The birthday regions are getting set up now on OSgrid. (Image courtesy David Kariuki.)
OSgrid, the largest grid in land area and active user numbers, will celebrate its 14th birthday starting on Wednesday, July 14. The celebration will run through July 25.
And to celebrate its birthday, the grid will give away free parcels in the OSGB14 regions where creators can showcase their best creations. If willing to build, you can contact admins in-world or via the website’s contact page to get a new parcel.
Most of the events will take place on the grid’s Event Plaza, at hypergrid address hg.osgrid.org:80:event plaza.
In addition to the exhibitions, there will be live music events, beach parties, and performances.
The celebration is meant to promote OpenSim’s culture of creating and sharing items on OpenSim, OSgrid president Dan Banner told Hypergrid Business.
OSgrid share of land area. (Hypergrid Business Data.)
OSgrid is, the largest OpenSim grid, with nearly a third of the land area of all public grids combined.
Part of the reason is that it is an open, free-to-connect grid. That means that there are several OpenSim hosting companies offering low-cost regions on the grid.
Plus, anyone can also download the grid’s software and run a free self-hosted OpenSim region or regions on their home computer.
OSgrid active users share. (Hypergrid Business Data.)
In addition to being the largeST grid in area, OSgrid is also the most popular, accounting for 16 percent of all active users on OpenSim’s public grids.
LBSA Plaza region on OSgrid. (Image courtesy David Kariuki.)
The grid’s LBSA Plaza region is the crossroads of the hypergrid. It’s the first place to stop by if you need any help with anything OpenSim-related. The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Lbsa Plaza.
There are also weekly meetings every Saturday where the general public can come and ask questions.
For many years now, the grid has been one of the original OpenSimulator-based grids dedicated to testing OpenSim projects. Many creations are shared for free in the grid and, over the years, it has become a haven for creators to unleash their ideas and designs, and has seen a strong social community evolve, said OSgrid president Dan Banner.
Dan Banner
“The spirit of this grid is founded on people building and sharing their creations, experiences and talents,” he told Hypergrid Business. “People donating to keep it up and running and sharing with others. People running their own sims without excessive hosting costs having the know-how because of sharing with others.”
OSgrid residents with regions, plots, or shops they want to showcase are invited to share landmarks and builds on OSgrid’s birthday region.
(Image courtesy OSgrid.)
The theme of this year’s celebration is “the beach.”
“Each year we usually go with a different random theme and this time for no particular reason it’s a beach theme,” he said.
Residents value OSgrid for freedom to build
LaNani Sundara from Creatix World grid started with about five regions in OSgrid in 2016 after the closure of the Kaneva virtual world. She uses OSgrid to create, run sims, and host regions for other people. Some of the most memorable residential places she ever hosted are Le Dias and Hipster Friends for their fairy tale stuff and amazing builds.
Hypergrid address for the Le Dias region on OSgrid: hg.osgrid.org:80:Le Dias.
“Building is much easier here,” she said. “On Kaneva you could not import stuff as easily and, for example, you could only rotate things in two dimensions — not three. So to have a leaning panel, say to build a roof, you had to import or buy one.”
Le Dias. (Image courtesy David Kariuki.)
“We landed with 90 or so ex-Kanevians on OSgrid, many left by now, or moved all over the hypergrid,” she told Hypergrid Business. “We came clueless and in need of land. I am a computer science engineer though, so I figured out how to set up sims and regions for us refugees to gather and, slowly, we learned and people found their way. I still host land for mostly ex-Kanevians. That was what inspired me.”
“I am glad OSgrid was and is there for us when we needed a new home,” she added.
She has also used OSgrid for testing but currently uses the Creatrix World grid for her testing. After she is satisfied her code performs well, she deploys it on her 25 sims on OSgrid.
Sundara also hosts DJ’s music events every Wednesday and Friday and during fundraisers and birthday events. According to her, these events help people come together to raise funds and build items for OpenSim.
“The fundraisers are usually much fun,” she said. “They have great themes, auctions, and games. Great teamwork on those fundraisers.”
Fewer restrictions and costs
Nebula Clouds build by Caro Fayray. (Image courtesy David Kariuki.)
Caro Fayray, another OSgrid resident, started in Second Life in 2007 and then moved to OpenSim in 2009 but became actively engaged with OSgrid in 2012. She primarily uses the grid as a place to create and to interact with others and also as an escape from real life, she said, which is so necessary under present circumstances,.
OSgrid has become her home in OpenSim, she said.
Caro Fayray
“After becoming an addicted builder in my early years in Second Life, OSgrid has enabled me to realize many of my fantasies without the restrictions and funds needed for Second Life,” she told Hypergrid Business. “My daughter calls it my meditation. I can forget everything and lose hours while I build. I have also watched people come and go but the core community has grown stronger and there is now a group of residents who are very involved and ready to help newcomers.”
She is not a techie but is able to run regions hosted on a server at a friend’s house and managed remotely by a good friend in-world who lives in Canada. She also builds items for free distribution at the grid, including plaza decorations for events.
“Apart from my own regions I enjoy doing group projects and themed events,” she said. “One done recently was for the Virtual World Best Practices in Education conference event. A group of 11 artists were involved and the theme was Reconnaissance in Times of Darkness. I also enjoy helping to organize the auctions during the OSgrid fund-raiser. People donate stuff they have made and people bid real money on the items. This helps towards the running of the grids servers etc.”
She hails the grid as one that has dealt with trials and tribulations along the way, to survive and flourish as an entry point to OpenSim and one that is home to many residents.
“This was enabled by a very dedicated group of admins and developers who have worked so hard to make OSgrid what it is today,” she said. “Long live OSgrid and happy birthday.”
OpenSim stats went up across the board this month, with the number of regions hitting yet another record high, despite a cleanup on OSgrid that took down more than 1,000 region map reservations.
Overall, land area went up by the equivalent of 128 standard regions, for a new high of 101,528, registered users went up by 2,240 to 452,071, and the number of active users went up by 1,432 to 38,985.
Almost all of the growth was on hypergrid-enabled grids, where users are able to freely teleport in and out of the grid, have friends on other grids, and send messages to contacts on other grids. In fact today, 98 percent of OpenSim land area and 94 percent of its active users are on the hypergrid.
The top five grids that gained the most regions this month included OpenManniLand with 960 new regions, ZetaWorlds with 153, GorGrid with 105, Tag Grid with 97, and Enchanted Grid with 55 new regions. Of these, only Tag is not hypergrid-enabled.
Scroll to the bottom of this article for a list of OpenSim’s 40 largest grids by land area.
OpenSim land area size over the years. (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 more than 2,787 unique DreamGrids in total, 220 of which appeared in January this year alone.
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.
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.
Dynamic Worldz 2: 421 active users (HG grid.dynamicworldz2.com:8822)
Free Life: 393 active users (HG freelife.outworldz.net:8002:Free Life Central City)
Asgard Estate: 361 active users (HG hg.asgard.estate:8002)
Soul Grid: 349 active users (HG soul-grid.de:8002)
Top five grids that gained the most active users this month are OSgrid with 1,059 new active users, Virtualife with 626, Asgard Estate with 361, Discovery Grid with 353, and UllsWater with 246 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.
Kitely Market
There are currently 18,849 products listed in Kitely Market, containing 37,426 product variations, of which 32,312 are exportable.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 514 OpenSim grids to date.
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 down to a trickle.
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.
Tag Grid Marketplace
TAG grid marketplace items. (Image courtesy TAG grid.)
The Tag grid marketplace now lists a total of 28,169 items, most of which are apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. The market now has 309 verified users according to the website.
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. In fact, there are literally more entire grids using the Kitely Market than there are individual people shopping on Tag’s marketplace, another indication of content creators’ preferences for open, hypergrid-enabled platforms.
Littlefield to host virtual version of Canada Day
(Image courtesy Littlefield.)
Littlefield will host a virtual Canada Day from 1 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, July 1 at the Sweethearts region. There will be music and dancing.
The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Sweethearts.
The grid will also host the annual Independence Day party at the Independence Island region from 8 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, July 4. There will be rides, dancing, free food, and fireworks display.
The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Independence Island.
(Image courtesy Littlefield.)
AviWorlds to celebrate 2,500-users mark
(Image courtesy AviWorlds.)
AviWorlds is set to celebrate surpassing the 2,500 members mark from 3 to 9 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, June 26 at the AviWorlds’ Welcome Events stage. A year ago, on June 24, the grid hosted a party to celebrate reaching 1,000 users. That means in just under a year, the grid has gained 1,500 additional users, said AviWorlds grid owner Josh Boam.
“We will have various artists on stage and live performances,” he said. “All proceeds from the event will be donated to Make a Wish Foundation International. You can contribute with Podex dollars or directly to their website.”
He thanks Gasworks for the help with DJ’s. The DJs to participate are Phoenix Enigma who will perform from 3 to 5 p.m., Purrrfectt Cat from 5 to 7 p.m., and Dick Pinelli who will perform from 7 to 9 p.m.
The hypergrid address is login.aviworlds.com:8002.
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,666 different publicly-accessible grids, 341 of which were active this month, and 277 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.
Memorial region on Littlefield Grid. (Image courtesy Littlefield.)
Littlefield will celebrate its eight year anniversary since it started as a standalone grid on Saturday, April 10 with music and an exhibition of in-world creations.
The event starts at 3 p.m. Pacific time on the Anniversary region with a live performance by Terry Wildman, followed by a dance party with DJ Essensual McMahon until 7 p.m. Pacific time. The official opening ceremony will then be held at 7 p.m., followed by a dance party at 8 p.m. with DJ Walter Balazic.
The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:8002:Anniversary.
Littlefield started out as a community in Second Life before moving to OpenSim.
The celebration will continue through the following week, with exhibits and free gifts for both local residents and hypergrid visitors, Littlefield Grid co-owner Walter Balazic told Hypergrid Business.
Littlefield residents all did amazing jobs on the exhibits, but several stand out and should not be missed, he added.
“Camyn Darkstone’s ‘Who are the Worldmakers’ exhibit is a very large walk through design that honors people who create content and regions in Virtual Worlds,” he said. “Xi Shi’s ‘Ruritania Big Wheel’ looks very much like an enclosed Ferris wheel but actually allows you to walk along the inside and lets the environment pass you as if you were walking down the streets of Ruritania. Chelsea Louloudi and Mudpuddle Cleanslate have a very large exhibit called ‘Pepperland II’ that creates a world based on The Beatles Yellow Submarine animation.”
The anniversary celebration will conclude with two dance parties and another live artist performance on Saturday, April 17.
Bondage Ranch will launch in Littlefield during the April 10 anniversary. (Image courtesy Littlefield.)
Littlefield started in 2007 in Second Life where the current grid co-owners Dirk Mathers and Walter Balazic run several sims and BDSM regions like Stone Haven, Balazic Isle, Psi’s Realm and another one called Littlefield where the current grid derived its name.
Stonehaven. (Image courtesy Littlefield.)
But Second Life had some significant drawbacks for the Littlefield community.
Wardenclyffe. (Image courtesy Littlefield.)
For example, Second Life’s online marketplace hurt in-world shopping. Region owners that made money by having stores in their grid could no longer make their monthly region rental payments.
And those region rents — called “tiers” in Second Life — were high.
“Dirk’s tier was around $300 per month for Stonehaven, and I was paying $300 a month for Balazic Isle,” he said. “We also had several homestead regions which ran around $600 between Dirk and myself.”
With all the other expenses, total costs were between $2,000 and $2,500 a month, he said.
Mill-Run. (Image courtesy Littlefield.)
They moved to OpenSim in 2012 by first migrating their regions, as well as two others run by Hiro Pratagonist, to OSgrid in 2012.
“We wanted a grid that was safe, stable, on servers hosted professionally in a data center, had no money or financial system as we didn’t want users to have to have a job in order to enjoy the regions on the grid, and also have the control of the environment,” he said.
They moved from Second Life with several designers such as Ada Wong, Camryn Darkstone, and Toy McBride who were creating clothing, furniture and other content that simply didn’t exist in OpenSim at the time, while Dirk and Balazic focused on RLV based content and toys for the Stonehaven region.
The Littlehaven regions all fit on a single server, which cost around $100 a month.
Plus, being in OpenSim mean that Littlefield now had more control over their regions, and could get OAR region backups, which weren’t possible in Second Life.
But OSgrid had its disadvantages.
Littlefield’s regions were too big for OSgrid, Balazic said. Plus, Littlefield needed to be able to have adult-only regions, with no child avatars allowed, and OSgrid could not support that.
“One day while standing in our home region of Littlefield Mall in OSgrid, we met up with Ashton Nobilis, an incredibly talented and knowledgeable engineer who had a long background in OpenSimulator and Second Life,” he said. “We hit it off with him instantly. It was if we had known him our whole lives. Ashton discussed with us our plans to create our own grid and started immediately to create Littlefield Grid.”
In April 2014, Littlefield became its own grid, said Balazic. “It’s thanks to Ashton’s genius that Littlefield is incredibly stable, has incredible performance, and has in eight years only been down four weeks in total.”
Today, it costs around $1,800 a month to keep up the entire grid, he said, including server rentals and DNS services. That’s for a grid which currently has 207 total regions and hundreds of active monthly users.
“It costs us less now to have an entire grid than it did for nine sims in Second Life, two-thirds of them being homesteads,” he said.
OpenSim land area grew by the equivalent of over 5,000 standard regions over the past month and grids registered more than 4,000 new users. However, active monthly users fell slightly, down 2 percent from last month’s record high.
There are now 95,537 regions on the public OpenSim grids, a record high.
The biggest growth was on the commercial ZetaWorlds grid, which reported a gain of 3,647 regions. ZetaWorlds also had the highest growth in active users numbers, with 245 new actives. Other grids that gained land area include OSgrid with 1,130 new regions, OpenManniLand with 246 new regions, Enchanted Grid with 90 new regions, and Amaryllis Grid with 70 new regions.
OSgrid still remains both the largest grid, with 27,924 total standard region equivalents, followed by Kitely with 19,173 regions, ZetaWorlds with 8,850 regions, DigiWorldz with 7,855 regions, and Discovery Grid with 6,826 regions.
When it comes to the drop in active users, a large chunk is due to the closing of the AviTron and VirtualVille grids, new ventures by former AviWorlds owner Alex Pomposelli. AviTron was only online briefly this month, and reported only 13 active users — down from hundreds late last year.
In addition, active users on OSgrid fell by 1,340 this month and Tag Grid did not release their active user numbers.
Hypergrid land area increased over the years on OpenSim. (Hypergrid Business Data.)
They also do not include any grids that run other distributions of OpenSim in private mode, which includes many private company grids or school grids.
OutWorldz is now tracking a total of 4,933 grids and objects that have ever been online at one time or another and crawled. Out of this total, 59 percent or 2,932 are DreamGrids or those created with the DreamWorld software owned by OutWorldz.
Fred Beckhusen
However, only 361 are reported as online at this time. On February, 660 grids and objects were online out of which over 50 percent or 376 were DreamGrids, Fred Beckhusen, owner of OutWorldz and president Micro Technology Service told Hypergrid Business.
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.
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.
There are now 38,474 active users on the public OpenSim grids, down by 796 from last month’s record high.
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.
Kitely Market
There are currently 18,282 product listings in Kitely Market containing 36,674 product variations, of which 31,567 are sold with Export permission.
Exportables have been increasing on Kitely Market. (Kitely Market Data.)
The Tag grid marketplace now lists a total of 28,106 items in 26 categories, most of which are apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. The market now has 308 verified users according to its website.
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.
Neverworld grid has a new March offer for land sales
Virtual Florida Keys on Neverworld grid. (Image courtesy Neverworld.)
This month, Neverworld grid has a new special sale. Each of the three-by-three vareregions is now being offered at a quarterly price of $36 per quarter, said Govega Sachertorte, a grid representative.
“Regions can be requested and ordered on our region order form on our website,” he told Hypergrid Business. “We pride ourselves in fast set up regions with no setup fee.”
Neverworld grid also wants to let everybody know that they now have a 121-region area called The Keys which is an exact replica of the Florida Keys and fully sailable. The ara is built with a similar concept to the Blake Sea in Second Life. The grid is offering free housing and free parcels there for anyone, including hypergrid visitos. You can contact Govega Sachertorte or Joshua 7 in-world for details if interested.
“Also, we have some self-serve regions for rent you just click on the box and pay via Gloebit for the entire month,” he said.
Most of the free land has either docks or a place to build one and is very recommended for anyone yearning for a tropical vacation.
The No Border’s Festival on 3rd Rock grid next week
(Image courtesy 3RD Rock grid.)
The thirteenth annual No Border’s Festival meant to raise money for the Mèdicins Sans Frontiéres — also known as Doctors Without Borders — will take place on 3rd Rock Grid from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, March 20.
This month, it will be tenhours of entertainment and visitors can come to enjoy music from different presenters and visit different regions on 3rd Rock Grid while contributing to a good course. All proceeds will go to benefit the organization.
Ausgrid outages
Ausgrid is currently down because of a misbehaving software, the owner, Kylie Brimmer. The grid will be back, hopefully soon, once the installation of the Windows server software is complete, Brimmer told Hypergrid Business.
VIBE Group moving its servers
The VIBE group is in the process of moving off their current university host server. The grids and content will be unavailable for the foreseeable future, owner Stephen Gasior told Hypergrid Business.
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,646 different publicly-accessible grids, 351 of which were active this month, and 288 of which published their statistics.
All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever available.
Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.
OpenSim’s total land area hit a record high this month, with the equivalent of 90,309 regions. And this is actually an undercount — many grids don’t report their stats, many schools and company grids run in completely private mode, and some grids count large variable-sized regions as single regions.
This is the first time in OpenSim’s history that it’s crossed the 90,000 region mark.
OpenSim also hit a new record high for active monthly users, with a new total of 39,247 actives — up from 35,669 last month.
Nearly all the activity was on hypergrid-enabled grids — the hypergrid currently accounts for 98 percent of OpenSim’s land area and 99 percent of its active users. However, Tag, the largest non-hypergrid world, did not report its active users numbers this month.
OSgrid, which serves as a test grid for OpenSimulator software is still the largest grid, with a total of 26,794 regions and is also the most popular with a total 6,146 active users.
A standard region equivalent is an area the size of a standard Second Life or OpenSim regions — or about 16 virtual acres.
Change in OpenSim land area over the years in terms of standard regions. (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.
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.
When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is, the busier, the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience… you get the idea.
The 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.
Kitely Market
There are currently 18,114 product listings in Kitely Market containing 36,460 product variations, of which 31,368 are sold with the Export permission.
Starting this week, merchants on the Kitely Market will be able to advertise for free on the grid’s Welcome Center on an area called Merchants Showcase.
This is good news because advertising in the marketplace itself is not free. Fans of the Kitely Market have been asking for this feature for years, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business.
Tag Grid Marketplace
TAG marketplace. (Image courtesy TAG grid.)
The Tag grid marketplace now lists a total of 28,105 items in 26 categories, most of which are apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. The market now has 308 verified users according to its website.
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.
Fire and Ice grid nearly doubles active users
Garden and Furniture region had more visitors than any other region on Fire and Ice grid. (Image courtesy Fire and Ice grid.)
Fire and Ice grid has seen a 78 percent increase in the number of visitors in the last one month to its current tally of 500 visitors per month.
The most number of users were realized in their Garden and Furniture sim, Fire and Ice grid owner Sara Payne told Hypergrid Business.
“This is in no small part down to the opening of our Garden And Furniture sim which has seen 184 unique visitors in the last 14 days since it opened,” she said. “Many of those visitors also visited other regions on Fire And Ice.”
This month, the grid also has a new events sim known as Events Region , which will be dedicated to hosting events on the grid. The region was built by a resident of the grid known as Wicked Way, said Payne.
“This was where we held our first Masquerade Ball for Valentines night,” she said. “The events region is a fairground surround a ballroom and is quite the experience.”
The Gardens sim is all new content to OpenSim, which is a reason it is attracting many users she said, adding that no one had uploaded the garden sets previously anywhere.
“The sets are also bundled into rez boxs so people can take them away and place them without the need to manually place items,” she said.
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,634 different publicly-accessible grids, 352 of which were active this month, and 278 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.
Can’t make it out to a fancy restaurant this Valentine’s Day because of, you know, fear of death? Or maybe you and your loved one are apart this holiday season? Or maybe you just want to treat yourself — OpenSim grids are offering a variety of options this holiday season.
Valentines Formal Dance and Fair on Fire and Ice grid
The Fair. (Image courtesy Fire and Ice grid.)
On the Fire and Ice grid, there’s a Valentine’s Formal Dance starting at 2 p.m. Pacific time on the Events region. DJ Siren Song will take you through a mix of love songs to spice up your Valentine’s and the fairground date setting.
“Siren’s sets have been very well received every time she has taken to the airwaves,” Fire and Ice grid owner Sara Payne told Hypergrid Business. “She will be sure to entertain your earbuds this time too.”
At the ballroom, there will be couples and singles dances as well as live entertainment on offer. The dance will last for at least two hours.
The Ballroom. (Image courtesy Fire and Ice grid.)
While the ballroom is the centerpiece for the party, there will be also be fairground rides in the surrounding region.
The hypergrid address is fireandicegrid.net:8002:Events.
Dance to the new French album Les vieux dossiers on the Speculoos grid
(Image courtesy Les vieux Dossiers.)
The album Les vieux dossiers was recently released in real life by Speculoos grid founder Olivier van Helden, also known as Magic Oli in world. The grid will celebrate the release of the new album starting at 1 p.m. Pacific time on February 14.
Les vieux Dossiers
“It will include the streaming of the full album, followed by Gudule’s French mix, meaning some French songs, but not only,” van Helden told Hypergrid Business.
The hypergrid address is speculoos.co.uk:8002.
Alternate Metaverse Grid hosts Valentines Club Crawl
Clubs taking part in Alternate Metaverse grid’s Valetines Club Crawl. (Image courtesy Alternate Metaverse.)
The Valentine’s Club Crawl Event on the Alternate Metaverse Grid will feature 11 stops around the grid, each stop having its own kind of Valentine’s theme and activities.
“There will be live performers, DJs and a class happening over the Valentine’s weekend, and all of these activities and events are open to the whole of the OpenSim hypergrid community in the name of love,” grid spokeswoman Sofee Supermarine told Hypergrid Business.
The Valentine’s specials will kick off on Saturday, February 13 with a Pre-Valentine’s Crawl.
The first stop features DJ Aphra Hendrix who will open the Pre-Valentine’s Club Crawl with some Nu Disco from 10 a.m. to noon Pacific time at the Cozy Comforts Club. The hypergrid Address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Cozy Comforts.
The second stop will feature DJ Sofee Supermarine who will play some fun romance from noon to 2 p.m. Pacific time at the Funsize Club. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Funsize.
The third stop will feature Cataplexia Numbers, who will come in for a Class of Sacred Love – Chakra Awareness from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time at the Chakras In Motion region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Koryphon.
The fourth stop will feature DJ Zed Wrenn from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Club Cherry region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Zeds Hangout.
Ending the grid’s Pre-Valentine’s day will be the final stop with DJ Jeff Edwards from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Club Gatsby’s region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Endless Summer.
Clubs taking part in Alternate Metaverse grid’s Valetine’s Club Crawl. (Image courtesy Alternate Metaverse.)
The Valentine’s Club Crawl will continue on the Valentine’s Day itself on Sunday, February 14 and will feature seven stops.
The first stop will feature DJ Michael Webb to open the Valentines Day celebrations from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific Time at the Horror House region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Horror House.
The second stop will feature DJ Harzer Bigbear from 10 a.m. to 12 noon Pacific time at the Grotta Giagante region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Nordharz.
The third stop will have live performer Clan Escotia and The Clan live from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m. Pacific time at the Club Escotia region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Club Escotia.
The fourth stop will have DJ Ian Kitsilano from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time at the Rockpalast region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Nordharz.
Then there will be a one hour rest time to get ready for the rest of the stops.
The fifth stop will feature live performer Austin Moores and his angels live from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Club Cupid region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Almost Heaven.
The sixth stop will feature live performer Merrick Robonaut performing live from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the ArtSpeak Cafe’. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:AMV Events.
The seventh stop will have DJ Rosa Aleskeev from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Legends region. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Legends.
Ending the Valentine’s Club Crawl weekend will be the last stop featuring DJ Cherokee Damar from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Legends. The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Legends.
Valentine’s Party at OSgrid
(Image courtesy OSGrid.)
The Event Plaza region of the OSgrid is a popular place for hypergrid events and from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. of February 14, the plaza will host a Valentine’s Party.
The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Event Plaza.
Dance in latex to fetish music at Littlefield grid
The Latex Lounge of the Littlefield grid will be lit for Valentine’s Day this Sunday starting at 5 p.m. Pacific time at the Battersea region, a popular destination for endless music. Come down with your latex or leather for several hours of dance and fetish music with DJ Essensual.
The hypergrid address is hg:lfgrid:8002:Battersea.
Also, don’t forget the Sweethearts’ and the Speakeasy regions that always have songs, music and dances every Thursday and Saturday of the week, and setting you up for the Valentine’s Day this week.
The hypergrid addresses are hg:lfgrid:8002:Sweethearts and hg:lfgrid:8002:Speakeasy respectively.
Shop virtual Valentine-themed items at MyOpenGrid
(Image courtesy Myopengrid.)
MyOpenGrid has virtual items on sale made specifically for your Valentine’s day clads. These items include Bella Stilettos, Burgundy Wish Catsuit, and Claret Scrubs. These items can be delivered across any OpenSim grid once you buy them from the MyOpenGrid Marketplace. You are able to pay with common methods including PayPal and Western Union.
The items are delivered directly to you without using vendors. Creators can, as merchants, also offer their items for sale at the marketplace including those for the Valentine’s Day.
Protesters wearing Free the Hostages signs on AviWorlds grid. (Image courtesy AviWorlds.)
Music club owners, performers, and other OpenSim users are protesting tomorrow against Alternate Metaverse grid’s restrictions on fan groups.
The protest is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, January 28 at the GasWorks region on the AviWorlds grid and will feature speakers, musicians, DJs, and vocalists.
The hypergrid address is login.aviworlds.com:8002:GasWorks.
The protesters are upset that the Alternate Metaverse grid is prohibiting the promotion of events on other grids, and say that some of their fan groups have been deleted.
Organizers include musician Rogue Parsons, also known as Rogue Galaxy, GasWorks Blues music club owners BlueLou McGrady and Rae Donogal, and Zuzions club co-owner Stevie Zee.
Others who have spoken up condemning Alternate Universe’s actions include Bonnie Parker, a former administrator at Alternate Metaverse and now a resident of AviWorlds, AviWorlds resident Jazzi DarkChild, performers DJ Princess Gotti, and DJ Kawaii, Luna Stormfeather, Taylor Made, Abaddon Darkness, AviWorlds administrator Pride Vice and AviWorlds CEO Josh Boam.
Saturday night! Rogue Galaxy sings live at a past GasWorks event. (Image courtesy GasWorks.)
“On the day of the event, we will have 16 display posters on the sidewalks and you can get a sign of your choice by clicking on the poster you like,” Rogue Parsons told Hypergrid Business.
According to Parsons, the specific Alternate Metaverse administrator responsible for problems is Cataplexia Numbers. As of publication, she did not respond to a request for comment.
“She is holding my group hostage and I cannot notify my music fans of where I am playing,” said Parsons. “My group has a lot of hypergrid members, not just members of Alternate Metaverse. I worked hard these past six months to build up my fanbase. She is trying to ruin my music business by holding my group hostage.”
Some OpenSim residents are supporting the protest with signs. Some signs are also available on the Welcome region of the AviWorlds grid, at hypergrid address login.aviworlds.com:8002:AviWorlds Welcome.
BlueLou McGrady
“The event being held on Thursday is being done in support of those who feel their opinions, and feelings and grievances do not matter,” GasWorks’ BlueLou McGrady told Hypergrid Business. “It is a chance for them to get things off their chests.”
Some grid managers may feel that allowing the promotion of events on other grids could encourage their residents to leave.
“But it can also encourage residents of other grids to visit the Alternate Metaverse grid,” said Hypergrid Business editor Maria Korolov. “By creating restrictions, AMV is discouraging performers from choosing Alternate Metaverse their home base. In addition, if residents love their home grid then they become ambassadors for that grid when they travel elsewhere.”
GasWorks says 200-member fan group has been deleted
The user account belonging to GasWorks, a music club, was banned and the club’s fan group of more than 200 members deleted last month, said GasWorks’ McGrady.
“Without warning, or advance notice, the GasWorks VIP group was deleted by Alternate Metaverse grid management,” he said. “Gone. It is important to note that our notices were simply event notices with a hyperlink to our new location. We did not ask group members to leave the Alternate Metaverse grid. Ironically, the last notice we sent in the VIP group was a notice in support of an event being held on the Alternate Metaverse grid.”
Protesters wearing Free the Hostages signs on AviWorlds grid. (Image courtesy AviWorlds.)
GasWorks owners Rae Donogal and BlueLou McGrady then left the Alternate Metaverse grid as we covered in a recent post.
“I pulled the club GasWorks from the Alternate Metaverse grid due to numerous incidents of being treated poorly by management of Alternate Metaverse,” said McGrady. “My original intent was to simply leave quietly as we had found a good place to land in the AviWorlds grid.”
Many others known to GasWorks owners have also had a number of restrictions, bans, and their groups held hostage, and many do not feel their voices are heard or their opinions don’t matter, according to McGrady, and this is the reason they will be having the protest event this Thursday.
“The last time I checked, Alternate Metaverse grid was a hypergrid enabled grid,” McGrady said. “As such, theoretically, people are allowed to move freely between grids, for visiting, shopping, or entertainment. Unfortunately, instead it seems to have become almost a Hotel California type situation where you can check in, anytime you like, but you can never leave.”
He says the Thursday protest event may not fix things in the long run because he is certain the management of Alternate Metaverse grid will take a stance that they are being victimized.
“That isn’t really the case,” he said. “People feel mistreated, wronged, and then dismissed. That rarely works for very long before they speak out.”
(Image courtesy AviWorlds.)
Rogue Parsons, who has a fan group called Rogues Rowdie Followers on Alternate Metaverse, which has over 100 members, says that she cannot now use the group to promote her events.
Alternate Metaverse was her first grid when she first came to OpenSim eight months ago. She received a free region, Treble Clef, and was paid well to perform at several shows on the grid, she said. But the relationship has soured and she has not been able to post on her fan group page at Alternate Metaverse since January 7.
“I am not banned from Alternate Metaverse,” Parsons told Hypergrid Business. “But Cataplexia told me that I can no longer post my hypergrid events to my personal fan group on her grid.”
She’d been posting all her events to the group, including all her hypergrid events for the previous six months.
“Cat told me I am no longer allowed to do that,” said Parsons. “I did send a notice to my group today and I’m afraid she will delete it like she did with the GasWorks Group. As a performer, I depend on reaching out to my music fans. I am a member of Alternate Metaverse. As a member, I am free to create my personal groups and I used my group for music fans from all across the hypergrid.”
She says that she now regrets referring her friends and fellow musicians to Alternate Metarverse.
“I have started a group at AviWorlds and I’m building it up,” said Parsons. “It has 20 members, and I also have a group at OSgrid with over 95. My experience at other grids is very positive and AviWorlds is very respectiful and supportive of their residents. Nobody tells me at AviWorlds or OSgrid that I cannot promote my shows on other grids.”
Ironically, Parsons said that she hadn’t been planning to hold a protest until Cataplexia accused her of doing just that.
“I logged into Alternate Metaverse one day last week and I got a notecard from her saying that she heard I had a Free the Hostages From AMV event, and that just wasn’t true,” said Parsons. “I never did that, but since she brought it up and accused me outright, I actualy thanked her for the idea, and went ahead to plan this event.”
(Image courtesy AviWorlds.)
Bonnie Parker said that she was a manager on Alternate Metaverse back when the grid first launched but has since been banned. Part of the reason for the falling out, she said, was that was asked to go and spy on GasWorks while it was still the grid. She accused club owners were asked not to hold events at the same time as Cataplexia’s.
“I went and met Rae and Blue, the owners of GasWorks, and I told them Cat sent me to spy on you,” Parker told Hypergrid Business. “I asked them, ‘Are you doing anything bad?’ as I laughed — because I thought it a stupid thing to ask me to spy on someone.”
Most grids do not place restrictions on fan groups
(Image courtesy AviWorlds.)
As a result of Alternate Metaverse’s actions some residents, especially performers, have begun leaving for other grids.
“We here at AviWorlds have noticed a higher than normal amount of new account creation,” said AviWorlds’ Vice. “I am not aware if this has anything to do with this topic but I am going to go out on a limb and say it probably is.”
One business owner who left Alternate Metaverse for AviWorlds reported that their groups were immediately deleted, Vice told Hypergrid Business. ”Luckily they know all their staff and were still able to contact them.”
AviWorlds places no restrictions on promotions either inside or outside the grid, and residents are welcome to use their avatars to perform or work on other grids.
“The only thing that AviWorlds asks is — don’t grief,” said Vice. “This also goes for your groups. We don’t micromanage them. They are your groups to do as you wish for with them. We leave it up to the group owner to decide what they allow and don’t allow. To deny an individual their creationism, individuality, exploration, and endeavors is completely immoral. Never take another’s voice. It is their greatest power.”
Josh Boam
AviWorlds CEO Josh Boam said that he’ll be attending the protest tomorrow.
“I’m going because I believe in our residents,” he told Hypergrid Business. “We provide all users with the same care and support as anyone else and we strive for freedom. Common sense is the only rule.”
OpenSim land area grew the equivalent of 2,270 standard regions and OpenSim grids reported more than 4,000 new registered users this month compared to last month.
However, the number of active users dropped by 646. This loss — and then some — could be attributed to Foundation Grid and Virtual Ville or Avitron, not reporting their stats this month. Both grids seem to be closed — and each had hundreds of active monthly users at the end of 2020. In addition, Tag Grid, which had more than 1,600 active users at the end of 2020, also did not release its active user stats this month. The grid has a new login URI now as taggrid.org:8002. OpenSimulator Community Conference, which had over 500 actives last month, also concluded in mid-December last year.
OSgrid is still the largest grid overall with the equivalent of 26,154 standard regions in total followed by Kitely which has 19,180, DigiWorldz with 8,015, Discovery Grid with 6,844, and ZetaWorlds with 4,608 regions.
Growth in OpenSim land area over the years. (Hypergrid Business Data)
ZetaWorlds was also the fastest-growing grid this past month, reporting the equivalent of 1,053 new regions. OSgrid gained 565 new regions, Caprica added 305, AviWorlds added 175, and Creatix World added 88 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.
The Hyperica robot has crawled over 6,300 grids of any type since Jan 1, 2020. These 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.
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.
3rd Rock Grid: 392 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
Neverworld: 360 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
Tangle Grid: 306 active users (HG tanglegrid.net:8002:HG Station 1)
Littlefield: 294 active users (HG lfgrid.com:8002)
Tranquility: 290 active users (HG tranquility-life.info:8002)
Nextlife World: 287 active users (HG nextlife-world.de:8002)
Kohaku Grid was the fastest-growing this month, with 631 new active users followed by OSgrid which got 578 new active users, Soul Grid with 181, Hartland with 105, and Living Dreams Grid with 98 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.
Kitely Market
There are currently 17,868 product listings in the Kitely Market, containing 36,074 product variations of which 30,996 are exportable.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 484 OpenSim grids to date.
Exportables have been rising has have been listings over the years on Kitely Market. (Kitely Market Data.)
The Tag grid marketplace now lists a total of 28,104 items in 26 categories, most of which are apparel, avatar accessories, and avatar appearances. The market now has 307 verified users.
Anyone can visit the website 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.
OpenSim developer meeting
A general technical meeting for the OpenSimulator developer community is set to take place at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on January 19 at the Wright Plaza of OSgrid. These are weekly meetings, with other meetings set for the same time on January 26, February 2 and February 19.
Those with OpenSim projects and those contributing to the OpenSim code are invited for the one-hour meeting.
Developers are invited to bring up any subject they wish will help develop OpenSim and testers and users are also encouraged to bring up items that will help develop OpenSim.
The hypergrid address is osgrid.org:80:Wright Plaza.
Annual Febulicious Fashionista event to take place next month
Fashionista Model in a past virtual show. (Image courtesy Core Productions Modeling Agency.)
The annual Febulicious Fashionista event sponsored by the Fashion Boulevard Core Productions modeling agency will take place from Sunday, February 7 to Saturday, February 13 in DigiWorldz.
The event is a series of fashion shows, live entertainment, musicals, community social events, merchant booths where merchants can sell their items, and creator expos with content exhibitions.
“We offer booths to content creators and they are 100 percent free to you. No catch, no hidden costs, nothing,” wrote the event manager Martin Glom on a post. “We promote and advertise you and your business throughout the week on OpenSim listings and also on DigiWorldz events.”
The shows and events, which are widely advertised in-world and on social media, are open to DigiWorldz residents as well as hypergrid visitors.
You can either participate in the event by being part of the event team as an entertainer, DJ or content creator to help the team with promoting businesses and the event. You can also participate as a merchant or a content creator by getting a booth for your exhibitions either for free or on-sale content. You can contact the event’s team in-world or via their Facebook page to participate.
Content creators, entertainers and DJs will be paid while helping the team to promote the event.
The hypergrid address is login.digiworldz.com:8002:Fashion Boulevard II.
Soloton Daily Meditations for self-improvement and focus
Want to improve your self? Hop over to the Soloton daily German-guided meditations hosted on the Kalasiddhi grid from 10 p.m. Pacific time every day except Friday.
The hypergrid address is kalasiddhigrid.com:8002.
Infinite Metaverse Alliance community Q&A
The weekly informal hypergrid community question and answer session hosted by the Infinite Metarverse Alliance takes place each Wednesday. The session has the video, chat, and audio recorded for those who cannot attend.
The teleport address is grid.metaversedepot.com:8002:IMA Outpost Alpha.
The Kitely Community Meeting
The Kitely Community Meeting, which is a social gathering that provides an opportunity for newcomers and old hands to ask questions and exchange information about projects and events will take place on 11 a.m. Pacific time on Sunday, January 17, and February 7. The meetings are open to hypergrid visitors.
The teleport address is grid.kitely.com:8002:Kitely Welcome Center.
Learn Blender for OpenSim
Beginners who wish to learn the basics of 3D modeling for OpenSim using Blender application can join instructor Mike Lorrey for a lesson on the Kitely grid from 2 p.m. Pacific time every week.
Participants need to have the Blender 2.8 application installed, be able to view prim media, and be able to hear in-world voice for instructions.
The hypergrid address is grid.kitely.com:8002:Space Force.
Fire and Ice grid celebrates first anniversary
Fire and Ice land is cheap. (Image courtesy Fire and Ice.)
The grid has been averaging around 300 active users a month for past four months, and its land area has grown to 87 regions. Half of its land area is composed of commercially-rented regions and the grid has been profitable for the last six months.
“I consider everything to be an achievement,” the proprietor of the Fire and Ice grid Sara Diamond wrote in a post. “We started with two avatars, no community and one server. We now have regular groups who get together as a community using both the grid and out-of-world services such as Discord server. There is a real sense of friendship and community growing at Fire and Ice.”
The grid has also been added to the list of default grids listed in the Firestorm Viewer, which makes it easier for new residents to find it.
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,624 different publicly-accessible grids, 344 of which were active this month, and 282 of which published their statistics.
All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.
Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.
OpenSim stats are down this month by a little over 1,000 active users — but Tag Grid, OpenSim’s largest closed grid, did not report stats this month, and had over 1,500 active users this month.
Active users are expected to increase again next month, as students return to school. Craft World is already seeing increased interest from educators (see related article here.)
OpenSim land area also went down, by nearly 5,300 standard region equivalents. But OSgrid, OpenSim’s largest grid, reported a loss of nearly 5,800 regions. OSgrid allows users to connect home-based regions for free, and holds the map spots reserved while the regions are offline. Once in a while, OSgrid clears map reservations for regions that haven’t been connected to the grid in a long time, and the total reported land area goes down.
This month, any map reservations that hadn’t been used since 2019 were removed, OSgrid president Dan Banner told Hypergrid Business.
OpenSim land area fell this month by a substantial number of regions. (Hypergrid Business Data.)
OutWorldz reports that it has so far, ever counted a cumulative total of 2,531 grids, out of which were hypergriddable and 1,727 private grids.
There have been 6,308 grids of any type that have been crawled by the Hyperica robot since Jan 1, 2020. These 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.
Out of the total counted 6,308 grids, 5,588 grids are Dreamworlds or virtual worlds created using the OutWorldz DreamWorlds software. Out of these, only 720 were detected as online during August using the Hyperica grid crawler, and out of these online grids, 647 are hypergriddable Dreamworlds or Dreamworlds accessible to the metaverse via the hypergrid port.
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. OutWorldz also provides OpenSim users with free mesh items, OARs, and free seamless textures that you can download and use on your grids.
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.
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.
Island Beach recorded the most growth in active users this past month, with at 995 new actives, followed by Little Breath with 394, Forbidden World with 193, Virtual Dream with 493, Grimm with 182, with 171, and Party Destination Grid with 103 new active users.
3rd Rock Grid: 408 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)
Freedom Grid: 402 active users (HG freedomgrid.world:8002)
Little Breath: 396 active users (HG little-breath.club:8002)
Counter Earth: 392 active users (HG jand.dyndns.biz:7002)
Neverworld: 391 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
Tranquility: 316 active users (HG tranquility-life.info:8002)
Virtual Reload: 313 active users (HG grid.virtualreload.cloud:8002)
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.
Kitely Market
There are currently 16,989 product listings in Kitely Market containing 34,638 product variations, of which 29,578 are exportable.
Exportables continued to increase this month on Kitely Market. (Kitely Market Data.)
Ansky moves to a new dedicated server, resumes land sales
Ansky land sale home page. (Image courtesy Ansky Grid.)
AnSky Grid has moved to a new dedicated server beginning mid-July this year and away from a cloud server that previously hosted the grid. The grid is now better with improved loading time and flexibility, grid owner Andrew Simpson told Hypergrid Business.
“I couldn’t set-up a few features like to add security options like two-factor authentication, and now the server is owned by us, and am glad to see a lot fewer lag issues and faster loading time,” he said.
Stores at 3RDLife grid. (Image courtesy 3rdLife Grid.)
3RD Life Grid now offers two options for those who want to purchase regions—either a region with nothing built on it or a region with pre-built structures on it. Those buying regions with pre-built structures can choose between a Village or Farm Land, Beach Home, and Forest which is a home and other surprises on it.
“These have been pre-built for the non-builders,” grid owner Tommy Seetan told Hypergrid Business. “If a resident buys one of the pre-built sims, they will have full access to everything. They can take the stuff away or add more if they wish. There is plenty of room.”
Craft World prepares for school openings, museum exhibits
Techland school region on Craft World, which belong to a teacher called Michela Occhioni and which has her own grid. (Image courtesy Craft World grid.)
In addition, the grid’s Museo del Metaverso is hosting a three-week group exhibition with eight artists, called Arena Call, every month. The coming month’s Arena Call for Artists 2020 event will take place on September 1 with a group exhibition by eight artists.
Region Ebla, belonging to Museo del Metaverso, where Arena Call for Artists is held. (Image courtesy Craft World grid.)
The hypergrid address for the Museo’s main region is MdM:craft-world.org:8002:mdm.
The event’s venue is hypergrid address is craft-world.org:8002:ebla.
Museo del Metaverso, the museum has been founded and is curated by Rosanna Galvani. (Image courtesy Craft World.)
The museum will also hold educational events about the coronavirus on September 6 and 8.
Craft is also updating its website to make it easier for users to find some information. First, it will provide a new page for students, teachers, and parents and will make it possible for users to search regions by “general,” “mature,” “adult” and “school” categories on its grid map.
Attend SciFi events at Furry World
(Image courtesy Furry World grid.)
Furry World will be hosting a SciFi event every Sunday at 9 a.m. Pacific time on the Dawn Universe region.
“It is about SciFi roleplay with stories such as recovering crashed spaceships, researching new events in space, fighting against a villain who threatens galaxies,” grid owner Tigger Puschelpaw told Hypergrid Business.
The hypergrid URL for the region is Furry-World.de:8002:Dawn Universe.
Visit a reconstruction of Villa Latifundia on Ancient Rome
Principium region at the Ancient Rome grid. (Image courtesy Ancient Rome.)
The Ancient Rome grid, which focuses on history, geography, research, and archaeology, has built a virtual German Villa Borg, which is a complete virtual reconstruction of Villa Latifundia and Rustica, excavations, artifacts, and historical sites.
“It is a university project,” grid owner Carmen Rochel told Hypergrid Business.
Students or members of the general public can get free houses and land and build on the grid. Anyone who can help to build on the grid can also contact Camen on the grid’s webpage.
Welcome Center on TanGLe grid. (Image courtesy TanGLe grid.)
Tangle Grid is now hosting a Classic Rock party with DJ Leslie starting at 10 a.m. Pacific every first Monday of the month at the Great Community Group region.
The hypergrid address is tanglegrid.net:8002:gcg refugee.
Learn to fly on Discovery Grid
A virtual Lear Jet model at Discovery Grid. (Image courtesy Discovery Grid.)
Discovery Grid has an airport region called Earhart Regional Airport on which anyone can hop into an aircraft and fly virtually, or even learn how to fly by attending regular classes each Thursday at 1 p.m. Pacific time. The classes are taught by the region’s virtual flight instructors who each teach ground school, owner of the Discovery grid Balpien Hammerer, also known as Rene Vega, told Hypergrid Business.
“The grid has picked up in activity with the arrival of roleplay activity, and events in new genres, notably aviation activity,” he said. “With the new Discovery Aviation Club the grid now has a group of aviators and a growing number of airports and airfields located throughout the grid.”
Recently, Hammerer created a set of scripts for the F-18 and A-18 fighter jet model made by Neytiri Omatikaya of PyroVR Fireworks. The scripts are generalized to drive a range of aircraft, including a Lear Jet model built by Magic of Ocean Engineering, a Falcon trijet, and a Goa’uld death glider.
Discovery Grid also hosts the Seattle Pop-up Market near the Space Needle in the virtual Seattle.
“This popular pop-up market is going into its second year already,” said Hammerer. “In its two-weeks run, the summer market had 130 unique local and hypergrid visitors.”
Tranquility Grid extends 20 percent off summer region sale
The La Grande at Tranquility. (Image courtesy Tranquility grid.)
Tranquility grid is extending the summer sale until the end of August with a 20 percent discount for region buyers who use the “July202o” discount code.
“The price is normally $7.50 and after a discount it’s just $6 per month for a home starter region of 10,000 prims,” grid owner Steve Stewart told Hypergrid Business. Land rentals are only available for grid residents, not hypergrid visitors.
One needs to be a grid resident to purchase land at the grid.
“We also now can supply DJ or radio streams for Shoutcast or Icecast, starting from $1.50 per month,” said Stewart.
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,573 different publicly-accessible grids, 351 of which were active this month, and 270 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.
In addition to the official distribution of the OpenSimulator software, there are several variations of the open-source virtual world platform, including the mini-grid Diva Distro version, the easy-to-install-at-home DreamGrid version, the HalcyonGrid distribution from the now-defunct InWorldz grid, the AuroraSim distribution which hasn’t been updated since 2014, the still actively developed WhiteCoreSim, as well as grid-specific versions of OpenSim such as the one distributed by OSgrid, or the one used internally by Kitely for its cloud-based region management.
One that’s been getting some attention lately is the Nani OpenSim distribution, by Lanani Sundara and Hyacinth Jewell from the Hgluv grid. Grids using it include Hglub itself, as well as Discovery Grid. Some people also use it to run individual regions that they host on home computers and attach to OSgrid.
Discovery Grid. (Image courtesy Discovery Grid via Facebook.)
Nani OpenSim is a fork from an earlier version of the official OpenSim code base and is designed to offer stability and performance improvements.
Two days ago, however, Sundara released what may be the final version of Nani OpenSim.
“It is getting harder to keep up with the changes in new viewers,” she wrote in the release notes.
In addition, the official OpenSim development team has released its own updated version at the end of October, which includes a new script engine and support for animated mesh.
To keep pace with new features in the viewers, and in the official release, Sundara would either have to redo the work of the core OpenSim developers, or throw out all her own work and start over from the latest official version.
“I think I am on a thin branch now and need to let go of it,” she wrote. “Thank you all for using my code when you did, I hope you enjoyed it. For now, I will stop updating this branch here.”
