OpenSim stats all up with the fall season – Hypergrid Business
The public OpenSim grids reported increases in both land area and users this month as people came back from vacations.
The total land area, in standard region equivalents, went by up 10,223 regions, to 163,960. It was the largest single-month increase in land area since a year ago last November.
Total active users went up by 881, to 163,960. And registered users went up by 7,251, to 459,533.
The following grids were added to our database this month: Fantasia, Francopholie, GL Grid, Harmonious Grid, LinkUp Grid, and RMBOSW Grid.
The following 14 grids were marked as suspended this month: Angel Souls, Concadia, Curiosity Zone, Digital Kittens Network, Dyvall, Eczeat, Enchanted Realms, Insight Concepts, Neocorex, New Horizon, Seconds, Technic World, Virtual Travelers, and Whispering Willows.
If these grids do not come back online within the next month or two, I’ll mark them as closed.
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 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. If you offer region rentals and are not on this list, email me!
You can 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:
- Wolf Territories Grid: 13,381 active users
- OSgrid: 3,907 active users
- Groovy Verse: 3,639 active users
- GBG World: 2,622 active users
- Alternate Metaverse: 1,959 active users
- DigiWorldz: 1,862 active users
- Darkheart’s Playground: 1,425 active users
- Neverworld: 1,195 active users
- New Life Italy: 1,128 active users
- Cave Grid: 1,056 active users
- Sciattisi Grid: 955 active users
- Trianon World: 878 active users
- AvatarLife: 756 active users
- Party Destination Grid: 725 active users
- AviWorlds: 696 active users
- Sanctum Astra: 679 active users
- BloodMoon: 621 active users
- Craft World: 605 active users
- Friends Grid: 585 active users
- SpaceGrid: 509 active users
- Funny Rides: 438 active users
- Virtualife: 366 active users
- ZetaWorlds: 364 active users
- Gentle Fire Grid: 310 active users
- Astralia: 302 active users
Kitely Market adds product listings, grids
As of May, there are 21,947 product listings in Kitely Market, containing 42,787 product variations, of which 37,499 are exportable, according to Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 694 OpenSim grids to date.
All of these numbers are an increase from August’s data.
Historically, all the Kitely Market growth has been in exportable content. This means that buyers can have their purchases delivered directly to avatar inventories on other grids, and that they can travel to other grids with the content.
In the early days of OpenSim, many creators considered this to be a security risk, and non-exportable content dominated. But creators quickly realized that most copybotted content actually comes from Second Life, where everything is non-exportable. And, in general, copybot tools and content thieves don’t bother to check item permissions before committing their thefts. Instead, allowing people to purchase exported content legally, conveniently, and at reasonable prices destroys the copybot economy entirely, leaving only a handful of freebie stores on grids that haven’t yet noticed that they exist and taken them down.
Another source of legitimate content on OpenSim is Linda Kellie’s products, and those of other creators that give them away for free under Creative Commons and similar licenses. Many official freebie stores on OpenSim grids offer these products.
This is similar to how Netflix and other low-cost and free streaming services dramatically reduced online movie piracy.
The Kitely Market is the largest collection of commercial 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.
BloodMoon grid launches online market, new website
BloodMoon grid has a newly redesigned website and an online marketplace that offers free products.
It is a new marketplace, so as of this writing, there are only eight products listed. And products can only be delivered to BloodMoon residents, to their BloodMoon avatars.
However, unlike Kitely Market, BloodMoon allows merchants to list products for free.
“One of the most important principles of BloodMoon Marketplace is precisely the ability to share creations free of charge,” grid administrator Vlad Helsing told Hypergrid Business. “BloodMoon is not intended to become a commercial grid. The Marketplace was created first and foremost to provide the OpenSimulator community with a modern and simple way to share and distribute content. We therefore strongly encourage creators, whenever they wish, to offer their creations for free at 0 BM$. Free products are fully supported, and this is an essential part of our philosophy.”
Merchants can accept payment in in-world currency or via PayPal.
Helsing said that the grid’s goal is to make the marketplace as accesible for creators as possible.
“On our Magic Box Hub region, we provide every Marketplace seller with a small parcel free of charge for their Magic Box,” he says. “There is no rent to pay and no time limit. This allows any creator to open a shop for free, even if they do not own land on BloodMoon.”
The Magic Box is used to synchronize products and handle deliveries, he says.
Products that violate copyright can be taken down by contacting the grid via a contact form or by email.
BloodMoon is a vampire and werewolf themed grid, and you can find out about upcoming events via its Facebook group.
OSgrid seeks donated items for upcoming fundraiser
OSgrid, the oldest public grid in the OpenSim metaverse, will hold its annual fundraiser week from October 12 through 18, grid staff member Caro Fayray told Hypergrid Business.
And the grid is currently looking for donations of items for its auction, which is usually held during the last three days of the fundraiser — that means it will probably be on October 16, 17, and 18.
And the auction isn’t the only event scheduled for the week.
“During that week there are parties and events, and sometimes others hold a fundraising event too,” Fayray told Hypergrid Business.
Read more about the event here.
Speaking of OSgrid, they’re also having a big public meeting on September 27 at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on the Hurliman Plaza region.
“It is essential that as many residents as possible attend this meeting,” the grid said in an announcement that pops up when you visit the grid’s website. Grid admins did not respond to my emails asking for information — and wanting to know whether they were closing the grid — but did modify the announcement to add, “This announcement does not mean that OSGrid is closing.”
What else could it be? A big shake-up in how the grid is managed? A change to the free region connection policies? A software update? No clue. They do say “exciting plans for the future of our community” at the top of the announcement, which sounds ominous. If it was good news, they’d just say what the news was, right?
“This is an important moment for the OSGrid community,” the grid said. “Your presence matters. Please make every effort to attend and help spread the word.”
“Your presence matters” sounds like a vote of some kind. But so, it would be nice to know in advance what we were voting for.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve heard anything!
GBG Neon Grid revamps website, marketplace, offers free land
Another grid that revamped its website recently is GBG World, though the new site is still very difficult to navigate.
The GBG Metaverse Marketplace also includes free items — and allows hypergrid visitors to buy products and have them delivered to their avatars on other grids.
It also allows creators from other grids to set up stores on the marketplace, by providing their grid information and the region port where they placed their Marketplace Box.
To use this marketplace users — both local and hypergrid visitors — need to stop by the “Welcome Area” region, visit the MP Terminal, and pay 10 GL$ to receive a marketplace login if they are local, and 100 GL$ if they are hypergrid visitors. But visitors don’t need to spend any money to buy the currency, GBG World CEO Nick Mit, also known as Anytos Atlas in-world, told Hypergrid Business.
“When they visit the grid for the first time, they automatically receive 150 GB$ as a welcome gift, so they can shop immediately without purchasing currency,” he said.
The most recent addition to the site is a local-only market for grid residents that delivers directly into user inventories, no hypergrid validation or Marketplace Boxes required.
Both markets can deliver to GBG residents, said Mit, but the new marketplace makes things simpler for local shoppers.
“Some users have difficulty understanding how Marketplace Boxes work or how to link their regions, so the local marketplace was created as a simple alternative that requires no setup at all,” he said.
The grid also offers free land and homes to residents, as long as they do not currently rent full regions either on GBG or another grid, and attend grid events weekly.
The grid also offers low-cost region rentals, starting at 6 Euros a month for regions with up to 7,500 prims, and 10 Euros for regions with up to 15,000 prims.
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.
Top 40 grids by land area
All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.
There were a total of 321 active grids this month, 231 of which published statistics. I’m currently tracking a total of 2,158 grids.
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.
- Wolf Territories Grid: 34,063 regions
- OSgrid: 25,665 regions
- Groovy Verse: 18,180 regions
- Kitely: 17,611 regions
- ZetaWorlds: 17,115 regions
- Alternate Metaverse: 11,794 regions
- Neverworld: 3,346 regions
- DigiWorldz: 2,552 regions
- GBG World: 1,930 regions
- Discovery Grid: 1,614 regions
- Tag Grid: 1,577 regions
- Friends Grid: 1,497 regions
- ArtDestiny: 1,225 regions
- Virtual Worlds Grid: 910 regions
- Craft World: 875 regions
- Exotic Realities: 776 regions
- Kinky Haven: 689 regions
- AviWorlds: 652 regions
- New Life Italy: 635 regions
- AvatarLife: 621 regions
- Virtual Worlds Zone: 562 regions
- Darkheart’s Playground: 426 regions
- Furry World: 358 regions
- EdMondo: 310 regions
- BloodMoon: 304 regions
- Migrating Coconuts: 247 regions
- Open Virtual Worlds: 241 regions
- Spartans Keep: 218 regions
- MisFitz Grid: 214 regions
- Japan Open Grid: 201 regions
- Funny Rides: 196 regions
- Maze of The Mind: 192 regions
- Sense Limits: 185 regions
- Kater and Friends: 181 regions
- I Love You Grid: 176 regions
- Dynamic Worldz: 170 regions
- Adreans-World: 165 regions
- Twiztid Timez Grid: 159 regions
- Logicamp: 142 regions
- Utopia Skye: 137 regions
Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that I don’t have in my database? Email me at (email protected).
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