Since October 2009 OpenSim grids have been growing in terms of total regions, total registered users and total active users. Hypergrid Business publishes monthly blog posts on the updated opensim grid numbers which is interesting to look at every month. During 2013 or 2014 it’s predicted OpenSim total regions will overtake Second Life total main grid regions.
Over recent years there has been more interest for OpenSim grids it seems and still Second Life continues to decline in terms of regions and active online users. These statistics below show data from October 2009 to March 2013 based on the top 40 opensim grids. Worth looking at I think!
Total Regions via Top 40 OpenSim Grids
- 6, 103 – 15th October 2009
- 7, 246 – 15th December 2009
- 8, 561 – 15th February 2010
- 10, 558 – 15th April 2010
- 11, 717 – 15th June 2010
- 10, 427 – 15th August 2010
- 12, 425 – 15th October 2010
- 15, 094 – 15th December 2010
- 13, 369 – 15th February 2011
- 14, 566 – 15th April 2011
- 15, 290 – 15th June 2011
- 18, 498 – 15th August 2011
- 19, 525 – 15th October 2011
- 21, 666 – 15th December 2011
- 23, 231 – 15th February 2012
- 20, 159 – 15th April 2012
- 18, 518 – 15th June 2012
- 21, 775 – 15th August 2012
- 25, 202 – 15th October 2012
- 23, 718 – 15th December 2012
- 24, 678 – 15th March 2013
Total Registered Users via Top 40 OpenSim Grids
- 183, 896 – 15th April 2011
- 194, 466 – 15th June 2011
- 206, 096 – 15th August 2011
- 215, 740 – 15th October 2011
- 222, 316 – 15th December 2011
- 228, 892 – 15th February 2012
- 235, 468 – 15th April 2012
- 245, 433 – 15th June 2012
- 257, 734 – 15th August 2012
- 258, 301 – 15th October 2012
- 276, 930 – 15th December 2012
- 286, 798 – 15th March 2013
Total Active Users Via Top 40 OpenSim Grids
- 15, 504 – 15th February 2012
- 17, 404 – 15th April 2012
- 16,391 – 15th June 2012
- 17, 364 – 15th August 2012
- 18, 124 – 15th October 2012
- 20, 695 – 15th December 2012
- 19,496 – 15th March 2013
Do you prefer Second Life or OpenSim grids ? Can you predict future numbers ?
Daniel Voyager 
good article-)) I do have to disagree on “One day OpenSim total regions will overtake Second Life total main grid regions which stands at 27, 568 regions. At the current rates that will happen in late 2014/2015” as I think the growth is exponential…and, in particular, the –free– opensim metaverse is drawing a lot of people.
Obviously, in people numbers, way behind sl, but in regions I expect you will see them overtake sl sometime this year.
A numbers of factors go into this..that one can run multiple regions in a single opensim instance, that people find out how wonderful it is to be truly free, and tell their friends, that the stigma of ONLY sl having the best content, gets thrown out as more and more realize that the fact is that many old sl content creators ARE out in the free metaverse, creating better due to the lack of prim amount limitations and prim size limitiations, and sharing, freely.
It is truly a wonderful thing to behold…btw, missed ya at “The Change”, but never fear, videos and pics are coming in already-))
And now Tim is offering some awful good and easy ways to get your own regions in opensim…zetamex.com…and tell him you want to be in Metropolis Grid…your readers will thank you-))))))
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Thanks Minethere.
Well I wanted to update my readers and new visitors from SL a update on how opensim is doing in terms of stats since the start. The opensim numbers are from a spreadsheet set up recently to track opensim grid numbers.
“in regions I expect you will see them overtake sl sometime this year” – Oh right, thats going to be historical if rates continue this year. I do want to see growth in SL at some point this year.
I have signed up and logged in a few times on Metropolis Grid. I know Metropolis Grid will be celebrating it’s 5th birthday next week which should be exciting. 😀
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We’re going to have a “build off” in the metro region -I’m going to be hosting and hope you can make it. 🙂
I’m not sure about SL growing, at this point. My feeling is that there are ways that the Lab could grow the grid, but they’ve lost interest in it and are treating it as a legacy product -so it’s either going to stay steady, or decline.
I’m not sure what the numbers really mean, anyway -I have 20 regions on my desktop which I sometimes connect to the hypergrid. Most of them are empty, and 5 of them are in varying states of development. There’s more activity and such on an 4096sqm plot in SL than there is on all 20 of my regions.
My point being, the comparision is apples to organes, in my opinion.
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Yes, the 5th anni bday is gonna be awesome..and a wonderful showcase of talent-))
http://hypergrid.org/metropolis/wiki/en/index.php/5-years-jubilee
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Awesome, thanks for the link Minethere.
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Ťhє plєaşurє is ﾑlwayş ოinє
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🙂
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Daniel —
Keep in mind that there’s a lot of OpenSim growth that we don’t get to see at all. First, the Diva Distro has been downloaded 20,000 times over the past three years. The OpenSimulator.org site has only started keeping track of their downloads over the past three months, but, on average, they see four times as many downloads each month as the Diva site. So I’d estimate that OpenSim has been downloaded a total of 20,000 (Divas) plus 80,000 (OpenSimulator.orgs) plus 18,000 (Sim-on-a-Sticks) times – or 118,000 downloads.
We have no way of knowing what’s happening with these downloads. Are people setting up their own grids? Attaching regions to existing grids? Downloading the software and giving up? Downloading the software once and setting up multiple grids for clients?
These are the “dark grids” – private school, company, and individual OpenSim deployments.
Then there are the vendor numbers. There are dozens of vendors that I know of (possibly more out there that I don’t know about). So far, they’ve declined to provide customer numbers, except one, who said that they are running “hundreds” of private grids for customers.
Most of those private grids are, again, for schools and companies doing training and simulations.
It’s hard to get folks to talk about this, because companies don’t want to talk about projects in the test or pilot phases, don’t want to talk about cutting-edge stuff that might give them a lead over competition, and don’t want to talk about stuff that might sound silly in print like “virtual worlds.”
But serious folks are starting to step forward with their stories, like the Army’s MOSES grid, and the Georgia school district’s NOBLE grid.
The big social grids are getting all the attention because they’re actively trying to market themselves to potential users. But I suspect that the money is in the private grids.
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Thanks Maria for your comment and info. 🙂
Helpful as always. 🙂
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