OpenSim user activity ramping up for the holidays

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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.

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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.

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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: 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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