OpenSim land area hits new high of 88,000 regions

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OpenSim land area grew by the equivalent of 3,905 standard regions last month, a new record high of 88,225 regions.

This was despite the fact that several large grids have stopped publishing land area stats, including InWorldz, Great Canadian Grid, and The Adult Grid.

The biggest gainer was OSgrid which added 1,404 regions, GreekLife with 857, Kitely with 228 and Atek with 164 new regions.

Growth in OpenSim land area. (Hypergrid Business Data.)

Active user numbers went up by 275, to 32,384. Growth was depressed somewhat by the closing of ZanGrid, which had 342 active users last month. In addition, OpenSim Life has stopped publishing their numbers.

This month, OSgrid remained the largest grid with a total of 30,350 standard region equivalents, followed by Kitely with 17,111, Metropolis with 6,989, Atek grid with 6,270 and DigiWorldz with 5,253. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the list of top 40 grids by land area.

Kitely was also OpenSim’s most valuable grid this month when it comes to bringing in new users. It reported 1,361 new accounts this month, followed by InWorldz with 1,149, Emilac with 840 users, EdMondo with 607 and Island Oasis with 597 users. Emilac and EdMondo are both education-focused grids, and regularly bring in large numbers of new users every semester.

These stats do not include most of the mini-grids running on the DreamWorld distribution of OpenSim, or private company or school grids.

According to the latest DreamWorld stats, more than 2,521 mini-grids have been created with this installer alone so far, out of which 38 percent or 959 are hypergrid enabled.

 

OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.

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.

You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz. OutWorlds also provides OpenSim users with free  mesh items, OARs and free seamless textures that you can download and use on your grids.

Popularity

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: 3,979 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
  2. Metropolis: 3,870 active users (HG hypergrid.org:8002)
  3. GreekLife: 2,130 active users (HG hg.grid-greeklife.info:8002)
  4. DigiWorldz: 1,974 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
  5. Island Oasis: 1,176 active users (HG islandoasisgrid.biz:8002:island Oasis)
  6. Kitely: 1,153 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
  7. Sacrarium: 954 active users (HG sacrarium24.ru:8002)
  8. Lost Paradise: 930 active users (HG lpgrid.com:8002)
  9. Eureka World: 897 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
  10. Kroatan Grid: 751 active users (HG kroatan.de:8002)
  11. Dorena’s World: 745 active users (HG dorenas-world.de:8002)
  12. Craft World: 690 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
  13. Exo-Life: 677 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
  14. DreamNation: 591 active users
  15. Virtual Brasil: 585 active users (HG mundo.virtualbrasil3d.com.br:8002)
  16. Logicamp: 486 active users (HG logicamp.org:8002)
  17. FrancoGrid: 444 active users (HG hg.francogrid.org:80)
  18. Genesis MetaVerse: 427 active users (HG grid.genesismetaverse.com:8002)
  19. Neverworld: 399 active users (HG hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002)
  20. ZetaWorlds: 365 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
  21. EdMondo: 351 active users (HG slw.indire.it:8002)
  22. YrGrid: 345 active users (HG grid.yrgrid.com:8002)
  23. Eros Resort: 336 active users (HG opensim.bci3d.com:8002)
  24. Nextlife World: 313 active users (HG nextlife-world.de:8002)
  25. 3rd Rock Grid: 304 active users (HG grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002)

GreekLife saw the most growth in active user numbers in the month with 677 new active users followed by Eureka World with 503 users and Genesis MetaVerse with 314. Virtual Life EU had 196 and Kroatan grid closed the top five spot of the most active grids with 166 users.

Of the top 25 most popular grids, only DreamNation was not hypergrid-enabled.

In fact, hypergrid-enabled grids accounted for 96.4 percent of all reported active OpenSim users on the public grids. However, one large closed grid, InWorldz, no longer publishes its active user numbers.

Dreamworld stats

The Hypergrid Business database currently tracks 1,271 grids, of which 267 were active this month.

OutWorldz has another system for tracking grid counts, and currently has a total of 2,521 grids. This is up by 339 from last month.

The total tally includes 17 percent of DreamWorlds or grids created with the DreamWorld software that allows users to easily create and run grids at home as well as to connect to other OpenSim grids.

Of the 2,521 grids, only about 379 grids are online, of which 56 are hypergriddable. The test to determine whether sims are online runs every hour and offline grids tested every four hours.

The details of statistics can be found on Hyperica directory of grids. and the daily summaries here on the OutWorldz website.

Any grid owner can add their grid into the list on the OutWorldz website if OutWorldz is not currently tracking its online status.

Kitely adds 300 more products

Kitely added close to 300 new products this month and now has a total of 10,913 product listings, containing 20,634 product variations, of which 15,855 are sold with the export permission.

Kitely Market has delivered items to 228 OpenSim grids to date, up by five grids this month.

Kitely exportables have been rising month by month. (Kitely Data.)

Ever since Kitely turned on the hypergrid export functionality, exportable content has been growing at a much faster rate than non-exportables, as merchants increasingly become comfortable to selling to the hypergrid.

However, non-hypergrid grids can also accept Kitely Market deliveries, giving their residents ready access to a wide, legal, and ever-growing collection of content.

VirTec records increase in spending on grids

Expenditure on VirTec network by various grids. (VirTec Data.)

Grids registered a nine percent increase in spending on the VirTec network compared to last month. This was the largest increase since May this year.

VirTec is a vending machine network owned by DigiWorldz which can be used to create and manage sales across many OpenSim grids, both on and off the hypergrid, and supports multiple currencies.

InWorldz stayed on the lead in terms of expenditure on the network followed by DigiWorldz, Virtual Mecca, Baller Nation and Genesis Metaverse.

OpenSimulator Community Conference to be held next month

OpenSimulator Community Conference, an annual event for OpenSim developers and the user community, will open doors next month from December 9 and 10 on the OpenSimulator Conference Center grid.

The event will focus on the latest software releases, visions for the future, and technologies or content today that are shaping the future of the OpenSim platform. The organizers are still looking for volunteers, presenters and sponsors. The event will feature short presentations, panels, performances, and workshops.

View all news, schedules and other information on the OpenSim Community Conference website.

HIE performs load test for next month’s Expo

The Hypergrid International Expo grid just completed its first load test last Wednesday, November  8 in preparation for the The Hypergrid International Expo that happens on December 16 and 17.

The expo will feature presentations from various grids, conference and training sessions. The multi language conference will feature presentations in French, German, Italian and Spanish, with English translation. The grid is dedicated to the Expo courtesy of Phaandor Pertwee and has only five regions.

The hypergrid address is: hie.ddnss.org:8006

Metropolis deletes infringing content, plans more bans

Metropolis grid announced this week that they have deleted several freebie regions that were violating copyrights, including Adachi that had “repeatedly violated” the grid’s Terms of Service.

The grid has now decided to delete Adachi owner’s inventory on the grid and issue a ban on grid usage, grid founder Lena Vanilli wrote in a Google Plus post.

The action will send a strong signal that the need to take serious copyright issues and to respect grid Terms of Service that discourage infringement, although it would not be received well by some people, read the statement.

Adachi has been at the center of copyright violations and related controversies in the recent past, with complains against it flying from every side. Metropolis grid, last month, called upon anyone with complains about copyright infringement on the grid to send an official complain.

Nine other regions are also associated with the same IP and since Metropolis must assume that there could be further damage from the IP, they might delete all the regions associated with that IP to prevent further damage, unless the company hosting Adachi region sends Metropolis a statement saying that they have discontinued hosting the region from their server as that would assure Metropolis that the IP would not pose further risk.

Former ZanGrid residents open a mini-grid in DigiWorldz

The Orchid Height community, which is a community of former ZanGrid residents, will open its doors to public as an enclave on the DigiWorldz grid. The grand opening will be at noon Pacific time on Saturday, November 18.

“We are still building up, but the main region Orchid Heights is ready to go and for this event we like to celebrate our landing in DigiWorldz,” former ZanGrid owner Suzan Moennink told Hypergrid Business.

ZanGrid closed last month after half a decade of OpenSim service as the owner went for further studies.

Those wanting to join the new Orchid Height community group can create an account at the website and when they login to OpenSim, they will land on the Orchid Heights welcome region and not the DigiWorldz welcome region.

“As a grid within a grid we also will offer regions to people who would like to own a region,” she said. “They will have full owner ship of those regions.” Orchid Heights will promote those regions on their webpage and on social media.

The community is formed by a group of people who were formerly at ZanGrid and who wanted to stay together and were searching for a new home grid.

“As grid owner of ZanGrid I helped them by giving the owner of DigiWorldz the filtered IAR and OAR files of those people, so he could load them on their avatar and on their regions in DigiWorldz,” Moennink  said. “Soon Orchid heights will have all their regions on their own server in DigiWorldz.”

Alchemy to have better currency support

The latest release of Alchemy OpenSim viewer released a few days ago features Gloebit’s proposed currency extensions for the first time.

Developers of Singularity and Alchemy viewers last month confirmed they would implement the module although they said they would need to do some changes on the patch code.

The patch, which was developed by the Gloebit team led by its CEO Christopher Colosi, will bring multi-currency support in OpenSim and eliminate the need for Gloebit users to do complicated coding and configuration for their grids and regions to support various money modules.

Phoenix Firestorm project manager Jessica Lyon also said in a post that allowing Firestorm users to purchase Gloebits currency on multiple grids via the viewer was a big step forward.

However, the team needed some legal advice before they can go ahead with the implementation of the patch in the Firestorm viewer.

For example, would be any complications for Firestorm if an unethical OpenSim grid owner exploited users’ money on their grid while the user is purchasing currency, or when the grid collapses, and the user takes the grid to court?

“And while we would most likely not be held accountable since we can prove we had no control over or interception of said transactions, we would still have to prove it and in doing so endure legal costs, travel expenses and a lot of headaches,” she said.

The full proposal of the patch can be read here.

Get sensational at Sensation City Black Millenium 2017

Sacrarium Grid region Sensation City will host the Sensation Black Millennium dance on November 23. Entertainment will be by Hard Techno and Hardstyle.

The small village is located on mountains and overlooking the sea so you get good sea views as well as enjoy good natural scenery.

Participants can also visit the beach where there is a store offering freebies, a club, Christmas market, and entertainment with DJs.

The hypergrid address is: sacrarium24.ru:8002:sensation city.

Transitions

Fifteen new grids were added to our list this November, including GlobusGrid, Moons Paradise, Ausgrid, DGridMen, VartownGrid, Imperial World, Hidden Oasis, Kokomo-World, Krabat Grid, Rhia’s Hideaway, Sunvibes Grid, SocialMouse, VirtualHarmony, Virtuality Grid, and the Hypergrid International Expo grid.

The following eight grids were marked as suspended this month: Avi Globe Grid, Blackswan, FranEsti Grid, New Zealand Virtual World Grid – Auckland, Rissland, SLFDGrid, Virtual ABDL Grid, and Virtual Dreamz.

Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.

And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.

By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.

In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be undercounted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.

November Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,271 different publicly-accessible grids, 268 of which were active this month, and 197 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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