#hypergridbusiness — Public Fediverse posts

Looks like Maria Korolov of Hypergrid Business is hoping for the above to come true, now that Google has made a 3D-world-generating AI. Like, one extensive prompt, and you'll get all this within three seconds.

https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2026/01/googles-world-building-ai-points-to-exciting-future-for-opensim-creators-or-their-doom/

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #HypergridBusiness #SimBuilding #AI

Another look back on last year in OpenSim, freshly posted on Hypergrid Business: OpenSim in 2025: A Year of Crisis, Growth, and Loss

Including:

• OSgrid's Asset Reset
• Someone trying to build full-size North America in OSgrid
• NeverTV
• Mal Burns' passing and the restart of Inworld Review without him

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #HypergridBusiness #OSgrid #Neverworld #NeverworldGrid #NeverTV #InworldReview

Another look back on last year in OpenSim, freshly posted on Hypergrid Business: OpenSim in 2025: A Year of Crisis, Growth, and Loss

Including:

• OSgrid's Asset Reset
• Someone trying to build full-size North America in OSgrid
• NeverTV
• Mal Burns' passing and the restart of Inworld Review without him

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #HypergridBusiness #OSgrid #Neverworld #NeverworldGrid #NeverTV #InworldReview

Another look back on last year in OpenSim, freshly posted on Hypergrid Business: OpenSim in 2025: A Year of Crisis, Growth, and Loss

Including:

• OSgrid's Asset Reset
• Someone trying to build full-size North America in OSgrid
• NeverTV
• Mal Burns' passing and the restart of Inworld Review without him

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #HypergridBusiness #OSgrid #Neverworld #NeverworldGrid #NeverTV #InworldReview

Another look back on last year in OpenSim, freshly posted on Hypergrid Business: OpenSim in 2025: A Year of Crisis, Growth, and Loss

Including:

• OSgrid's Asset Reset
• Someone trying to build full-size North America in OSgrid
• NeverTV
• Mal Burns' passing and the restart of Inworld Review without him

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #HypergridBusiness #OSgrid #Neverworld #NeverworldGrid #NeverTV #InworldReview

@vrsimility Don't ask @Cheryl Furse for #OpenSim stats. She'll tell you what she believes as if it's a proven fact, and at the same time, she claims that all official stats, even those automatically submitted by grids to #HypergridBusiness, are all bogus.

The July stats on Hypergrid Business know of 419 active grids, but Hypergrid Business relies on people reporting the existence of grids to them which is why "new" grids have often been up and running for several months already. Anyways, 419 active grids and 200 world-wide OpenSim users would mean that everyone would have more than two grids practically constantly running on average.

According to the same stats, #DreamGrid has been installed 3,435 times so far. However, due to the nature of DreamGrids often residing on personal Windows computers at people's homes which are only started up when they're needed, there are no stats on how many of them actually count as active.

As for #OSCC, they don't publish any attendance stats AFAIK. All I know is that the grid is designed for 350 avatars of all roles combined. That's why visitors have to register first, and registrations are capped. Any given presentation may normally have some 70 or 80 avatars attending. It'd be pretty senseless to come to an OSCC presentation and bring a bunch of alts with you, especially since you're already encouraged to reduce the complexity of your main avatar for attending OSCC.

@Cheryl Furse

> Where is a crypto crash?
2022 especially.
#^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_bubble#2021%E2%80%932023_crash
#^https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1145297807/crypto-crash-ftx-cryptocurrency-bitcoin
More recently: #^https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/06/10/bloodbath-sudden-1-trillion-crypto-crash-sparks-fresh-coinbase-warning-and-tanks-the-price-of-bitcoin-ethereum-bnb-xrp-cardano-dogecoin-polygon-and-solana/

> Opensim a success? We are just 200 real people with thousands of alts.
That's your personal perception which you yourself think you "know" for a "fact".

If you really think this is a cold, hard fact, please prove it with a link to statistics.

By the way, here come cold, hard facts: the Hypergrid Business stats from June 15th.

#HypergridBusiness reports 424 active grids. Everyone would have to run at least two grids.

You refuse to believe that number? You think it's made up? It isn't just a number. Here's a list of all 424 grids. Count them. Then check the links. Almost all of them should be active.

125,841 standard regions on the reporting grids alone = each user has to have almost 630 standard regions on average.

#OSgrid alone reported 27,325 standard regions. If everyone had land on OSgrid, that'd be almost 130 standard regions per #OpenSim user.

Also, as of today, by the way, OSgrid lists 5,689 sims (taking varsims into account) on its official website, all by name. Only few of them are official. All the others are hosted by their owners and attached to OSgrid externally. OSgrid does not offer land rentals.

If every OpenSim user had land on OSgrid, everyone would have 28 sims or more on average attached to OSgrid. That's enough land for a stand-alone grid.

If you claim for a fact that this is bullshit, and either OSgrid or its staff makes up most of the names on the list, go in-world and check on the map whether these sims actually exist on the OSgrid map. Mind you, they may be offline. Many of them run on people's Windows PCs which they shut down when they don't need them. Nonetheless, these sims have existed and been online recently.

And that's only OSgrid. On average, everyone would have to own countless sims alll across the Hypergrid.

> I would compare much more with sim city. In opensim anyway, because most are just building landscapes and take pictures of it. SimCity has some more goals. lol

Goes to show you don't get out much.

What people actually do is hoard freebies and party. Female users also play Barbie with their avatars. And some have virtual sex.

But in general, most users don't spend more time than absolutely necessary decorating sims. Look at those many freebie sims that look like they were slapped together within one afternoon.

> You didn't mention thirdroom. Why?

Because I only wanted to pick out a few examples. If I had to include #ThirdRoom, I would also have to cover #VRchat and #Vircadia and #Overte and #RecRoom and #MozillaHubs etc. etc., just to give each and every virtual world out there a fair treatment. The article would have grown HUMONGOUS.

Even when it only came to free, open-source, decentralised virtual worlds, I would also have had to mention and analyse Vircadia, Overte and Mozilla Hubs and rip #Decentraland apart for lying into people's faces.

Besides, I know you're a huge Third Room fangurl. But Third Room is far from being as successful as #SecondLife or #Minecraft or #Roblox. It's a tech preview. It's in a very very early stage. It's far from having a community of thousands, having in-world places that you can spend weeks or months or years exploring, having in-world events etc.

Right now, Third Room is only just barely where Second Life was in 2002, only with public access. It is where OpenSim was in July 2007, immediately after OSgrid was launched, and before people flocked into OSgrid, claimed land and started building.

Also, since Third Room is based on Unity, this blocks creativity. Everything has to be built and scripted outside Third Room. That's like building an entire Second Life or OpenSim sim outside Second Life/OpenSim, scripting it outside Second Life/OpenSim, then dropping the whole thing into Second Life/OpenSim in one chunk, and if you want to change even a small detail, you have to go back outside Second Life/OpenSim and go through almost the whole process again because Unity doesn't let you do shit in-world.

> For opensim I only see one big problem. Stone age technology. Especially because of openGL and Firestorm still thinks we live in a 8 bit world.

32-bit. Second Life wouldn't even be technologically possible in 16-bit, much less 8-bit.

Also, you claim that #OpenGL is stone-age technology because its initial release was in 1992. Well, bad news for you: Your precious, oh-so-powerful MacBook Air M1 runs on an operating system from the age of dinosaurs. It's basically #BSD (macOS is based on Darwin, and Darwin is based on BSD), and BSD is from 1977.

Oh, and by the way, OpenGL has advanced over time. The minimum version required for the official Second Life viewer is 3.2 from August 2009, the minimum version recommended is 4.6 from July 2017.

> This can be changed if there would be young developers interested in creating high end graphics. But you have only nostalgic 60 years old men in opensim who are not skilled to develop new technology.

Another false claim of you which you "know" for a "fact": Everyone in OpenSim except for you is a crusty old geezer at an average age of 60 years.

> Thirdroom has 20 years old kids already who can develop new technology

LOL ROFL

Okay, let's check the factuality of this.

This is the Third Room code repository on GitHub.

The contributors, at least those that aren't bots, are:
Robert Long, software engineer
Nate Martin
Ajay Bura
Matthew Hodgson
Rhea Danzey, senior SRE
Hugh Nimmo-Smith
antpb
Travis Ralston, senior software developer

At the age of 20, you can't be an engineer. You can't have an engineer's degree of any kind. You're still in university or college.

At the age of 20, you certainly can't have "senior" in your official job title.

At least some of these developers don't even look like they're 20. Not 25 either. Not even 30.

So next time you present your personal perception as cold, hard, undeniable facts, prove them. Or don't complain when someone comes with actual facts that contradict what you say and proves these.

And the monthly #OpenSim stats are out, in case someone is curious.

#HypergridBusiness lists 421 public grids now, a new record. And that despite the probably longest list of grids which now count as inactive or gone I've ever seen. Aurora Georgetown may need a new home again, now that Twisted Grid is offline. It's also a pity that TexLand seems to be gone. HD Skin World, I don't know if they had any visitors over the last months, but I remember the eponymous sim as so laggy that it was nigh-impossible to move even with the whole sim rezzed around you.

And congrats to @Lone Wolf and his #WolfTerritoriesGrid for being the second-largest public grid! 18,720 standard regions, just slightly more than #Kitely.

Metaverse – Hypergrid Business wrote the following post Fri, 14 Apr 2023 23:07:47 +0200

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 View article View summary #^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.

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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:

• OSgrid: 4,837 active users
• DigiWorldz: 1,968 active users
• GBG World: 1,739 active users
• Alternate Metaverse: 1,568 active users
• ZetaWorlds: 1,459 active users
• Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,315 active users
• Soul Grid: 1,244 active users
• Moonrose: 1,225 active users
• AviWorlds: 1,132 active users
• Neverworld: 1,022 active users
• Eureka World: 1,018 active users
• Kitely: 995 active users
• Exo-Life: 993 active users
• WaterSplash: 962 active users
• Party Destination Grid: 862 active users
• Craft World: 753 active users
• Wolf Territories Grid: 686 active users
• Offworld: 629 active users
• Barefoot Dreamers: 599 active users
• Youth Nation: 513 active users
• DreamNation: 493 active users
• Astralia: 476 active users
• One Life Grid: 476 active users
• Trianon World: 454 active users
• 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.

• OSgrid: 26,885 regions
• Wolf Territories Grid: 18,720 regions
• Kitely: 18,376 regions
• ZetaWorlds: 8,949 regions
• Alternate Metaverse: 7,797 regions
• Discovery Grid: 5,600 regions
• DigiWorldz: 3,617 regions
• Groovy Verse: 3,280 regions
• Tag Grid: 1,524 regions
• 3rd Rock Grid: 1,248 regions
• AviWorlds: 1,070 regions
• GBG World: 949 regions
• Virtual Worlds Grid: 916 regions
• Serenity: 676 regions
• Tomi’s World: 625 regions
• Piggy Bank Grid World: 613 regions
• Kinky Haven: 601 regions
• ArtDestiny: 529 regions
• German World Grid: 499 regions
• Littlefield: 489 regions
• Furry World: 472 regions
• GorGrid: 417 regions
• 4Creative: 414 regions
• DreamNation: 413 regions
• Craft World: 404 regions
• Neverworld: 325 regions
• Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
• EdMondo: 294 regions
• Soul Grid: 238 regions
• AvatarLife: 238 regions
• Open Virtual Worlds: 232 regions
• Youth Nation: 190 regions
• Counter Earth: 185 regions
• Adreans-World: 172 regions
• Seconds: 167 regions
• German World: 144 regions
• Japan Open Grid: 143 regions
• GerGrid: 141 regions
• Tangle Grid: 129 regions
• AlterEgo: 126 regions

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 [email protected].

#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

@Ken Not only apparently. There is such a thing as #OpenSimulator. It has been around since early 2007, and the #Hypergrid was established in 2008. It even has a small but growing community in the Fediverse. You may have caught it from hearsay from people who in turn have heard about it from hearsay, but I'm an actual user. Someone who is more famous than me is @Mal Burns who also runs several series of YouTube videos including This Week in XR, MBTV and the OpenSim-specific Inworld Review.

For starters, see this FAQ page on #HypergridBusiness which has a dedicated OpenSim section labelled #Metaverse. Seriously, #OpenSim has been using that term since long before Zuckerberg tried to make everyone believe he invented it.

OpenSim is a result from the #SecondLife viewer going #OpenSource, thereby laying open Second Life's viewer API. For one, this led to the creation of third-party viewers such as the #FirestormViewer. But beyond that, a whole new platform for #VirtualWorlds was developed around that viewer API so that it'd work with the new third-party viewers, so that little had to be developed from scratch. The project started as OpenSecondLife, but it was renamed OpenSimulator prior to its public launch.

This also explains why OpenSim is so very similar to Second Life, why it's so very close to it: It still uses viewers primarily made for Second Life, albeit sometimes in dedicated OpenSim variants. The reason for this is a lack of developing capacity. See, Second Life is entirely maintained by a profit-oriented company with hundreds of hired full-time developers. OpenSim is maintained by a small bunch of spare-time developers who get code submissions from other spare-time developers from the community. And OpenSim still doesn't even have its own dedicated viewer. What few devs take care of Firestorm barely get to do more for OpenSim than absolutely necessary because they're busy enough to keep it running in Second Life.

So since the third-party viewers have to cling to Second Life's development and implement all its new innovations to stay compatible with Second Life, OpenSim is forced to follow suit to stay compatible with the viewers. New things from Second Life take their time to trickle down to OpenSim, also because they have to be more or less reverse-engineered first, but OpenSim got things like #BakesOnMesh or EEP.

The experience of Hypergridding is semi-smooth. You do get to take your entire inventory with you, for example. This also means that you can acquire things on other grids than your home grid.

There's a thing called Hypergrid v2 which introduced the "suitcase" in which items can be taken from grid to grid, so all you actually take with you is what's inside your suitcase or worn on your avatar. This was partly established in order to keep asset servers of grids from being cluttered with all kinds of stuff from all kinds of avatars' inventories. But since it's so inconvenient and cumbersome to use, few grids have adopted it, and even fewer still use it, mostly small newbie grids whose admins don't know what it is.

People Hypergrid all the time. Go to any event on the Hypergrid, and you've got folks from all over the Hypergrid as visitors. That's also because the Hypergrid is huge. An estimation says that over 8,000 individual grids are on the Hypergrid, ranging from small home-hosted personal grids to the behemoth that's #OSgrid which, all by itself, has a larger land area than Second Life.

There are a few problems, though. Some arise from not all grids always running the same OpenSim version. Some grids run development versions to always have the latest features and get bugfixes quickly. OSgrid itself is basically still the same development platform as which it was launched in 2008, so while it's the biggest grid in land mass and user numbers, it's also one of the most bleeding-edge grids. Other grids stick with stable release versions. Then there are grid owners who simply can't be bothered to upgrade. Some may have that Windows user mindset of installing once and never upgrading as long as it works. Also, there are entire grids which seems like they've spent at least the last six years under a rock with their hopelessly outdated OpenSim version and their complete lack of years of innovations, e.g. they still don't have any mesh. Last but not least, a few grids run forks of OpenSim which have been abandoned by their creators, which are therefore very outdated, but which are difficult to migrate from to vanilla OpenSim. So although OpenSim has introduced BoM some three years ago, there are still a few grids which don't support it.

Another problem is that not all grids are hosted on powerful Linux root servers in data centres. Especially lots of smaller grids are based on DreamGrid, an OpenSim distribution with a Windows-only point-and-click control interface geared towards ease-of-use for people who have zero experience in running servers. These are very often hosted at home on whatever spare Windows machine the grid admin had lying around through whatever landline the grid admin has at home. There are also people running their OpenSim grids on Raspberry Pis.

Last but not least, just like in the Fediverse, not all grids on the Hypergrid are connected to all other grids. A few grids are blocked by especially large public grids for various reasons. In the case of #ZetaWorlds, it's the other way around: They have blocked lots of other grids for a whole number of reasons, be it grids that use dynamic DNS which may wreak havoc on a grid's database, be it grids that don't offer any way to get into contact with the admin(s) other than in-world.

If you're interested, you may want to take a look at the OpenSimulator Community Conference which will take place on December 10th and 11th. I think registration is still open, and the grid it runs on offers first-time visitors to create a new avatar (it's also on the Hypergrid for those who already have avatars, but that isn't the case with you).

@Ken Not only apparently. There is such a thing as #OpenSimulator. It has been around since early 2007, and the #Hypergrid was established in 2008. It even has a small but growing community in the Fediverse. You may have caught it from hearsay from people who in turn have heard about it from hearsay, but I'm an actual user. Someone who is more famous than me is @Mal Burns who also runs several series of YouTube videos including This Week in XR, MBTV and the OpenSim-specific Inworld Review.

For starters, see this FAQ page on #HypergridBusiness which has a dedicated OpenSim section labelled #Metaverse. Seriously, #OpenSim has been using that term since long before Zuckerberg tried to make everyone believe he invented it.

OpenSim is a result from the #SecondLife viewer going #OpenSource, thereby laying open Second Life's viewer API. For one, this led to the creation of third-party viewers such as the #FirestormViewer. But beyond that, a whole new platform for #VirtualWorlds was developed around that viewer API so that it'd work with the new third-party viewers, so that little had to be developed from scratch. The project started as OpenSecondLife, but it was renamed OpenSimulator prior to its public launch.

This also explains why OpenSim is so very similar to Second Life, why it's so very close to it: It still uses viewers primarily made for Second Life, albeit sometimes in dedicated OpenSim variants. The reason for this is a lack of developing capacity. See, Second Life is entirely maintained by a profit-oriented company with hundreds of hired full-time developers. OpenSim is maintained by a small bunch of spare-time developers who get code submissions from other spare-time developers from the community. And OpenSim still doesn't even have its own dedicated viewer. What few devs take care of Firestorm barely get to do more for OpenSim than absolutely necessary because they're busy enough to keep it running in Second Life.

So since the third-party viewers have to cling to Second Life's development and implement all its new innovations to stay compatible with Second Life, OpenSim is forced to follow suit to stay compatible with the viewers. New things from Second Life take their time to trickle down to OpenSim, also because they have to be more or less reverse-engineered first, but OpenSim got things like #BakesOnMesh or EEP.

The experience of Hypergridding is semi-smooth. You do get to take your entire inventory with you, for example. This also means that you can acquire things on other grids than your home grid.

There's a thing called Hypergrid v2 which introduced the "suitcase" in which items can be taken from grid to grid, so all you actually take with you is what's inside your suitcase or worn on your avatar. This was partly established in order to keep asset servers of grids from being cluttered with all kinds of stuff from all kinds of avatars' inventories. But since it's so inconvenient and cumbersome to use, few grids have adopted it, and even fewer still use it, mostly small newbie grids whose admins don't know what it is.

People Hypergrid all the time. Go to any event on the Hypergrid, and you've got folks from all over the Hypergrid as visitors. That's also because the Hypergrid is huge. An estimation says that over 8,000 individual grids are on the Hypergrid, ranging from small home-hosted personal grids to the behemoth that's #OSgrid which, all by itself, has a larger land area than Second Life.

There are a few problems, though. Some arise from not all grids always running the same OpenSim version. Some grids run development versions to always have the latest features and get bugfixes quickly. OSgrid itself is basically still the same development platform as which it was launched in 2008, so while it's the biggest grid in land mass and user numbers, it's also one of the most bleeding-edge grids. Other grids stick with stable release versions. Then there are grid owners who simply can't be bothered to upgrade. Some may have that Windows user mindset of installing once and never upgrading as long as it works. Also, there are entire grids which seems like they've spent at least the last six years under a rock with their hopelessly outdated OpenSim version and their complete lack of years of innovations, e.g. they still don't have any mesh. Last but not least, a few grids run forks of OpenSim which have been abandoned by their creators, which are therefore very outdated, but which are difficult to migrate from to vanilla OpenSim. So although OpenSim has introduced BoM some three years ago, there are still a few grids which don't support it.

Another problem is that not all grids are hosted on powerful Linux root servers in data centres. Especially lots of smaller grids are based on DreamGrid, an OpenSim distribution with a Windows-only point-and-click control interface geared towards ease-of-use for people who have zero experience in running servers. These are very often hosted at home on whatever spare Windows machine the grid admin had lying around through whatever landline the grid admin has at home. There are also people running their OpenSim grids on Raspberry Pis.

Last but not least, just like in the Fediverse, not all grids on the Hypergrid are connected to all other grids. A few grids are blocked by especially large public grids for various reasons. In the case of #ZetaWorlds, it's the other way around: They have blocked lots of other grids for a whole number of reasons, be it grids that use dynamic DNS which may wreak havoc on a grid's database, be it grids that don't offer any way to get into contact with the admin(s) other than in-world.

If you're interested, you may want to take a look at the OpenSimulator Community Conference which will take place on December 10th and 11th. I think registration is still open, and the grid it runs on offers first-time visitors to create a new avatar (it's also on the Hypergrid for those who already have avatars, but that isn't the case with you).

@Ken Not only apparently. There is such a thing as #OpenSimulator. It has been around since early 2007, and the #Hypergrid was established in 2008. It even has a small but growing community in the Fediverse. You may have caught it from hearsay from people who in turn have heard about it from hearsay, but I'm an actual user. Someone who is more famous than me is @Mal Burns who also runs several series of YouTube videos including This Week in XR, MBTV and the OpenSim-specific Inworld Review.

For starters, see this FAQ page on #HypergridBusiness which has a dedicated OpenSim section labelled #Metaverse. Seriously, #OpenSim has been using that term since long before Zuckerberg tried to make everyone believe he invented it.

OpenSim is a result from the #SecondLife viewer going #OpenSource, thereby laying open Second Life's viewer API. For one, this led to the creation of third-party viewers such as the #FirestormViewer. But beyond that, a whole new platform for #VirtualWorlds was developed around that viewer API so that it'd work with the new third-party viewers, so that little had to be developed from scratch. The project started as OpenSecondLife, but it was renamed OpenSimulator prior to its public launch.

This also explains why OpenSim is so very similar to Second Life, why it's so very close to it: It still uses viewers primarily made for Second Life, albeit sometimes in dedicated OpenSim variants. The reason for this is a lack of developing capacity. See, Second Life is entirely maintained by a profit-oriented company with hundreds of hired full-time developers. OpenSim is maintained by a small bunch of spare-time developers who get code submissions from other spare-time developers from the community. And OpenSim still doesn't even have its own dedicated viewer. What few devs take care of Firestorm barely get to do more for OpenSim than absolutely necessary because they're busy enough to keep it running in Second Life.

So since the third-party viewers have to cling to Second Life's development and implement all its new innovations to stay compatible with Second Life, OpenSim is forced to follow suit to stay compatible with the viewers. New things from Second Life take their time to trickle down to OpenSim, also because they have to be more or less reverse-engineered first, but OpenSim got things like #BakesOnMesh or EEP.

The experience of Hypergridding is semi-smooth. You do get to take your entire inventory with you, for example. This also means that you can acquire things on other grids than your home grid.

There's a thing called Hypergrid v2 which introduced the "suitcase" in which items can be taken from grid to grid, so all you actually take with you is what's inside your suitcase or worn on your avatar. This was partly established in order to keep asset servers of grids from being cluttered with all kinds of stuff from all kinds of avatars' inventories. But since it's so inconvenient and cumbersome to use, few grids have adopted it, and even fewer still use it, mostly small newbie grids whose admins don't know what it is.

People Hypergrid all the time. Go to any event on the Hypergrid, and you've got folks from all over the Hypergrid as visitors. That's also because the Hypergrid is huge. An estimation says that over 8,000 individual grids are on the Hypergrid, ranging from small home-hosted personal grids to the behemoth that's #OSgrid which, all by itself, has a larger land area than Second Life.

There are a few problems, though. Some arise from not all grids always running the same OpenSim version. Some grids run development versions to always have the latest features and get bugfixes quickly. OSgrid itself is basically still the same development platform as which it was launched in 2008, so while it's the biggest grid in land mass and user numbers, it's also one of the most bleeding-edge grids. Other grids stick with stable release versions. Then there are grid owners who simply can't be bothered to upgrade. Some may have that Windows user mindset of installing once and never upgrading as long as it works. Also, there are entire grids which seems like they've spent at least the last six years under a rock with their hopelessly outdated OpenSim version and their complete lack of years of innovations, e.g. they still don't have any mesh. Last but not least, a few grids run forks of OpenSim which have been abandoned by their creators, which are therefore very outdated, but which are difficult to migrate from to vanilla OpenSim. So although OpenSim has introduced BoM some three years ago, there are still a few grids which don't support it.

Another problem is that not all grids are hosted on powerful Linux root servers in data centres. Especially lots of smaller grids are based on DreamGrid, an OpenSim distribution with a Windows-only point-and-click control interface geared towards ease-of-use for people who have zero experience in running servers. These are very often hosted at home on whatever spare Windows machine the grid admin had lying around through whatever landline the grid admin has at home. There are also people running their OpenSim grids on Raspberry Pis.

Last but not least, just like in the Fediverse, not all grids on the Hypergrid are connected to all other grids. A few grids are blocked by especially large public grids for various reasons. In the case of #ZetaWorlds, it's the other way around: They have blocked lots of other grids for a whole number of reasons, be it grids that use dynamic DNS which may wreak havoc on a grid's database, be it grids that don't offer any way to get into contact with the admin(s) other than in-world.

If you're interested, you may want to take a look at the OpenSimulator Community Conference which will take place on December 10th and 11th. I think registration is still open, and the grid it runs on offers first-time visitors to create a new avatar (it's also on the Hypergrid for those who already have avatars, but that isn't the case with you).