Hypergrid Business

OSFest 2024. (Image courtesy Lisa Laxton.) The virtual doors of OSFest 2024 have swung open, welcoming creators, builders, merchants, performers, and sponsors to begin crafting their digital spaces. This annual event, hosted on the OpenSim Fest grid, is set to run from October 4 through October 20, 2024, offering a diverse platform for virtual exhibitions, […]

Summer is generally a slow time for OpenSim, and virtual worlds in general, as people spend more time outside and on vacation and educational projects go on break. The total number of active users went down by more than 3,700, to 43,001. DigiWorldz, for example, lost 1,220 actives this month, according to its stats reports,

Kitely’s Coopersville region is a Mega World. (Image courtesy Kitely.) For a limited time, Kitely‘s “Mega Worlds” region packages are on sale again, for $90 a month, the company announced today. A “Mega World” is a variable size region the size of 64 standard region that can hold up to 150,000 prims. That works out to

The total land area of OpenSim’s public grids jumped by more than 33,000 region equivalents this month, with the addition of a large new grid to our list. However, the total number of active users was down by nearly 1,500, due to several grids not reporting stats this month. Missing grids included Fire and Ice,

(Image by Maria Korolov via Adobe Firefly.) I’ve been interacting with OpenSim bots — or NPCs — for nearly as long as I’ve been covering OpenSim. Which is about 15 years. (Oh my God, has it really been that long?) I’ve been hoping that OpenSim writing would become by day job, but, unfortunately, OpenSim never

StorylinkRadio region in Kitely. (Image courtesy David Kariuki) Kitely, a leading OpenSim grid, has announced a significant upgrade to its virtual world hosting service, implementing an enhanced version of OpenSim 0.9.2.2. This update comes on the heels of a recent system-wide upgrade that doubled world performance. According to an announcement earlier this week, the new version

OpenSim active users are up by 1,039 this month, reaching a new all-time high of 48,234. The total land area also increased, by 489 standard region equivalents. However, the total number of registered users on all the public OpenSim grids fell by more than 10,000 since May. The biggest reason for the drop? 3rd Rock

Kitely Welcome Center. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.) Kitely, a leading OpenSim grid, has announced a significant upgrade to its virtual world hosting service, doubling the performance of all Kitely regions without increasing prices. The company has achieved this by adopting the latest Amazon server technology, the M7i generation, while maintaining its existing pricing structure. Ilan

I don’t personally agree with the dystopian visions of the metaverse as presented by sci-fi writers. But if you want to understand where the inspiration for platforms like Second Life — and OpenSim — comes from, these books are a must-read. Plus, they might give us some tips about what to avoid as we move

The total land area in OpenSim fell this month by over 3,000 standard region equivalents, the total number of registered users fell by just over 1,000, and the number of active monthly users dropped by 425 compared to this time last month. The region loss was due to the fact that Discovery Grid did not

Today was the last day of 3rd Rock Grid, one of the oldest grids in OpenSim. Empty welcome region on 3rd Rock Grid. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.) The grid announced that it was closing back in March, and, since then, many of the former residents have found their way to other grids, with ZetaWorlds being

I have a new OpenSim grid stats report coming out tomorrow, so I’ve been surfing OpenSim grid websites these last couple of days, looking for errant stats pages. And that means that I’ve been looking at a lot of grid home pages. And there are some really pretty ones out there! And some grids truly

International Day on Alternate Metaverse Grid. (Image courtesy Alternate Metaverse Grid.) Alternate Metaverse Grid celebrated its first annual International Day on Thursday, March 7: Celebrating International Diversity on OpenSim. Grid co-owner Cataplexia Numbers said she was looking of a way to bring together the residents of various countries that are members of the Alternate Metaverse

The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 138,831 standard regions this month, an all-time high — and the fourth month in a row that OpenSim land area has broken this record. That’s an increase of more than 5,000 regions since last month. The biggest gainer in terms of land area

(Image courtesy Wolf Territories Grid.) In a move to make the virtual realm more inclusive, Wolf Territories Grid, announced the launch of its new speech-to-text function today, in order to improve the in-world experience for hard-of-hearing and deaf community members. With the commitment to ensure equal participation for all users, Wolf Territories Grid’s new speech-to-text