Category: ZetaWorlds

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OpenSim user activity ramping up for the holidays

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are now tracking a total of 2,642 grids, of which 337 are active and 273 published their statistics this month. The rest do not have accessible public stats pages. The metaverse now spans an area of 125,877 total standard region equivalents, 95 percent of which is hypergriddable. There are nearly half a million total users out of which 44,184 are active. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.

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

Total OpenSim virtual land area in standard regions over time. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

Our stats do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid which is a distribution of OpenSim since these tend to be private grids.

DreamGrid has so far recorded more than 3,000 unique DreamGrids that have launched since it was launched, according to Micro Technology Services CEO Fred Beckhusen. Micro Technology Services owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz.

Fred Beckhusen

The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. Anyone can easily add their grid to this list from the same page.

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, anyone can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature on their home computer. They can also use it to easily and quickly manage their grids, including adding new regions, banning users, deleting regions, auto restarting,  tracking usage stats, and shutting down entire grids or unoccupied regions to save computing power. Learn here how to create and host a new Dreamgrid on your home computer using the software.

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

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

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

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

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

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

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

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

The active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know. The most popular grids are also not necessarily the most active.

The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,500 product listings in Kitely Market containing 40,366 product variations, 35,192 of which are exportable.

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

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

As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years.

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

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

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

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

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

OpenSim grid news

Thanksgiving Day at Littlefield Grid

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.).

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

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

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

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

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.).

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

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

(Image courtesy Littlefield grid.).

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

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:Christmas Island.

Neverworld offers free prims on new rentals to celebrate eighth birthday

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

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

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

Live on Mars at Neverworld grid

(image courtesy Neverworld grid.).

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

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

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

World Techno Day on December 9

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

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

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

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

SilverFox Designs Mall moved to Kishaki grid

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

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

New grids

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

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

Closed grids

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

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI or website address — if that’s the case, email us and let us know and we’ll update our database.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,642 different publicly-accessible grids, 337 of which were active this month and 273 of which published their statistics.

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

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

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

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

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OpenSim land area at new all-time-high

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

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

We are now tracking a total of 2,620 OpenSim grids, 431 of which were active and 269 of which published their statistics this month. The rest do not have accessible public stats pages. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fred Beckhusen

The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. Anyone can easily add their grid to this list from the same page.

With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. They can also use it to easily and quickly manage their grids, including adding new regions, banning users, deleting regions, auto restarting,  tracking usage stats, and shutting down entire grids or unoccupied regions to save computing power. Learn here how to create and host a new Dreamgrid on your home computer using the software.

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

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

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

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

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

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

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

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

The active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know. The most popular grids are also not necessarily the most active.

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

The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

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

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

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

As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years.

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

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

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

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

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

(Image courtesy Neverworld grid.).

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

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

OpenSim grid news

OSFest 2023 kicks off

(image courtesy OSFest.).

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

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

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

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

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

Wish Upon a Star at the Grid Genesis Roleplay

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

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

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

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

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

I Love You Grid up and running despite devastating earthquake

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

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

Littlefield held 9-11 memorial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New grids

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

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

Closed grids

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

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

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI or website address — if that’s the case, email us and let us know and we’ll update our database.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,584 different publicly-accessible grids, 419 of which were active this month, and 268 of which published their statistics.

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

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

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

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

Posted on

OpenSim hits new land area record as user numbers spike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DreamGrid has so far recorded a total of 10,377 DreamGrids that have launched. However, when the grid name changes are accounted for, 3,435 Dreamgrids have been installed as shown by a count of unique, random IDs according to Micro Technology Services CEO Fred Beckhusen. Micro Technology Services owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz.

Fred Beckhusen

The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. 

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

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

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

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

Hypergrid Business newsletter now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

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

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

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

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

The active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know.

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

The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids, or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

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

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

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

As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years.

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

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

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

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

Volunteers needed for OpenSim .Net 6 testing

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

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

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

Vincent Sylvester

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

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

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

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

WestWorld grid closes temporarily

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

New grids

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

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

Closed grids

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

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

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI or website address — if that’s the case, email us and let us know and we’ll update our database.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,576 different publicly-accessible grids, 424 of which were active this month, and 282 of which published their statistics.

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

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

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

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

Posted on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fred Beckhusen

The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. 

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

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

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free using either DreamGrid, or the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

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

Hypergrid Business newsletter now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

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

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

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

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

The active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know.

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

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

The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids, or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

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

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

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

As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Volunteers needed for OpenSim .Net 6 testing

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

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

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

Vincent Sylvester

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

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

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

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

XMIR grid now using .Net 6 version of OpenSim

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neverworlds grid to host Jerry Garcia Digital archive museum

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

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

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

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

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

The group has already toured the Jerry Garcia Foundation.

Virtual Beach has a new owner

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

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

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

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

AviVerse AlterEgo now offers Vivox for home regions

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

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

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

New grids

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

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

Closed grids

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

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

Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI or website address — if that’s the case, email us and let us know and we’ll update our database.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,563 different publicly-accessible grids, 428 of which were active this month, and 282 of which published their statistics.

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

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

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

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

Posted on

Number of OpenSim grids hits record high

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fred Beckhusen

The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. 

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

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

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

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

Hypergrid Business newsletter now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

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

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Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better.

People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

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

The active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know.

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

The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

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

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

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

As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly OpenSim developer meetings discuss .Net 6 testing

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

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

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

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

Zetamex seeks machine learning volunteer

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

Vincent Sylvester

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

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

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

Trianon World to launch fun-filled Funzies World next week

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

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

Shadow Raven aka MzEssensual.

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

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

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

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

(Image courtesy Trianon World.).

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

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

(Image courtesy Trianon World.).

GridPlayGrid is back up online

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

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

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

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

DreamGrid V5.35 released

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

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

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

New grids

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

Closed grids

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

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

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

Top 40 grids by land area

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

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

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

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

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

Posted on

OpenSim adds more land area, loses active users

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free using either DreamGrid, or the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

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

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

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

The active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know.

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

The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids, or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

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

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

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

As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years.

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

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

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

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

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

News

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

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

Society of the Sacred Grove hosts Gnome Quest

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

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

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

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

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

Easter market open at Chubelz

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

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

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

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

New grids

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

Closed grids

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

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

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

Top 40 grids by land area

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

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

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

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

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

Posted on

OpenSim hits new record usage at holiday season

OpenSim added 2,061 active users this past month, hitting a new record high of 47,169 unique monthly users.

Some of the increase could be due to the recently-concluded OpenSimulator Community Conference , or due to the fact that people are home from work or school for the holidays, and have time to go into virtual worlds.

The public OpenSim grids now have a total of 102,917 standard-sized regions in virtual land area. The OpenSim metaverse is also home to 475,905 registered users.

All grids without a publicly accessible website, social media page, OpenSimWorld listing, or other page are now marked as private in the Hypergrid Business database. Please submit the link to the grid’s public page through a direct email or this form in case you find that your grid is marked as private and you want it to be back on our lists. Despite that, the number of active grids in our database is 407 — another record high.

OSgrid and Kitely are still largest grids by total regions and registered user numbers.

OpenSim land area has been increasing on average over the years. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

OSgrid has 23,117 hosted regions in total followed by Kitely with 18,390, Wolf Territories Grid with 13,168 regions, ZetaWorlds with 8,035, and Alternate Metaverse with 7,507 regions. Scroll at the bottom of this page for a full list of top 40 largest grids.

The largest land area gainer this month is OSgrid at 885 new regions, followed by Alternate Metaverse with 488, ZetaWorlds with 143, Groovy Verse with 63, and Discovery Grid with 48 new standard 256 by 256 regions hosted.

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

DreamGrid is now tracking a total of 8,519 grids all time. 331 new DreamGrids were created with the software in October this year based on the unique DNS name.

DreamGrid now also hosts a total of 6,743 regions — both var and standard ones — all of which have a total size equaling 65,638 standard 256 by 256 Second Life regions, said Fred Beckhusen, the CEO of Micro Technology Services Inc which owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz.

Fred Beckhusen

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

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. DreamGrid offers 230 free OARs which you can add to your new regions easily. The software has saved its users a combined total of over $35 million in setup and estate purchase/rental fees this year when compared to Second Life prices, according to the latest presentation by Beckhusen at the developer AvaCon conference this month.

DreamGrid is working on new features including support for 3D VR view for OpenSim in Beta 5.28, OpenSim-as-a-service which enables users to run a grid on boot, and grid-wide classified ads. It is also now beta-testing a GDPR or terms of service pop-up at LostWorld-os.com:8002.

“It is built into DreamGrid, and does not require Apache or PHP or changes to OpenSim,” he told Hypergrid Business. “It uses the same terms of service as is shown on the Diva page. It has a built-in web page editor to make it simple to use.”

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

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

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: 5,447 active users
  2. AviTron: 3,585 active users
  3. DigiWorldz: 2,054 active users
  4. MetaverseLife Grid: 1,758 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 1,690 active users
  6. GBG World: 1,684 active users
  7. ZetaWorlds: 1,356 active users
  8. Eureka World: 1,202 active users
  9. AviWorlds: 1,184 active users
  10. Soul Grid: 1,050 active users
  11. Kitely: 1,005 active users
  12. Exo-Life: 990 active users
  13. Neverworld: 915 active users
  14. Party Destination Grid: 912 active users
  15. Moonrose: 889 active users
  16. Craft World: 798 active users
  17. Dorena’s World: 751 active users
  18. The City: 696 active users
  19. Wolf Territories Grid: 686 active users
  20. Kid Grid: 663 active users
  21. Littlefield: 550 active users
  22. Astralia: 545 active users
  23. DreamNation: 508 active users
  24. OpenSimulator Community Conference: 486 active users
  25. Gentle Fire Grid: 423 active users

The active list is based on active, unique 30-day user login numbers that grids report on their stats pages. Those grids that don’t report their numbers might be just as popular, but we wouldn’t know.

AviTron has of late accelerated registrations and this month — for the second time in a row — earned the top spot by number of newly registered users at 390. Kid Grid, MetaverseLife, and OpenSimulator Community Conference grids also reported significant increases in activity.

The active user stats are used to generate the popular hypergrid destinations list, which is useful if you have a hypergrid teleport and want to put up gates to the most popular grids, or include the most popular grids in an in-world directory. This list is also a good place to start if you want to open up new stores, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,780 product listings in Kitely Market, containing 38,548 product variations, 33,476 of which are sold with export permission.

Kitely market product listing, variations, and exportables have been increasing over the years. (Kitely Market Data December 2022.)

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 569 OpenSim grids to date. The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

As seen from the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years.

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

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

Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its own online marketplace.

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

The Tag grid marketplace, the only other OpenSim marketplace comparable to the Kitely Market, lists and sells a total of 28,286 virtual items including apparel, avatar accessories, avatar appearances, and other items. From the marketplace’s 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.

Catch up with discussions at this year’s OpenSimulator Community Conference

The OpenSimulator Community Conference, an annual event that brings together OpenSim developers and users took place on Saturday, Dec. 10, and Sunday, Dec. 11, and in case you missed anything, you can catch up with the discussions from the conference’s YouTube page as streamed from the event.

This year’s event attracted over 400 hypergrid users, over 100 OpenSim expert speakers, and multiple workshops and exhibitions by sponsors and other users. It hosted interesting discussions on how AI is being used to generate art, collaboration in the metaverse, how to detect and prevent copybots, teaching and learning in metaverse, gaming in metaverse, matrix game system for team play, among many topics.

OSCC is the largest developer and user conference in OpenSim.

Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and Christmas Stream at Littlefield Grid

(Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.).

Littlefield Grid will be hosting Christmas Eve and Christmas Night Dance parties from 9.00 p.m. Pacific Time on December 24 and 8.00 p.m. Pacific Time on December 25 at Christmas Island.

There will be rides, ice skating, a Christmas shopping area,  and a dance with DJeeing with DJ Walter Balazic.

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

(Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.).

The annual New Year’s Eve Formal Dance Party will also take place on New Year’s Eve on New Year’s Island. Activities scheduled include rides, skating, and New Year’s Party favors. There also will be a Formalwear Shop that offers free tuxedos and gowns and dance with DJ Walter Balazic.

The hypergrid address is lfgrid.com:New Years Island.

LEAD Technologies Inc. V1.01

The grid will also be running the Christmas Stream throughout the holiday until January 6, playing your favorite holiday classics throughout the day and night, Littlefield Grid co-owner Walter Balazic told Hypergrid Business.

The hypergrid address is holiday.littlefieldgrid.com:9950.

Winterfest in Alternate Metaverse this month

Wintervale. (image courtesy Alternate Metaverse.).

The Alternate Metaverse grid will host a Winterfest starting on December 22 through January 1 at the Wintervale region.

There will be winter events including skiing, ice skating, snowboarding, fantasy snow globes, Wintervale Palace, ice fishing, cafe on ice, sledding, winter carriage riding, snowman builds, a winter ballroom, and a photo booth. Other activities and events include a carnival, karaoke, a tree decorating contest, belly dancing, live performances, and DJing.

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

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Freya’s Shadow World, Grid Land, Kid Grid, Konecta Radio, OsDreaming, Sovaria Estates, and Trianon World.

Top 40 grids by land area

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,497 different publicly-accessible grids, 407 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.

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

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

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

Posted on

Wyldwood Bayou, Littlefield get perfect scores in 13th annual OpenSim grid survey

More than 300 valid responses came in for the 13th Annual OpenSim Grid Survey, and Wyldwood Bayou and Littlefield, two write-in grids, received perfect scores from their residents. Craft World and Terra Nova, also write-ins, were close behind.

Meanwhile, Alternate Metaverse deserves a mention at the top of this story. It wasn’t the highest-rated grid, or the grid with the most respondents — it was in second place after AviTron — but it did have the most effusive comments from its residents. Scroll to the bottom of this article to read just some of the praise its residents have heaped on this grid and its owners.

Most years, there’s at least one smaller grid that does well in this user survey, because small startup grids typically have close-knit and supportive communities. Plus, on smaller grids, it’s easier for the grid owners to provide support. On larger grids, support can start lagging behind, people can feel lost in the crowd, and there might be challenges scaling the technology.

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

Where do OpenSimmers live and visit?

Between them, the respondents had visited 93 different grids and named 40 different grids as their primary homes.

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

Where do OpenSim users make their home? (Hypergrid Business data.)

 

We also asked our readers about the grids that they had visited, other than their own home grid.

OSgrid, OpenSim’s largest and oldest grid, was the most visited — 68 percent of our readers had been to that grid, not counting the 8 percent who make it their permanent home. The next most visited was DigiWorldz with 38 percent, followed by Kitely, with 37 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 three other grids. At least, they could immediately recall the names of three other grids. Several respondents said that the number of grids they visited was “too high to count.”

Most residents said they were very happy with their grids — 93 percent would “absolutely” recommend them to others. Just 5 percent said “maybe” and fewer than 2 percent said they would not recommend.

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 score as 4 and 5, in every category. If people don’t like a grid, they leave and go live somewhere else.

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. As a result, smaller grids often do very well in these annual surveys.

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.

Technology

This year, when our readers were asked how they would grade their grid’s technology. Littlefield and Wyldwood Bayou had perfect scores, while Utopia Skye was close behind.

Wyldwood Bayou was also the top-scoring grid in last year’s survey, with Utopia Skye in second place.

OSgrid had the lowest for technology. OSgrid is the largest OpenSim grid, allows people to connect regions that they host at home, for free, on their own computers, and all of its management is by a team of volunteers. OSgrid is also the testing ground for new OpenSim features and releases. All these factors combined mean that any particular region might be running slowly on a home Internet connection, or be using an older version of OpenSim.

These survey results also only show how users feel about the technology — not about the effort that the grids have put into their platform. Kitely, for example, has done a great deal of work on custom code, in addition to contributing code fixes back to the community. And OSgrid is where the OpenSim developers do their testing. Neither of these contributions are 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 — Littlefield, Wyldwood Bayou, and Craft World.

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, Littlefield, Wyldwood Bayou, and Terra Nova had perfect scores, followed closely by Utopia Skye.

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

Content

In content, Littlefield and Wyldwood Bayou received perfect scores, followed closely by Craft World and Terra Nova.

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

For the latest list of all grids on the OpenSim platform — or some fork of it — check out our Active Grids List.

If you would like to see a full list of results — minus any identifiable information — please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Additional comments from the respondents

The following are representative comments about the grids. There were more than 130 comments in all, much 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.

Alternate Metaverse

“Alternate Metaverse has the nicest people and there seems to always be someone on to chat with. They are also very helpful when you run into a problem. Love being there.”

“Alternate Metaverse is far and away the most fun, supportive, and fair-minded grid I’ve ever been a part of.”

“Alternate Metaverse is the most caring and helpful place that anyone could come to.”

“Alternative Metaverse is home for me.. I am from Second Life, I’ve tried other grids, and AMV is by far the most relaxed… peaceful.. fun.. friendly.. supportive grid I’ve yet to experience… will I invite others to AMV? Yes! I have been — I take my family and friends to the best.”

“AMV is likely the best run grid I’ve been on thus far. When my Sir and I arrived here, it was like we had found where we were meant to be. We have one word for Alternate Metaverse — home.”

“Cliff and Cat make the grid welcoming and fun for everyone!”

“Excellent grid management, very good support and a very active community.”

“Great work — keep doing what you do, guys, you’re better then OSgrid. They lose their assets and try to fix it now for a year. I’m happy in AMV and it’s my preferred location for almost everything OpenSim.”

“I have moved six times in the past six years. AMV has been there when the others fail and crash.”

“I spend almost all of my time here at AMV. I was astounded by the way the grid owners — Cat and Cliff — get involved in all the events here. I am also amazed at the way both Cat and Cliff take a sincere interest in the well-being of their residents and on a one-to-one basis. They sincerely show how much they care for each of their residents by going that extra mile to ensure their happiness, contentment, well-being and utmost safety.They ensure a no-tolerance harassment policy and take us, residents, at face value! Thank you both Cat and Cliff for being the best of the best grid owners around!”

“I have been to other grids and to be honest with you, I have found nothing worthy to even compare with Alternate Metaverse’s quality of virtual life. I see this grid growing in leaps and bounds and I don’t think that will stop anytime soon or at all.”

“I would recommend Alternate Metaverse Grid for having the best service and no grid issues and the grid owner knows his stuff from behind the scenes, also the team are friendly and also its community has fun and outgoing people to hang out with. Plus — the Dinkies have arrived on the Alternate Metaverse Grid so now it is more fun and many new activities for all Dinkies to check out and hangout and feel safe at.”

“I tried a couple of other grids and they were nothing compared to Alternate Metaverse. I have visited a lot too when I hypergrid but nothing compares to AMV. It’s the best by far.”

“Every grid we’ve visited has something to recommend it, but when we landed at Alternate Metaverse Grid we knew we had struck gold.”

“The tech is on par with Second Life — and better, in most cases — the residents are comfortable with themselves and each other and the helpfulness, consideration and camaraderie is real, not just something stated by grid owners who hope it’s going to be that way just because they said so.”

“This is a grid worth visiting because it epitomizes everything good about OpenSim. Superior tech, terrific residents, great events and entertainment and exceptional educational opportunities.”

“The owners, Clifford Hanger and Cataplexia Numbers, have done a first- rate job here and the grid reflects who they are and the care they take with it. To say ‘we’re happy here’ is such an understatement. To say ‘we’re finally home’ sums it up so much better.”

“One of the best parts about AMV is that the owners of the grid live here with us. They are part of the entertainment, the building, the event coordination, everything. The friendly community adds to its charm, there are people here ready to participate in every type of activity you can imagine! Clan’s Band makes our home here, and we have been — almost — everywhere in the metaverse!”

“The grid owners and the community itself truly cares about each other on AMV. No better place to be.”

“They have some good learning opportunities at Koryphon Academy.”

“Alternate Metaverse and Wyldwood Bayou are by far the two very best grids in OpenSim. Aesthetically, technically, community, entertainment.”

“Alternate Metaverse Grid is technical 10/10. For builders and scripters. Entertainment for everybody, amazing regions to visit and amazing staff and residents.”

“Totally awesome grid, I love it!”

AviTron

“Avitron, the best don’t miss it..”

“Avitron el mejor lugar.” [Google translate: “Avitron is the best place.”]

“Eu vim do Second Life e graças a um amigo conheci o AviTron, nunca estive tão feliz, em um mundo sem a ganância do dinheiro, sobra tempo para a fantasia a amizade desfrutando de lugares lindos com festas maravilhosas. Problemas tem uma vez ou outra, mas vale a pena por cada alegria de estar no Avitron. Fica meu agradecimento. Patricia Maia.” [Google translate: “I came from Second Life and thanks to a friend I found AviTron. I’ve never been so happy. In a world without the greed of money, there’s time left for fantasy, friendship, enjoying beautiful places with wonderful parties. Problems have one time or another , but it’s worth it for every joy of being at Avitron. I would like to thank you.”]

“I love AviTron.”

“I’m slowly leaving AviTron, due to the owner’s greed and mistreatment.”

“Todas las cuadriculas son buenas, cada una tiene su fantasía y su encanto, gracias a todas está personas que nos hacen una segunda vida mejor, son excelentes.” [Google translate: “All the grids are good, each one has its fantasy and its charm, thanks to all these people who give us a better second life, they are excellent.”]

AviWorlds

“AviWorlds is not only managed by a great team but also has a awesome custom website.”

“Support and technology on AviWorlds is top notch! definitely the best!”

Barefoot Dreamers

“Very attentive owners. Hugabug is on top of things. I feel safe here, no drama — a friendly group.”

Craft World

“Bellissimo.” [Google translate: “Very beautiful.”]

“I am very happy to live on my favorite grid, Craft World.”

“I love my community in Craft World!”

DigiWorldz

“I found out that scripts are disabled when the items is taken off DigiWorldz unless they are full perm. That killed my business. Population on just DigiWorldz is too small to make any money. No ability to create OAR files like on Discovery Grid and Kitely. Very poor interface for land owners. This grid seems pretty stagnant. No meetings with owner to discuss needs and the grid direction like on Discovery and Kitely. No apparent growth in technology unlike Discovery and Kitely. I am probably going to leave.”

Discovery Grid

“Discovery Grid is one of only a select handful of grids I trust the grid owner and that can handle my high-end fireworks displays – support has always been top notch and very fast, extremely pro-active in the fight against the infestation of botted content, and I also consider grid owner, Balpien Hammerer, a friend.”

“Discovery is an up and coming grid that really goes all out to make their residents feel at home.”

“I really like Discovery Grid, I feel really welcomed there. Also they’re always improving things there to make the experience there even more enjoyable!”

“Small community, but very friendly and helpful. Good communication from the owner.”

Edge of Reality

“I love The Edge, it’s a peaceful grid with awesome people.”

GBG World

“GBG World is the fastest grid with only 2 second sim restarts and zero lag.”

“I love living on GBG World. Great and fast service. GBG is the best.”

Genesis

“Genesis is a new grid established 03/30/2022 by Metal Tango and Lavia Lavine, Tango’s mother in real life. Though it was meant to be primarily a role play grid, it has recently accepted a group of refugees from a grid that shut down, led by Thundergod Thor who secured them regions on Genesis.

“I am building or I should say, rebuilding, Land of Xzar on a large variable-sized region, which is a visual of a novel I am writing and when completed, visitors will be able to have an adventure, while learning the story. A huge shopping center is being built with original creations from grid members as well as quality stuff picked up from everywhere meant to be shared. From Viking villages to Starfleet Command Posts, the newly arrived builders are hammering away and we intend on making this exclusive grid — membership is strictly vetted — one of the best homes for people to spend time in, as it isn’t just a grid of random people. On this grid, we are family. Besides being unique in that there are two factions of people inhabiting this grid, some have become friends with the newcomers, and we will be having regular meetings to include both groups so we know who is who and belongs. We may be a small grid, but to us, we are a rising star, and I am so very thankful, I was invited to join.”

HiddenDreams

“There are some amazing creations, fun places, respectful people, and some really beautiful environments. HiddenDreams — growing slowly — has a nice balance of all those traits seen in glances as it develops. I am happy and excited to be at Hidden Dreams grid.”

Kinky Haven 

“I like Kinky Haven because I know the content is legit, the owners are real and customer service is primary.”

Kitely

“I love Kitely, not only because of it’s amazing and kind community but also because the grid owners are so involved and helpful. I also like that it has a marketplace because I’m a creator and a merchant. I recommend Kitely to everyone.”

“I like Kitely for the marketplace and the friendly, welcoming residents, admins, and owner. The only reason I only gave it 4 out of 5 for “Concurrency, stability, & feature set” is because you can’t have a single 256×256 region and put it next to another 256×256 region, and if you do get the advertised single, two-week-trial region, it’s $15 per month for 15,000 prims, while for $5 more, you get 60,000 prims but have to accept a 2×2. A 1×1 is enough to terraform — I don’t like dealing with variable-sized regions, not being able to put individual OARs on it all at once, and the way you can only texture the ground in the southwest corner. At least, that’s been my negative experience with VAR regions. But I’m renting from someone else who deals with all that stuff for me at a very affordable price.”

“I’ve been represented by the same avatar in OpenSim since 2008. I chose Kitely early on for the same reasons I returned to Kitely this past year after taking a long vacation from Second Life or OpenSim. While I was gone I used Unity and UnReal platforms and I spent time completely off the grids relearning watercolor, acrylics, textiles and the brush. While other grids in OpenSim offered this or that, my foremost reason for choosing Kitely — after experimenting with other OpenSim grids — is convenience, consistency, service and price.”

“Ilan Tochner went above and beyond helping me get established and welcomed in the community. It’s because of his assistance I have a private world in Kitely.”

“From being gifted Fluttering Wings by Shandon Loring and told where I can can buy fifties memorabilia, Koshari Mahana and the possibility of having a micro avatar built, Veritas McMaster.”

“I owe Kitely and those who live there my loyalties and support….thank you, thank you! I never thought at fifty one, this old girl could be taught new tricks but thanks to Blender’s Buddies, Mike Lorrey, Kayaker Magic, Original Ruth, Webby Merlin and Clan, I’m in school and learning something new. Its mind blowing just how big the grid really is.”

“Kitely is run with exceptional professionalism.”

“Kitely is the best by far for its moral climate and safety given to families with children. I enjoy not being treated like a piece of meat, but rather treated with respect . I wont trade this community for any other. Now as far as content , its good but always room for improvements. Smiles over all Kitely is the best.”

“Love Kitely great people lotz of fun.”

“Most reliable so far.”

“Super good to test constructions, support can’t be better, most important if copied stuff is found, this is handled in a extremely short period of time.”

Littlefield

“Great friendly place to hang out with friends great music.”

“Littlefield has the best infrastructure of any grid. The admins are attentive, supportive and professional. They make sure that the community is the best. Littlefield Grid rocks!”

“Littlefield is the best for community and is amazingly well run.”

“No other grid has the BDSM content and community that Littlefield has. The admin staff is outstanding and it’s the best running grid out there. No lag, great content, great support, and a great community!”

“The people here are absolutely the best! I can get help immediately when I ask for it, and they are always there when I need them! Great group of people who are always having fun and really care about their communtity!”

“This grid has the best community and support! They bend over backward to assist their users and now that they have upgraded to 9.2 the speed of the grid is unbelievable! I couldn’t be happier to call Littlefield my home!”

“Walter has done a great job with Littlefield.”

Mobius Grid

“I like the aesthetic and also enjoy helping create various audio content for Mobius Grid. It’d be great if more people tried the place out.”

“Mobius Grid is the best grid for content, with it’s stylish Sonic-styled regions and free cartoon avatars, and the community is friendly, but I think OpenSim in general needs a content overhaul.”

My personal grid

“I chose to start my own grid and now I have my server, I can build as much as I want and I still save money. I have never been happier. Now that’s true freedom on the grid for creativity.”

“This grid is a hobby. I’m thrilled when people stop by and look around.”

OSgrid

“Different grids have different settings, they come and go so it’s hard to define which you spend most time on. I run my own mini grid too, but it gets taken down just as easily. The hypergrid would benefit from landmarks working like in Second Life and being able to hop from one grid to another no matter what.”

“This is a good grid but there are a lot of nasty people who spread lies and rumors because they have no lives and nothing better to do with their time. Other than this, the grid is good.”

Terra Nova

“Amo estar no Terra Nova Grid.” [Google translate: “I love being on Terra Nova Grid.”]

“Experiencia, amigos.” [Google translate: “Experience, friends.”]

“Gosto mais a opensim da terra nova grid porque tenho boas pessoas para fazer amizades e conversar brincar e fazer outra coisa de diversao.” [Google translate: “I like opensim from terra nova grid better because I have good people to make friends and talk to play and do something else for fun.”]

“I Go to many other places but the Terra Nova Grid is the best of the best for me. Very happy place and people.

“I love Terra Nova grid and I also love OSgrid, where I have an island.”

“It has varieties of things for fun and lots of parties.”

“Me sinto super bem em terra nova todos são bem amigos prontos a ajudar um ao outro todos empenhados e ajudar.”  [Google translate: “I feel really good in Terra Nova. Everyone is very friendly ready to help each other, everyone committed and helping.”]

“Terra Nova e exelente lugar muito bom ,pessoal la sao maravilhosa começando pelos donos da grid sao 10, gosto muito de Terra nova eles estao de parabens.” [Google translate: “Terra Nova is an excellent place, very good, the people there are wonderful, starting with the owners of the grid are a 10. I really like Terra Nova, they are to be congratulated.”]

“The grid works 24 hours a day, every day of the week, with frequent backups to maintain the entire integrity of the islands and residents.”

“Terra Nova Grid the best at the moment.”

“Terra Nova Grid, o melhor em recepção, o melhor local de paz.”  [Google translate: “Terra Nova Grid, the best in welcoming, the best place of peace.”]

“The activities we have, the parties, combat events among others… and the reception.”

Trianon World

“Trianon World is a new grid, but with Essensual McMahon at the helm, it surely will be great for entertainment and unique custom clothing.”

Utopia Skye

“Utopia Skye Grid is one of only a select handful of grids I trust the grid owner and that can handle my high-end fireworks displays – support is very prompt and professional, the grid is extremely pro-active in the fight against the infestation of botted content, and I also consider grid owners, Mike Chase and Calliope Andel, friends.”

“Anyone who used to be on InWorldz should check out Utopia Skye. Building a real community here.”

“At Utopia Skye, I found a home and friends. I found a place where i could let my creativity loose.”

“Really love their philosophy and ethical values.”

“The owners, Calli and Mike, have gone above and beyond to offer me friendship and a sincere sense of kindness. It seems clear that they care for their residents beyond the ‘Oh I love you cause I want my grid to grow.’ It’s a very comforting feeling when you know your grid owners are not there to use you. I feel at home.”

“Utopia Skye Grid is run by people that care about the community and its residents — full stop. At the technology helm is Mike Chase, leader of the NGC project which focuses on security and stability in the virtual world’s space which creates a trusted environment. Many grids now run the software he has fixed, or added enhancements to, which stems from the OpenSim core codebase. With the changes he’s made, Utopia Skye grid — and any other grid running this software — enjoys more security and increased functionality as well as a stable operating base. On top of that, as we’ve grown over the years, we’ve created a welcoming environment, increased the holistic offerings that we’ve had since inception and worked with special needs groups to create safe spaces. One of the biggest tenets of Utopia Skye Grid is the respect for content and the merchants who create it. And as far as our customers go, we are always available to them in several ways. We provide resources, compassion, technology and the result is community. I would not be anywhere else.”

Wyldwood Bayou

“Great people, great community, great support. They say when you’re here you’re family and they mean it.”

“Wonderful group of people, great role players.”

“Wyldwood Bayou is an amazing grid with wonderful people, quality original builds, great role play, stellar support, and some of the best entertainment on the hypergrid.”

“Wyldwood Bayou Grid is a small community of friends dedicated to providing excellent music venues, roleplay venues, exploration and fun on a non-commercial grid. It’s a fantastic, welcoming place full of really good folks and a great destination if you are looking for hospitality and entertainment. They have a calendar of their events on their website so you don’t miss anything!”

“Wyldwood Bayou has a close knit and warm community, great music events and two active roleplay groups. There is lots to explore and great people to hang out with.”

“Wyldwood Bayou is a friendly place with great music, an adventure park, and fun roleplay.”

ZetaWorlds

“OpenSim is better than Second Life!”

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OpenSim users, land area hit record highs

OpenSim reported land area growth for the third month in a row with the addition of more than 1,400 new regions, for a new record high of 114,567 standard region equivalents. Active monthly users went up by 525, for a new record high of 44,061.

Logicamp and Creatrix World — two major grids that were offline last month — are back up online after downtime and severe crashes.

Tomi’s World grew the most in terms of region count added in the past 30 days with 413 new regions, followed by ZetaWorlds with 199, Alternate Metaverse with 153, Serenity with 112, and Virtual Worlds Zone with 99 new regions.

OpenSim land area by time. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

OSgrid is still the largest grid by land area with a total of 36,942 standard regions followed by Kitely with 18,761, Wolf Territories Grid with 11,600, ZetaWorlds with 7,995, and Alternate Metaverse with 7,401 regions. Scroll down to the bottom of this article to see the list of the 40 largest grids by land area.

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

OutWorldz now has over 1,100 users, Fred Beckhusen, CEO at Micro Technology Services Inc. that runs both DreamGrid and OutWorldz, told Hypergrid Business. 

DreamGrid continues to grow each month with a total of 6,241 unique grids, which is about 92% of all hypergridable grids. A total of 3,504 grids, an average of 292 new grids per month, were crawled in 2021 alone by Hyperica software, which has now been integrated into OutWorldz.

In 2022 so far, there are an average of 285 per month or a total of 1,423 new grids crawled. This is according to a table from the Outworldz Dynamic DNS system, which is an easy-to-use, free service for grids for the Outworldz.net and Inworldz.net domains that make a “grid of grids.”

“Hyperica.com, which was purchased from Maria Korolov some years ago, has now been integrated into Outworldz.com,” said Beckhusen. “There are currently 8,145 distinct items listed — ignoring duplicates — at outworldz.com/search along with links to 115 grids, 581 regions, 127 parcels, and 105 events — it appears in the viewer in ‘Search.'”

“Only assets, regions, parcels, and grids marked ‘Show in Search,’ along with an enabled ‘Publicity’ checkbox in DreamGrid will appear,” he said. ” This also populates the Destination Guide, which was also a part of Hyperica.com.”

The total list of grids tracked by OutWorldz is available here. Anyone can also create a grid with the software and add it manually in the stats via the same link if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz. Outworldz DreamGrids have access to over 170 free OpenSim Archives. The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers.

OpenSim is a free open-source virtual world platform that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, 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: 4,676 active users
  2. AviTron: 2,716 active users
  3. DigiWorldz: 2,082 active users
  4. Metropolis: 1,842 active users
  5. AviWorlds: 1,500 active users
  6. ZetaWorlds: 1,456 active users
  7. Kitely: 1,338 active users
  8. GBG World: 1,333 active users
  9. Alternate Metaverse: 1,037 active users
  10. Party Destination Grid: 996 active users
  11. Exo-Life: 935 active users
  12. Neverworld: 845 active users
  13. Eureka World: 826 active users
  14. Soul Grid: 808 active users
  15. The City: 778 active users
  16. Craft World: 758 active users
  17. Wolf Territories Grid: 686 active users
  18. Astralia: 676 active users
  19. Quintonia: 584 active users
  20. Freedom Grid: 573 active users
  21. Moonrose: 524 active users
  22. Dorena’s World: 517 active users
  23. DreamNation: 517 active users
  24. Free Life: 487 active users
  25. Arkham Grid: 480 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.

These are the most popular grids as of now but aren’t necessarily the fastest growing in terms of new active users. The Wolf Territories Grid gained the most new active users at 463 new, followed by Serenity with 291 new active users, New Hope Grid with 228, Metropolis with 180, and AviTron with 171 new active users.

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, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,512 product listings in Kitely Market containing 38,587 product variations, 33,431 of which are sold with the export permission.

Exportables, product listing and variations in Kitely over the years. (Kitely Market Data)

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 552 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 over 2,000 items including apparel, avatar accessories, avatar appearances, and other items. From the marketplace’s 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.

DreamGrid 5.0 to allow running of over 160 regions on home computers

The DreamGrid team is also in the final stages of testing DreamGrid version 5. Tests for 160 regions have been successful and the newer version will allow people to run a large number of regions, said Micro Technology Services’ Beckhusen.

“I’ve successfully run 160 regions on a 2-core — no hyperthreads — Windows 10 PC with 4 GB of DRAM,” he said. “This is far below the recommended amount of RAM, which normally would require 48 GB.”

The ability to freeze and thaw a region for almost instant teleports is new and no CPU is used when no one is in the region, he said.

“On a personal note, I bought control of Micro Technology Services Inc., and am now the CEO,” he added.

Phantom Rose Grid to sponsor OpenSim Fest 2022

Phantom Rose Grid will be one of the sponsors of the OpenSim Fest 2022, with an exhibit on their Welcome region.

“The exhibit space is 128 by 64, so I have recreated The Square from my Phantom Rose Steam region,” Phantom Rose Grid owner Lannorra Sion told Hypergrid Business. “In addition, I have a small interactive Gothic Role Play from my PR Bayou Region, with a special Amulet made just for the OpenSim Fest in presentation box as a prize, and a look at my almost open new Region, Phantom Rose Medieval.”

The exhibit space has information about the Grid as a whole and there are elevator balloon rides at the Square, she added.

The OpenSim Fest, one of the largest OpenSim event with thousands of attendees and volunteers, celebrates creative talents in virtual worlds. This year, it will run from July 8 to 25. The hosts were offering 30 parcels — 25 of which were already occupied as of last month on the OpenSim Fest grid for building exhibitions. Building is ongoing and expected to be complete on June 30.

Also, there 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. Other sponsors of the event include Laxton Consulting, LLC, which is part of the Infinite Metaverse Alliance. The host is also calling for more sponsors and volunteers.

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.

Phantom Rose Grid’s new underwater region mimics the ancient Minoan city of Atlantis

Akrotiri in Phantom Rose grid. (Image courtesy Lannorra Sion.)

Phantom Rose Grid has a new region open, known as Akrotiri, which is the start of the Phantom Rose Mer Nation, said Phantom Rose Grid’s Sion.

Each of the eight Mer folk areas in the nation is explored underwater when a visitor lands in the new region. They can then explore mimics of the ruins of Atlantis, the ancient Minoan city which was swallowed into the sea after a volcanic eruption.

“The name Akrotiri is taken from the ancient city of the Minoans, which was on the island now known as Santorini, in Greece,” wrote Sion in a post. “As you may know, the legend of Atlantis talks about a prosperous ancient city, named Atlantis, that sunk into the sea in a catastrophe. Many scholars believe this was based on the destruction of the Minoan empire by the eruption of a volcano on Thíra or Santorini, which buried Akrotiri and caused a huge tidal wave that destroyed Knossos on Crete and other Minoan port cities and led to the downfall of this once-mighty kingdom.”

Adventure Sailboat Race on Discovery grid

Boat sailing in Discovery grid. (Image courtesy Spirit Rock Ranch.).

At 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, June 18, The Spirit Rock Ranch region on Discovery grid hosted the Adventure Sailboat Race for sailing enthusiasts. Winners who clocked the best times against other competitors received cash prizes in Gloebits currency.

The region hosts adventures of different kinds including surfing, archery, big game hunting, horseback riding, and kayaking, every Saturday morning.

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

Want to hear the full story of the most studied actions in the history of the U.S. military?

Mato Spa will be presenting “Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors,” by bestselling historian Stephen E. Ambrose, at 6 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, July 2 at the Paha Sapa region on Kitely.

You need to have your voice activated to hear the full story about Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer of the Seventh Cavalry. On June 25, 1876, Custer led 611 U.S. army soldiers toward the banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory to face 3,000 Native American warriors, led by Crazy Horse, who stood there waiting for battle.

The hypergrid address is grid grid.kitely.com:8002:Paha Sapa.

Pangea Art and Culture Festival 2022 ongoing and calling for artists

Terra Merhyem’s Excalibur. (Image courtesy Pangea grid.)

The hosts of Pangea grid’s Art and Culture Festival 2022 are calling for applications from any international or local German artists who would like to exhibit their art and culture at the festival. The applications should be submitted to info@pangea-grid.com or in-world.

The event kicked off in May with Terra Merhyem’s Excalibur exhibitions. Her multimedia installation based on the Arthurian legends included music, a group dance performance, text, and 3D art. The next big event will be by Rage Darkstone, with many more events to come over the next months.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Ardiva, Mystic Bermuda, Proud Rainbow, Rainbow World.

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 1,760 different publicly-accessible grids, 354 of which were active this month, and 294 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 area hits new record high as all stats rise this month

OpenSim land area is up by more than 12,000 standard regions this month compared to last month, bringing the total land area to a record high of 113,151 standard region equivalents.

The growth happened despite some grid outages and closures. In particular, four French grids have shut down over the course of the past two months.

The number of registered users is also up by more than 16,000, mostly due to the Tag Grid now reporting these numbers.

However, total active users dropped by a mere 200 this month.

Logicamp, which had 281 actives and 112 regions last month is down this month and did not report stats. The Social Mouse is also down. Creatrix World is still restoring user accounts and inventories following a severe crash and has not been accepting new residents.

We are now tracking a total of 1,756 grids, 366 of which are active, out of which 286 had their stats reported this month.

Wolf Territories Grid showed the biggest land area growth this month with 11,041 standard region equivalents in the course of the last 30 days, followed by Alternate Metaverse 1,373, OSgrid with 441, ZetaWorlds with 150, Kinky Haven with 132, AviTron with 103 additional regions. Discovery Grid has lost the most land area at 227 regions, followed by Serenity at 171, and Kitely at 114 regions.

OpenSim metaverse land area is now at its most expansive in history. (Hypergrid Business Data.).

OSgrid is the largest OpenSim grid in terms of land area with a total of 36,941 regions, followed by Kitely with 18,828, Wolf Territories Grid with 11,552, ZetaWorlds with 7,796, Alternate Metaverse with 7,248, and Discovery Grid with 5,646 regions. Scroll down to the bottom of this article and see the list of 40 largest grids by land area.

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, private company grids, or school grids.

DreamGrid lets anyone create a small home grid on their computer easily through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. The software is free to download and use. Customers can use it to easily and quickly manage their grids using graphical interfaces. They can add new regions, ban users, delete regions, auto restart and shut down entire grid or unoccupied regions to save computing power, and track usage stats.

Outworldz DreamGrids have access to over 170 free OpenSim Archives. The Hyperica events listing also lists current and future online events directly published to OpenSim viewers. So far, the Hyperica grid crawler software has tracked a total of 6,639 objects including 5,796 DreamGrids and 505 other grids as per their latest update. 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 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: 4,780 active users
  2. AviTron: 2,545 active users
  3. DigiWorldz: 2,036 active users
  4. Metropolis: 1,662 active users
  5. Kitely: 1,434 active users
  6. AviWorlds: 1,402 active users
  7. ZetaWorlds: 1,341 active users
  8. GBG World: 1,208 active users
  9. Alternate Metaverse: 1,152 active users
  10. Party Destination Grid: 949 active users
  11. Exo-Life: 918 active users
  12. The City: 885 active users
  13. Eureka World: 804 active users
  14. Little Breath: 798 active users
  15. Craft World: 765 active users
  16. Neverworld: 750 active users
  17. Dorena’s World: 674 active users
  18. Soul Grid: 670 active users
  19. Astralia: 565 active users
  20. Freedom Grid: 556 active users
  21. DreamNation: 540 active users
  22. Quintonia: 500 active users
  23. Free Life: 490 active users
  24. Arkham Grid: 472 active users
  25. Moonrose: 457 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.

These are the most popular grids as at now but aren’t necessarily the fastest growing in terms of new active users. OSgrid showed the most gains with 907 new active users followed by Twisted Grid with 300, Youth Nation with 294, AviTron with 293, GBG World with 148, and Continuum with 110 new active users.

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, hold events, or are just looking for places to visit.

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

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 19,539 product listings in the Kitely Market containing 38,670 product variations, of which 33,527 are sold with the export permission.
Exportables on Kitely market over time. (Kitely Market Data.)
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 551 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 over 2,000 items including apparel, avatar accessories, avatar appearances and other items. From the marketplace’s 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.

BritGrid offering affordable rental regions

BritGrid is continuing to offer affordable rentals and has increased prim allowance on all new and existing regions to 30,000 primitives free of charge, grid owner Mister BritGrid told Hypergrid Business.  The prices are as follows:

  • one region, measuring 256 square meters: £5.00 or US $6.13 per month
  • two-by-two varregion, measuring 512 square meters: £7.50 GBP or US $9.2
  • three-by-three varregion, measuring 768 square meters: £10.00 GBP or US $12.27

All purchases come with extra primitive options of 45,000 or 60,000 at £2.50 or $3.07 for each additional 15,000. There is a daily backup for OARs for all the regions, a choice of X or Y script engine, daily OAR backups, optional Gloebit currency , and optional Vivox voice.  There are no setup fees.

The hypergrid address is britgrid.com:8002.

Chez-Eden grid hosts event for French users in wake of shutdowns

Francogrid, Virtual Dream, Fibia Origin , and Neros have all closed down this month and their French-speaking users have scattered to other grids, said Chez-Eden grid owner Eden Cat.

To support these users, Chez-Eden is hosting an in-world gathering for French OpenSim users. Helping organize the event are Hicks Adder and Max Hill, known in-world as Ignis Faatus.

Most of these users lost their inventories and assets after these closures some of which were unexplained.

The first meeting of the kind will take place on Wednesday, June 1 on the Chez-Eden grid.

The hypergrid address is chez-eden.venez.fr:8002:Chez-Eden.

After that, the grid will be hosting monthly events, including technical talks, to help Francophones meet, help each other, and share information about OpenSim issues.

I Love You, an OpenSim region and social network, celebrates one year annivesary

The I Love You region on the the ZetaWorlds grid will host a birthday party from 8 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, May 22 at the Main Event Stage to celebrate turning one year old. The event will be seven hours of fun, music, dancing, and shows. There also will be fireworks at the end of the night.

The event is sponsored by the XusYou OpenSim grid and I Love You Social, a brand new adult social network like Facebook but only open to virtual lifers and which is created for all OpenSimmers. It is free to join and use. The network allows people to make friends, post anything they like, and advertise for free.

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

Memorial Day at Equinox grid

(Image courtesy Club Equinox.).

Club Equinox grid will be hosting the grid’s Memorial Day celebration starting 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, May 22 at the EQG Club Equinox region.

There will be music but the details of the activities are not yet announced. Contact grid owner and administrator Aubrey at Xariaaubrey1972@gmail.com to register for the event.

The hypergrid address is equinoxgrid.com:8002:EQG Club Equinox.

New grids

The following grids were added to our database this month: Darkworldz Grid, France PR, Genesis Roleplay Grid, Imperiya Grid, Love Lemon, Old Fuori Grid, SecretLifeGrid, Thug, and Youth Nation.

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 1,756 different publicly-accessible grids, 366 of which were active this month, and 2867 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.