8002)
  25. The City: 382 active users (HG thecity.inworldz.net:8002)

These are grids with the total number of active users or the most active grids this month.

Tag Grid did not report its user stats this month, which are normally over 1,500 unique monthly logins and over 1,000 regions.

The Fire and Ice grid also had a change in how it reports stats this month and instead of reporting stats on the grid’s WiFi page it is now reporting stats on the home page — the two had a discrepancy, said grid owner Sarah Payne.

“The figures on the WiFi page for many months have consistently shown approximately 100 more visitors in a 30 day period than actually came to Fire And Ice,” she told Hypergrid Business. “This means that we are going to show a substantial drop in visitors on the Hypergrid Business listings, but that this is related to a change in the reporting of the statistics rather than a real change.”

The grids that added the most new active users are led by Virtualife with 576 new active users, Eureka World with 245, My Virtual Beach with 158, Party Destination Grid with 144, and Twisted Grid with 136 new active users.

The actives 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 active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport 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 or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, 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

Kitely Market currently includes 19,084 product listings containing 37,832 product variations, of which 32,759 are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 523 OpenSim grids to date, which includes both public grids listed here as well as private grids that are not accessible to the public, don’t report their stats, and don’t make it into our reports.

(Kitely Market Data October 2021.)

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 on 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.

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 own online marketplace.

The Tag grid marketplace, is the only other OpenSim marketplace comparable to the Kitely Market, also lists apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. From the marketplace website, anyone is able to list their products or items on the marketplace to promote them either for sale or as a freebie, but the content can only be purchased and used within the Tag grid and can’t be taken or delivered to other grids.

WordPress for OpenSimulator plugin now available

The WordPress for OpenSimulator plugin or W4OS is now available on the WordPress directory. And for the first time now, you can, with the plugin, create a website with or that supports grid features, said OpenSim author and developer and owner of Speculoos grid Olivier Van Helden.

Olivier Van Helden

“It is an OpenSimulator web interface, designed particularly for grids,” he told Hypergrid Business. “It might work on standalone regions too but this has still to be tested. It provides a grids status block and allows users to register and create grid avatars from a website. Default models can be added to allow new user to choose their initial appearance.”

Speculoos has already implemented the plugin, meaning grid owners and other customers wanting to see how this works, can look at the grid’s home page and splash page.

The developers intend to extend functionality to supporting ability for users to create, start, stop, and backup their regions; admin creation of users, and the ability to select between robust console or database connection. It will also support WooCommerce Subscriptions for user-owned regions or other pay-for services.

Gloebits resolves most issues with grid-based payments

(Image courtesy Rene Vega.)

Gloebit, which has been lax in solving grid payment problems with their service, has reported that it has solved several issues. These problems, including stuck Gloebits transactions and delayed or failed transmission of transaction completion messages, begun at the start of this month due to Let’s Encrypt and Amazon Web Service.

“As of last night, we have resolved some of these issues and completed about three-quarters of the stuck transactions,” wrote Gloebit CEO Christopher Colossi. “We are still receiving 500 error messages from some grids when attempting to call in to tell them to complete the remaining stuck transactions. We are continuing to work on these and will eventually forcibly complete or cancel them if necessary.”

AviTron launches points system

AviTron welcome area. (Image by Maria Korolov.)

The AviTron grid has launched a point accumulation system to encourage users to interact in the grid. The system, which counts the number of hours a player is online in-world to award the points, is already active and is being used in the free land program. Players can then win grid’s in-world money, Tron, depending on the points they have in their grid account, said grid owner Alexsandro Pomposelli.

Alexsandro Pomposelli

“This can be exchanged for prizes or even real money,” he told Hypergrid Business. “This system will have a huge ads system that will work along side. Ultimate goal is volume generation and subsequently the grid earns $ from it.”

Fire and Ice now supports Google Drive for saving and loading OARs

Region owners can now save and load OAR files to their regions directly from their website account. Every Fire And Ice customer now gets a shared folder on the grid’s Google Drive, said Fire and Ice grid owner Sarah Payne.

“Region owners can upload OAR files to their shared folder and then from there apply an OAR to their region in the world,” she told Hypergrid Business. “Similarly they can save an oar of their region to the same shared folder.”

“We chose this route because it provides secure, private file space in a system familiar to many customers already,” she added. “Google Drive is one of if not the most popular file sharing system available.”

To move a file to the Shared Folder, upload it to your own Google Drive account, right-click it and select “move to” and use the left arrow next to “My Drive” before navigating to the Shared Folder. (Image courtesy Sarah Payne.)

Avatars can also now make proposals on Fire and Ice grid, withdraw, accept, decline them silently, decline them with notification to the propose, and block them to prevent unwanted or multiple proposals from and to avatars when needed.

The grid has also effectively removed access to the old WiFi website due to security issues, she said. The page now redirects to the grid’s home page. The grid intended to remove the page entirely but is forced to redirect to prevent users from getting the broken splash page error, and because most users will not be able to load grid managers on their own.

“Those sites are horrendously insecure and many browsers complain or refuse to show them without adding an exception to the browser security,” she said. “Fire and Ice do not wish our users to be exposed to that.”

Amnesia Island to open today at Neverworld grid

(Image courtesy Amnesia Island.)

Amnesia Island region opens this week on Neverworld Grid and the owners invite the public to the grand opening party from 11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time this Saturday, October 16. There will be cocktails, DJing , and music on the island.

The island provides breathtaking ocean views such as sunsets, right from the club where live shows will be streamed soon.

The hypergrid address is: hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002:Amnesia Island. 

My Protective Sanctuary gallery opens on OSgrid

(Image courtesy My Protective Sanctuary)

My Protective Sanctuary, a gallery exhibitions by curator and artists Asmita Duranjaya featuring 12 artists, opens at 1 p.m. Pacific Time this Sunday, October 17, at the InterstellaART Exhibitions region on OSgrid.

Asmita Duranjaya

Duranjaya is a cyber-artist who has used digital and virtual tools to create art installations since she was 12. She started at Second Life where she got a LEA scholarship five times but due to changes in Second Life, which impacted her work, she moved to a sim landscape in OpenSim at InterstellART.

The opening will feature a Fracticularium, a fracticle performance featuring temporary hud-controlled shelter zones created from particles, accompanied by music.

The exhibition gallery, according to a post by Duranjaya, is as a place to feel physically and mentally protected especially at this time of COVID-19 crisis. It contain sanctuaries designed by the participating artists, and in which visitors can immerse. The artistic ideas vary from gardens, photo representation of inner states and memories, photo representations of life circumstances, to temple-like photo presentations. Visitors can also get gifts from participating authors. You can also review more photos  from the exhibitions on Duranjaya Facebook page here. 

After opening, the exhibition will be accessible for five months.

The artists with creations exhibiting at the gallery are Azi Az, Caro Fayray, Cherry Manga, Fayuko Amano, Kuveni Kalakaruwa, Moora McMillan, Mystic Moonlite, Shenn Tao, Sujeewa Kumari, Victoria Logan, and Symphony Viva.

The hypergrid address is: hg.osgrid.org:80:interstellART_exhibitions.

Grids ready for Halloween season

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.)

StoryLink Radio is hosting an entire month of Halloween-themed storytelling in-world and on YouTube, and is still welcoming any merchant interested in claiming a space to display and sell their Halloween-themed wares in Kitely and Second Life.

The on-going live in-world story-telling happening in StoryLink’s grid has 30 hours currently scheduled for programming and has support for intergrid chats among the audience, StoryLink Radio owner Shandon Loring told Hypergrid Business.

The StoryLink’s Halloween Mall in Kitely already has 15 merchants selling and displaying their in-world items. Late Night Horror Stories, which started on October 14, will run until October 28 where two special horror stories will be told every night at the StoryLink’s Drive-In theater from 9 p.m. Pacific Time. The Scary Stories Sleepover Event happens on October 21 with a special session involving 13 scary stories told around campfire in StoryLink’s Kitely Octoberworld region.

The Bayou’s region of the Phantom Rose grid is hosting two Halloween-themed adventure quests. The Tortuga Island region at the Virtual Dream grid, which is a new build by Ange Menges and Nani Ferguson, will be open starting on October 30 for 15 days for Halloween celebrations.  Aurora Georgetown in Twisted grid will be hosting a Scarecrow-making contest for Halloween in October.

In addition to these Halloween events, we have already posted a separate Halloween story roundup for all what grids are doing in readiness for the Halloween. If there is anything left out in the story or you have any additions, do not forget to reach me at david@hypergridbusines.com so I can cover and include it.

Littlefield to host Mischief Night Dance and annual Guy Fawkes Bonfire Dance

Littlefield will have the grid’s Mischief Night Dance from 8 p.m. Pacific Time on October 30 at the Speakeasy Dance Club. It will feature dance, and a little mischief on Halloween eve.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Speakeasy.

The Ruritania’s annual Guy Fawkes Bonfire Dance happens from 2 p.m. Pacific Time on November 5 at the Ruritania region, with your host Xi Shi.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Ruritania.

Littlefield grid will also host the annual Halloween Costume Party and Dance starting at 8 p.m. Pacific Time at the Halloween Island. It will feature a hunted house, hayride, corn maze, and other events.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Halloween Island.

Group seeks content contributions to help battle violence against women

The 2LEI, an event held annually in Second Life to honor November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, is still calling on OpenSim community to participate in helping the course. This year, 2LEI will run from November 5 to 27 and is dedicated to the recognition of rights not yet achieved.

To participate, contact Craft World founder Raffaele Macis, known in-world as Licu Rau, either on the Craft grid or by email at licu.rau@craft-world.org.

Craft is the first OpenSim grid to officially announce its participation, according to an announcement posted by organizer Rosanna Galvani. Galvani is the founder and owner of Craft World’s Museo del Metaverso.

Autumn Fest in Alternate Metaverse grid

Cat’s Meow Fall Fashion Show. (Image courtesy Alternate Metaverse grid.)

The AutumnFest Stage region of the Alternate Metaverse grid will continue to be open until November 2 for the Autumn season as well as the Halloween celebrations. For the celebrations, the event is featuring musicians or performers like Clan Escotia, and fashion shows.

The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Meow Fashion.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: CopyKat, Dutch Life, GBG World, Ghost Area, Harz World, PixArtGrid, and The Simple Life.

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.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,687 different publicly-accessible grids, 331 of which were active this month, and 274 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.

Posted on

Wildwood Bayou shines in twelfth annual OpenSim Grid survey

More than 300 valid responses came in for the Twelfth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and Wildwood Bayou received nearly perfect scores in all categories, with Utopia Skye, Enchanted Grid, Craft World and Kitely close behind.

Wildwood Bayou, Utopia Skye, and Enchanted Grid were all write-in grids. Most years, there’s at least one smaller grid that does well in the user surveys. We currently follow 1,709 grids total, of which 468 were active sometime this year, so only list the most active grids among our default choices. The full list of currently active grids is here.

Overall scores of the 13 grids that had the most responses. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Where do OpenSimmers live and visit?

Between them, this year’s respondents had visited 77 different grids and named 40 different grids as their primary homes.

OSgrid was the grid that was home to the most respondents, followed by AviTron, DigiWorldz, Alternate Metaverse, Kitely, Craft, Enchanted, and Discovery.

We also asked our readers about the grids that they had visited.

OSgrid, OpenSim’s largest and oldest grid, was the most visited — 74 percent of our readers had been to that grid. The next most visited was DigiWorldz with 54 percent, followed by Kitely, with 53 percent.

 

Where do OpenSim users like to travel? (Hypergrid Business data.)

 

The numbers add up to more than 100 percent because most people have visited more than one grid. In fact, the average OpenSim users has been to almost five different grids — that they recalled during this survey. Many users said “too many to mention” or “I’ve been to 33 different grids” without listing specific grids, and are not included in the average count.

Most residents said they were very happy with their grids — 93 percent would “absolutely” recommend them to others. Fewer than 2 percent said that they would not recommend, with the rest responding “maybe” or “I don’t know.”

Would you recommend your grid to others? (Hypergrid Business data.)

Technology, support, community, and content

I did not ask people to compare different grids and tell me which one is better. After all, nobody out there has visited all the grids and tried them all out. Instead, what I do every year is ask people what they think about the grid that they spend the most time on.

Typically, people rate their home grid highly. And that makes sense — after all, that’s the grid where they decided to spend their time. That’s why most grids had average responses of “very good” or “excellent” — which I scored as 4 and 5, respectively, when I tabulated the numbers.

As grids get larger, however, they also get more people who are generally discontented. In addition, larger grids may have problems maintaining their technology or support. And, as a result, smaller grids often do very well in these rankings.

You’ll notice that the difference between grids is often a fraction of a percent, so please do not take these results as pure gospel. Plus, with the relatively small number of users we have in OpenSim, the margin of error is high — one highly dissatisfied resident can skew the results quite a bit. So please take all of the following as “food for thought” as opposed to “absolute truth.”

Technology

This year, when our readers were asked how they would grade their grid’s technology, Kitely came out on top, with Wyldwood Bayou, Enchanted Grid, and Discovery Grid all close behind.

Kitely has a unique, on-demand region hosting system that allows them to offer better performance at a lower price than many other grids. Plus, it is also the home of the Kitely Market, OpenSim’s major online marketplace for virtual content.

Those who live on their own personal grid scored their grid the lowest for technology, which makes sense since these grids often run on personal, home computers and connect to other via grids via slow, residential Internet connections. Plus, their have to do their own tech support.

These survey results also only show how users feel about the technology — not about the effort that the grids have put into their platform. OSgrid, for example, is where the OpenSim developers do their testing. This contribution is not necessarily reflected in the poll numbers.

How readers rated their home grids on technology. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Support

In support, three grids received perfect scores from their residents — Wyldwood Bayou, Utopia Skye, and Dorena’s World — with Kitely very close behind.

OSgrid scored lowest, but, again, the grid is all volunteer-run and regions are hosted on home computers. And there’s only so much that volunteers can do to help since everybody’s home computer and networking configuration is different.

How readers rated their home grids on support. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Community

For community, Wyldwood Bayou had a perfect score, followed by Enchanted Grid in second place and AviTron in third.

Small, close-knit grids and startup grids with early and passionate residents typically have high community scores. It doesn’t mean that larger grids don’t have community spirit, but rather that it’s easier for someone to feel lost and alone on a large grid unless the administrators and other community organizers make a very concerted effort to get people involved.

How readers rated their home grids on community. (Hypergrid Business data.)

“My personal grid” had lowest score for community, for obvious reasons. Okay, if it’s not obvious to everyone, then let me explain. You see, a grid that you run yourself, on your own computer or on your own server, will only have the community that you yourself can gather together. If it’s a one-person grid for, say, creative building, then you’re not going to have much of a community at all.

Content

In content, Utopia Skye, Tangle Grid and Dorena’s World tied for perfect scores, with Wyldwood Bayou in close second place.

Again, “my personal grid” scored last, since these typically come with just free public domain starter content such as Linda Kellie OAR regions files.

How readers rated their home grids on content. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Additional comments from the respondents

The following are representative comments about the grids. There were more than 80 comments in all, higher than last year, some of them quite lengthy, and if anyone wants to see them, or use them on their websites, just email me. Again, I won’t include any personally identifiable information.

In addition to leaving out some of the repetitive comments, I’ve also skipped those that had negative personal attacks or that seemed libelous. And, of course, I also edited out any personally identifying information. The comments have also been very lightly edited for spelling and grammar.

3rd Rock Grid

“3rd Rock Grid is the third oldest grid in the metaverse and that says something. Many grids have come and gone but 3RG remains. We are stable, we have a great group of people that live here, great entertainment and great content.”

“3rd Rock Grid: so much integrity in this world, great entertainment.”

AlterEgo

“Simple homemade grid. It’s a simple grid in a very simple but growing server. I would recommend it for availability, but they still have a lot of work to do. [There’s] land that can be purchased with Gloebit and resold and free land. Usual free content for OpenSim and regions from DreamGrid. Simple but available.”

Alternate Metaverse

“Alternate Metaverse has an amazing community and are a friendly and active bunch to hang out with. The technical side of the Alternate Metaverse grid is more than super and the owner really knows how to solve all issues in a professional manner .”

“Alternate Metaverse is one of the best grids I have ever had the honor to be on when it comes to virtual worlds and I will never leave”

“I have already recommended Alternate Metaverse to others”

“I have found Alternate Metaverse to be the most welcoming grid so far. I have set home to there.”

“I love this place.”

“It’s the best.”

“Living in Alternate Metaverse is an absolute dream for me and my girlfriend”

“Nice fun community, with lots of entertainment, amazing places to visit and staff. Technical, and most friendly grid”

“One of the most welcoming and kind people around OpenSim”

“The only grid — apart from Kitely — that offers automatic saves of OAR files, and automated uploads of OAR files, from their website. Amazing people and community.”

“This is an awesome grid with awesome people and events.”

AviTron

“A fantastic staff. Well done. I have to be honest, until a few weeks ago I didn’t know any of these [other] grids … now I’m meeting and visiting them.”

“Among all I know is the one that has the most advanced technology and based on Linux system, which is more secure.”

“De todos los grids que he visitado AviTron es el mejor.” [Google translation from Spanish: “Of all the grids I have visited, AviTron is the best.”]

“Excelente servicio y muy buen sistema de soporte.” [Google translation from Spanish: “Excellent service and very good support system.”]

“Is clear that is just beginning and to be honest so far is doing OK, but I know there’s a lot of work yet to be done. It has lots of potential.”

Barefood Dreamers

“Wonderful owners who get things done. Amazing young grid. They will go far.”

Craft World

“At Craft, I have been carrying on my project, the Museo del Metaverso, for years, I feel at home.”

“Definitely a wonderful grid with lot of content and people without being too crowded.”

“I love Craft.”

“In the past year there has been a growing number of artistic events of outstanding quality on Craft.”

“It is a great grid and the owner, Licu Rau, is more than just friendly — he is a friend! One notices, that he loves the grid and the work he is doing there!”

DigiWorldz

“DigiWorldz is a good grid with some technical problems. Of course all grids have technical problems… and I’m not sure how many of those problems are in OpenSim itself and Firestorm.”

“DigiWorldz is a great community to be a part of. The grid owner is honest and trustworthy. I feel at ease and trust that my information, data, and creations are safe!! And have no fear of the grid closing or ripping me off. Thumbs up for DigiWorldz.”

“DigiWorldz is more home to me then other grids.”

“Extremely well-run, quick response — ten minutes or less — to problems. High performance: 95 to 105 frames per second, 103-ish ping. Great for vehicles with uBODE physics option on sims, nightly backups to multiple servers, and a real relaxed vibe where you don’t have to worry if the grid is online when you want to log in.”

“I have recommended it to many people!”

“I have to go to other grids, like Discovery Grid or Kitely Market get products not available on DigiWorldz. I really like Discovery Grid, but it does not have the active population size I need for what I am building.”

“The best community IMO of any grid. Dedicated staff, talented creators and friendly people.”

“I’ve been in DigiWorldz for over four years now. I have learned so many new things over the years from so many of the awesomely creative creators here in DigiWorldz! As I learn more and more I only find that I want to learn even more and more! It’s so much fun learning, creating different things… what one can create out of a simple square prim is astounding. As I learn each new thing my mind soars into outer space and I have so many infinite ideas of more ways to create more objects and such. It’s only because of DigiWorldz that I have been able to express myself in such unique ways. I am in Second Life for over 16 years now and in DigiWorldz for over four years. In the quarter of the time that I have been in Second Life, I have learned so so much more here in DigiWorldz. I want to express my sincere gratitude to each and everyone of you people who have taught me what I know. I’m not taking away from anyone else in OpenSim that has taught me a host of everything… I do so appreciate the time and effort that everyone has taken to teach me different things. I am so blessed to have the privilege’s of learning from all of you! Onto my next note which is last but note least, are my love for my horses here in DigiWorldz! They all have such unique personalities and I love all of the beautiful coats they have, too. It’s amazing to me when I get a super rare coat! I just get so excited to see such awesomeness! Noxy! You’re doin’ one heck of a great job with them horseys! Keep up the great work! I commend you for the extremely hard work that you have put into your horses! Keep on keepin’ on! Huggelz!”

Discovery Grid

“Grid owner is always working to update the grid and make it better. Water connects all regions unless you don’t want to be. People are friendly and welcoming.”

“Myself and my business split time between Discovery Grid and Utopia Skye Grid — two of a small handful of grids I actually trust, where grid owners aren’t giving region owners god mode and aren’t rife with stolen content like several grids listed above. Discovery Grid and Utopia Skye Grid owners actually care about vetting stolen content and run high-end tech servers my business requires in order to run.”

Enchanted Grid

“Enchanted Grid was a great surprise, my first day there I went to an event with a huge turn out and we had a lot of great conversations. There are lots of really creative regions, and many engaged friendly creators – some of my favorite InWorldz folk! — so I decided to get a few regions. I especially love the sailing in a Halcyon grid. Very awesome.”

“A closed grid, so most content created by its own residents.”

“No copybotted [stuff]. It’s a great grid with excellent creators.”

“No drama here, great tight community that welcomes new people.”

“This grid utilizes the same physics as InWorldz did and overall the grid is very similar to InWorldz. There are quite a few old InWorldz residents and I highly recommend this grid for anyone that was from there.”

FrancoGrid

“Sadly I fear this grid is losing attraction.”

Kitely

“Any problems are quickly dealt with by the grid owners and greed and drama are rare.”

“Best tech support of any OpenSim grid. The Kitely Market grows steadily and is the easiest place to sell stuff to nearly anywhere — legally — in the OpenSim grids.”

“Grid is excellent, support is super good, pity that the avatars are very poor which is a comment for OpenSim in general. Quite some people I know left for this reason. Impossible to attract good clothing makers for OpenSim in general for this reason. Quality of avatars is super important as long as this issue is not handled OpenSim won’t get the real influx of people. I know that an effort has been done to get this up to date. With all respect go and look at the place and check objectively. It’s seriously substandard.”

“I have spent more time on this OpenSim hypergrid-enabled grid than any other. I’ve had land here for a few years. The weekly meetings are a good way to find out what is going on and the community itself is very drama free and there are many wonderful, magical places to visit. The technology is definitely top-notch for any OpenSim grid. It’s a very active grid which is sort of surprising since you can’t cash out money — but maybe that’s part of the charm. The regions you visit aren’t just shopping and clubs — they are virtual expressions of residents’ imagination.”

“Ilan Tochner’s support to Kitely users is beyond exceptional. Absolutely amazing. I believe he never sleeps.”

“Kitely continues to expand its range of offerings with its megaworld on a dedicated server and is now offering megaworlds with 24/7 uptime service, which is a major change to Kitely’s business model but has apparently paid off. [CEO] Ilan [Tochner] and [co-founder and VP of R&D] Oren [Hurvitz] consistently provide excellent support to fix bugs and respond to user needs and do so with expertise and professionalism I do not see on other grids. Their focus on stable service and excellent backend architecture is unmatched.”

“Kitely is fast, economical to use — i.e. have sims — and has a super supportive community. Additionally, the Kitely Market is the most powerful and well stocked one of the metaverse I believe. Not only that, but it connects to the whole hypergrid so that you can shop it from anywhere. Now that was super smart!”

“Kitely is the best at OpenSim. However, OpenSim is yesterday’s technology. I wish Ilan and Oren were inclined to create the next generation in a virtual worlds platform.”

“Kitely values in land are great. Tech support is very helpful.”

“Let’s face it, we all came from the same place. They offered small plots of land at a huge cost and had absolutely no customer service to speak of. They nickel and dimed us for every upload and honestly, the lag! How many years in and there’s still lag? I did a lot of research before hanging my hat in Kitely. I wanted a low cost, large land mass with stability. I wanted customer service, good customer service. I wanted a marketplace. I wanted community. Kitely has all of that, they checked off all my boxes and then some.”

“The robust servers Kitely uses, and the personal hands-on from their support team is par excellence!”

“We used to be in Second Life — but found Kitely is, in so many ways better — and getting even better.”

Metropolis

“This is a rough rating, butI was once a big fan of Metropolis Grid. But my feeling now, with no news over months, no answers from support even on tickets, I consider it slightly as dead. Sad!”

Mobius Grid

“Great gamer community that welcomes everyone. Cutting edge grid tech and excellent support for my main hypergrid store.”

My personal grid

“Been with DreamGrid for about two years, with this year hypergrid open.”

“I make my princial home on my personal DreamGrid since I don’t trust ANY third-party grid to manage my inventory.”

OSgrid

“Committed admins and a strong, caring community make this the grid to call home.”

“I love OSgrid. It’s the best grid in the universe.”

“Nice place to be…”

“OSgrid is the best, in my opinion.”

“OSgrid offers many options, from rented regions to nearly-free self-server lands. It’s main, serious downside is no community group announcements, which makes hosting events difficult. It is an experimental grid, not a community grid — and that is its weakness. But if you want 110 percent control over your lands, host your own server on OSgrid. Or… build your own grid.”

“I choose to make this grid my second home SOLELY because it’s population is by far the largest, and movement and communication is easier within a grid rather than outside of it.”

“Why is it so hard to teleport to go places?”

Phantom Rose Grid

“Although my grid is non-commercial, I provide many 24/7 activities for visitors alone or with others. I also give out some very nice freebies that I make myself or know to be legal to give away.”

Sharing is Caring

“This grid is my family, never had such wonderful friends.

“This grid is not open to public registrations, rather, it is invite only.”

Tangle Grid

“Tangle Grid tries hard to keep updated with the newest OpenSim software. They also keep it’s residents updated via Facebook, MeWe and their own news website. Overall, they one of the best grids I have ever lived on. They go out of their way to make you feel at home. Most grids I have been on you never see the owners — with Tangle Grid this isn’t the case. They’re always there with any problems you may have. They even help with non-grid problem like computer setups, if you are having problems logging in. They been around for nine years and have very little down time. Region prices are also fair and they offer free land to try them out.”

Utopia Skye

“As an artist/builder/videographer, it is a grid I trust. Unlike some other grids listed, I am absolutely sure that my intellectual copyrights are respected there.”

“Small but friendly grid, only drama comes from the Golden Touch Theater and amazing particle shows.”

“Utopia Skye grid is a consistently progressive technology grid. It’s a holistic, artistic, creative space where people can enjoy events and building. The codebase is maintained by Mike Chase who is one of the creators of the Sasquatch version of the OpenSim codebase — a version that proves to be very reliable with zero downtime in over three years! While the grid may not boast some of the numbers others do, the numbers reported here are true numbers and the people who are here are loyal and enjoy a warm community. Plus the Golden Touch Theater performs here and the shows they put on are worth everything.”

“Utopia Skye is a small but professionally-run grid. We welcome residents who want to build a home and create in an environment that respects creator IP. You will never find a ‘freebie’ store that offers botted content that’s been ‘liberated’ from Second Life or anywhere else and we work closely with creators to protect their work.”

Wyldwood Bayou

“The community here is the most welcoming I’ve found on the hypergrid.”

“This grid is made for visitors who love music, roleplay and exploring.”

“Wyldwood Bayou grid is non-commercial, so no shops or rentals. It is a destination grid, open to hypergridders so that they can visit, explore, participate in medi-fantasy roleplay at Brigantia or Ravenquest, and attend events at the superb music venues–Rockin’ The Blues, Hot Daddy’s, etc.”

“Wyldwood Bayou is a destination grid with a small but wonderful community. The grid offers sailable oceans, beautiful regions with role play and successful clubs which are based on friendships, and inclusivity as well as music. Very great places to visit here and wonderful people to meet.”

“Wyldwood has the best community in the metaverse. The music and the roleplay are outstanding and you will not find a warmer welcome anywhere.”

‘Wyldwood Bayou runs well and has a welcoming and kind community. They have weekly music events with different DJs and roleplaying events in fae lands.”

Note to grid owners

You are free to use any of the information from this article on your grid’s website or in any other promotional materials, including the quotes from survey responders. A link to this article is appreciated but not required. You can also request the raw — anonymized — data for your grid by emailing me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Posted on

OpenSim stats recovering from last month’s losses

OpenSim added more than 1,700 active users this month, after a drop of nearly 5,000 last month. Public grids also registered 2,790 new user accounts. Land area slipped slightly — by 453 regions, but nothing like last month’s drop of 4,361.

The drop in area was fully accounted for, and then some, by a decline on the Discovery Grid, which was down 618 region equivalents compared to this time last month.

In addition, Tag Grid did not report its active user numbers this normally, which are normally over 1,500 unique monthly logins.

only 296 new active users this month to recover from the massive slump of 4,911 users last month. And although the land size reduced by 909 regions this month, it was a huge improvement from last month’s massive loss of 4,361 regions.

(Hypergrid Business Data)

The Seconds grid gained the most regions this month with 109 new regions, followed by Furry World with 84, Trans Sidera with 74, Virtual Life with 69, and OpenManniLand with 68 new regions. However, OSgrid is still the largest grid in terms of the number of regions or 32,104 standard region equivalents, followed by Kitely with 18,891, ZetaWorlds with 9,720, Discovery Grid with 6,151 and DigiWorldz with 5,552 standard region equivalents.

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid, which is a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, or private company grids, or school grids who used other installers.

OutWorldz is now tracking more than 2,787 unique DreamGrids in total. The Hyperica robot has crawled over 6,300 grids of any type since the start of this year. These items are tracked in a different database. Hyperica stores online DreamGrids, regions, parcels, regions, objects, and hypergrid events provided the region or item is set for “Show in Search” in-world.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete pre-built regions — and free IARs — user inventory files — as well as mesh objects and textures which OpenSim users can download and install on their own regions on any grid that permits those kinds of uploads.

The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers.

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of 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: 4,500 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. AviWorlds: 1,999 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  3. Metropolis: 1,987 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  4. ZetaWorlds: 1,301 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  5. DigiWorldz: 958 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  6. Kitely: 928 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  7. Party Destination Grid: 919 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  8. Exo-Life: 903 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  9. AviTron: 796 active users (HG avitronlogin.avitron.net:8002)
  10. Alternate Metaverse: 735 active users (HG alternatemetaverse.com:8002)
  11. Neverworld: 667 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  12. Virtual Dream: 660 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
  13. Craft World: 634 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  14. Fire and Ice Grid: 607 active users (HG fireandicegrid.net:8002)
  15. Soul Grid: 557 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
  16. German World Grid: 500 active users (HG germanworldgrid.de:8002)
  17. DreamNation: 488 active users
  18. Discovery Grid: 481 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  19. Virtualife: 474 active users (HG hg2.virtualife.cloud:8002)
  20. Virtualife: 472 active users (HG hg2.virtualife.cloud:8002)
  21. Arkham Grid: 463 active users (HG grid.arkhamgrid.org:8002)
  22. The City: 451 active users (HG thecity.inworldz.net:8002)
  23. Astralia: 441 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  24. Barefoot Dreamers: 420 active users (HG login.barefoot-dreamers.com:8002)
  25. Free Life: 419 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002:Free Life Central City)

The Virtual Life grid topped the list of grids that gained the most active users this month with 474 new actives, followed by The City with 451, German World Grid with 385, Tomi’s World with 140, and Soul Grid with 139 new active users.

The actives 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 active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport 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 or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, 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 19,061 product listings in Kitely Market containing 37,743 product variations, of which 32,671 are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 518 OpenSim grids to date.
(Hypergrid Business data as of September 2021.)

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 on 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.

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 own online marketplace.

The Tag grid marketplace now lists a total of 28,256 items, most of which are apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. The market now has over 300 verified users.

From the marketplace website, anyone is able to list their products or items on the marketplace to promote them either for sale or as a freebie, but the content can only be purchased and used within the Tag grid.

Grids prep for Halloween season

Halloween is the time to expect all scariest things in OpenSim grids. Many grids already have regions themed for Halloween, with story telling, freebies, hunts, contests, and tours, all for Halloween.

StoryLink Radio is hosting an entire month of Halloween-themed storytelling in-world and on YouTube stream, and is welcoming any merchant interested in claiming a space to display and sell their Halloween-themed wares in Kitely and Second Life. The Bayou’s region of the Phantom Rose grid is hosting two Halloween-themed adventure quests. The Tortuga Island region at the Virtual Dream grid, which is a new build by Ange Menges and Nani Ferguson, will be open starting on October 30 for 15 days for Halloween celebrations.  Aurora Georgetown in Twisted grid will be hosting a Scarecrow-making contest for Halloween in October.

In addition to these Halloween events, we are also doing a separate Halloween story roundup for all what grids are doing in readiness for the Halloween. Do not forget to reach me at david@hypergridbusines.com if your region or grid already has something on-going or you are preparing something for Halloween.

Utopia Skye Grid to host Emergence event

Emergence show will take place next month. (Image courtesy Golden Skype.)

The Golden Touch Theater group will be hosting the Emergence show starting at 12 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, September 18 at the Golden Skye region of the Utopia Sky grid. The show involves an artistic dance, poetic theater, and visual entertainment representing a celebration of coming out of the dark.

The event will be full of music from the Golden Touch shows, dances with the dancers who’ve performed them, as well as fun all around.

There will be a pre-show event at noon Pacific Time on Sunday, August 15 where visitors can come for a dance and a sneak peek of what will happen at the event.

The hypergrid address is utopiaskyegrid.com:8002. 

Group seeks content contributions to help battle violence against women

For the first time ever, OpenSim grids, communities, and individuals are invited to participate in 2LEI, an event held annually in Second Life to honor November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

To participate, contact Craft World founder Raffaele Macis, known in-world as Licu Rau, either on the Craft grid or by email at licu.rau@craft-world.org.

Craft is the first OpenSim to officially announce its participation, according to an announcement posted by organizer Rosanna Galvani. Galvani is the founder and owner of Craft World’s Museo del Metaverso.

This year, 2LEI will run from November 5 to 27 and is dedicated to the recognition of rights not yet achieved.

Autumn Fest Kicks off in Alternate Metaverse grid

Cat’s Meow Fall Fashion Show. (Image courtesy Alternate Metaverse grid.)

The AutumnFest Stage region of the Alternate Metaverse grid will be celebrating the Autumn season as well as the Halloween, starting September 16 to November 2. The region now has Halloween decor and an October Park for these celebration.

First of all, all is set for the Autumn Fest at the 5-region sim. The event has already featured musicians or performers like Clan Escotia who performed today live from noon Pacific Time during the event opening. September 17 there will be Meow Fall Fashion Show where attendees will be showcasing all types of fashions in-world, starting at 1 p.m. Pacific Time at the Meow Fashion region.

The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Meow Fashion.

Musician Terry TheWildman will be performing live on stage from 11 a.m. Pacific Time on September 20. She will be playing old rock and roll. The event also features belly dancing with DJ Cataplexia Numbers from 10 a.m. to noon Pacific Time on September 21. You will enjoy tribal beats and sensual Eastern rhythms and the dress code is silks or warrior kilts for men. There are outfits available for everyone.

Then Cataplexia Numbers will do a pre-show starting 5  p.m. Pacific Time on September 23. There also will be Joao Frazao playing classics and sensuals from 11 a.m. Pacific Time same day.

At 11 a.m. Pacific Time on September 24, Aex Zatsepin will play songs from his own pre-made recordings for the Autumn Fest. The region will also host this as well as events like Fall Fashion Show which will feature 16 performers.

The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:AMV Autumnfest Stage.

Prefabricated houses and freebies in Needful Things on Offworld grid

(Image courtesy Needful Things.)

The Needful Things region at the European Offworld grid is offering several freebies items including prefabricated houses with snow control. These buildings are recommended for anyone looking for a virtual building to set up a new virtual home in their region in any grid.

They are also new freebies categories that allow people to switch between summer and winter with just a single click from a control panel. Most of the houses also have a light control panel. Bink Draconia, who runs the region, will be adding new modified prefabricated houses to the freebies as well.

Needful Things also offers animations, textures, lady fashions, Ruth 2.0 avatars, hair, skins, eyes, shapes, jewelry, NPCs, landmarks to other hypergrid destinations, potted plants, lighting fixtures, pets, Easter items, and furniture.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: CopyKat, Dutch Life, Harz World, Kinky Haven, PixArtGrid, The City, and The Simple Life.

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.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,686 different publicly-accessible grids, 326 of which were active this month, and 272 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.

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OpenSim land, active users down at close of summer

OpenSim lost both land area and active users this month. Part of it is seasonal, with schools out of session, and people going outside to enjoy the nice weather. Part of the loss is because The Tag Grid, which reported nearly 1,700 active users last month, did not share those stats this month.

But mostly, the losses were across the board. Of the 265 grids that reported stats this month, 143 lost active users, 28 had no change, and only 74 gained users.

And when it comes to land area, DigiWorldz lost the equivalent of nearly 2,000 standard regions, while ZetaWorlds and OpenManniLand lost a little over 1,000 regions each.

Altogether, the total land area of OpenSim shrunk by the equivalent of 4,361 regions, down to 99,264. And active users dropped by 4,911 compared with last month, down to 33,650.

 

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

The top five grids that gained the most regions this month are GorGrid with 415 new regions, Tomi’s World with 273, Counter Earth with 209, Discovery Grid with 77, and FrancoGrid with 67 new regions.

These stats do not include most of the grids running on OutWorldz’ DreamGrid, which is a distribution of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, or private company grids, or school grids who used other installers.

OutWorldz is now tracking more than 2,787 unique DreamGrids in total. The Hyperica robot has crawled over 6,300 grids of any type since the start of this year. These items are tracked in a different database. Hyperica stores online DreamGrids, regions, parcels, regions, objects, and hypergrid events provided the region or item is set for “Show in Search” in-world.

OutWorldz also offers free OARs — complete pre-built regions — and free IARs — user inventory files — as well as mesh objects and textures which OpenSim users can download and install on their own regions on any grid that permits those kinds of uploads.

The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers.

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of 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: 4,558 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. DigiWorldz: 2,015 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  3. AviWorlds: 1,975 active users (HG login.aviworlds.com:8002)
  4. Metropolis: 1,619 active users (HG hg.metro.land:80)
  5. ZetaWorlds: 1,412 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  6. Party Destination Grid: 924 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
  7. AviTron: 914 active users (HG avitronlogin.avitron.net:8002)
  8. Exo-Life: 903 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  9. Kitely: 892 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  10. Alternate Metaverse: 736 active users (HG alternatemetaverse.com:8002)
  11. Discovery Grid: 718 active users (HG discoverygrid.net:8002)
  12. Fire and Ice Grid: 682 active users (HG fireandicegrid.net:8002)
  13. Neverworld: 585 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  14. Craft World: 581 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  15. Virtual Dream: 548 active users (HG virtualdream-grid.com:8002)
  16. DreamNation: 534 active users
  17. Soul Grid: 418 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
  18. Dynamic Worldz 2: 388 active users (HG grid.dynamicworldz2.com:8822)
  19. Astralia: 384 active users (HG astralia.eu:8002)
  20. Caprica: 384 active users (HG cg.1studi.ru:9000)
  21. Vida Dupla: 371 active users (HG vidadupla.com.br:8002)
  22. Free Life: 369 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002:Free Life Central City)
  23. 3rd Rock Grid: 356 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
  24. Barefoot Dreamers: 352 active users (HG login.barefoot-dreamers.com:8002)
  25. Virtual Worlds Zone: 345 active users (HG virtual-worlds.zone:8002)

AviTron, which was the biggest mover last month also continued to lead the list of top active user gainers with 451 new active users, followed by Virtualife, which gained 273, Caprica 247, Barefoot Dreamers 186 and Virtual Worlds Zone with 142 new active users.

The actives 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 active user stats are also used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hyperport 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 or hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

Here some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Of course, 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 19,013 product listings in Kitely Market containing 37,683 product variations of which 32,616 are exportable.
Kitely Market Product Listing and exportables over the years. (Kitely Market Data.)
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 515 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 on 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.

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 own online marketplace.

The Tag grid marketplace now lists a total of 28,256 items, most of which are apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. The market now has over 300 verified users.

From the marketplace website, anyone is able to list their products or items on the marketplace to promote them either for sale or as a freebie, but the content can only be purchased and used within the Tag grid.

Group seeks content contributions to help battle violence against women

For the first time ever, OpenSim grids, communities, and individuals are invited to participate in 2LEI, an event held annually in Second Life to honor November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

To participate, contact Craft World founder Raffaele Macis, known in-world as Licu Rau, either on the Craft grid or by email at licu.rau@craft-world.org.

Craft is the first OpenSim to officially announce its participation, according to an announcement posted by organizer Rosanna Galvani. Galvani is the founder and owner of Craft World’s Museo del Metaverso.

This year, 2LEI will run from November 5 to 27 and is dedicated to the recognition of rights not yet achieved.

Fire and Ice hires new manager, adds region restart function

Garden and Furniture region on Fire and Ice grid now has Ubode physics supported. (Image courtesy Fire and Ice grid.)

the Fire and Ice grid. has hired Debbie Phoenix, grid owner Sara Payne told Hypergrid Business. 

“She has done a simply amazing job of helping support all our residents. She also helped Rogue get the events off the ground but is now focused on other tasks,” said Payne. “Last month we moved from Bullet Physics to Ubode and she has been instrumental in helping our residents make that adjustment. Overall the move has been a huge success.”

Following the update, one of the most popular regions at the grid, Garden and Furniture region, has been fully updated to support Ubode physics. The grid also now lets customers restart their own regions instead of having to ask an admin. They can do this either through the viewer or through their website account.

“The recommended method is through the web interface,” said Payne. “This is part of our ongoing improvements. We have a new secure interface between our website and our region servers which will allow us to add a host of further improvements in the future.”

The grid has also posted strong growth numbers.

“We have exceeded our highest ever visitor figures this month,” Payne said. “Today it’s showing 513 visitors in the last 30 days. Additionally, we have broken the 100 region barrier with the addition of 16 Gor role-play regions a new landowner has brought to Fire And Ice.”

Hello Outfit Challenge shop hosts Outfit Challenge

Outfit Challenge Event Location. (Image courtesy Outfit Challenge Shop.)

The Hello Outfit Challenge will take place from 12 p.m. Pacific Time on Wednesday, August 25 at the Hello Outfit Challenge Shop on the Xinashi region in Fire and Ice grid. The shop hosts a display of outfits like dresses, skirts, pants, and shorts which anyone can take a copy and use in the outfit they assemble then come to the event to show it off. The friendly, fun, and social event is focused on helping avatars look at their best.

Those participating in the challenge can end up having their outfits displayed for a month at the shop and included in the shop’s main collection. Anyone can also come to the event and see outfits and the displays even if not willing to be part of the challenge display.

The hypergrid address is fireandicegrid.net:8002:Xinashi.

Utopia Skye Grid to host Emergence event

Emergence show will take place next month. (Image courtesy Golden Skype.)

The Golden Touch Theater group will be hosting the Emergence show at 12 p.m. to 2.00 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, September 18 at the Golden Skye region of the Utopia Sky grid. The show involves an artistic dance, poetic theater, and visual entertainment representing a celebration of coming out of the dark. The semi-formal theater experience is set in beautiful surroundings to enhance visitor’s viewing pleasure.

The event will be full of music from the Golden Touch shows, dances with the dancers who’ve performed them, as well as fun all around.

There will be a pre-show event at 12.00 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, August 15 where visitors can come for a dance and a sneak peek of what will happen at the event.

The hypergrid address is utopiaskyegrid.com:8002. 

Karmalot Kingdom due to partner’s disappearance

This was the main entrance to Karmalot grid. (Image courtesy Karmalot.)

The Karmalot Kingdom grid is offline due to the disappearance of one of its partners, grid co-owner Karma Firde told Hypergrid Business. 

But she plans to bring the grid back up again as soon as she can, she said. “I have not stopped wanting my kingdom online.”

She said she does not know what happened to her partner, Raybo Rubble.

“We always kept in touch through our Facebook Karmalot Kingdom account,” she said. “In all those years we have never gone more than two weeks without responding to each other’s texts. We were transferring to an even faster server and updating things, giving the kingdom a fresh look, when my correspondence with Ray took a sudden stop.  The last text I received from him was on May 22. He said that the new server had been a bugger with installing stuff. He wanted to make sure he got it right and did not miss moving things over.”

You can keep up with the latest news on the Karmalot Kingdom Facebook page.

AviTron grid offering free land

AviTron, which now also has its own grid currency, is offering 400 free quarter-region parcels.

Each parcel can hold up to 3,750 prims, with two sides facing water.

The offer is open to grid residents who actively participate in grid activities and collect free tokens at in-world money giver machines.

For more information, visit this page or contact grid owner Alex Pomposelli at support@avitron.net.

Phantom Rose adds role play and a New Orleans region

Starting this month, Phantom Rose grid has added a weekly role-play event on the Bayou region, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific Time every Thursday.

Immediately following is a Pagan drum dance event from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific Time.

The new Bayou region is a fantasy version of New Orleans and features the city’s Spanish and French influences and architecture. On the region, there are boats, horse and carriage, horseback riding, historic dancing in the assembly room, romantic dancing at the ruins, mermaiding with free gothic fins at Haunted Lake.

Lannorra Sion

There are also several treasure adventure quests that require participants to do tasks and reward them with a special gift at the end, gird owner Lannorra Sion told Hypergrid Business.

There is also a shopping area next to the assembly room, with all free gifts, where you will find a dressmaker with free regency gowns, a Gentleman’s shop with regency period men’s wear, both made by Lannorra Sion along with other shops that feature food, cake plates, and accessories.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Brogal’s World, Kinknet, Ms Jaxxons Grid, Sharing Is Caring Family, and Twisted Grid.

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.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,679 different publicly-accessible grids, 321 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.