OSgrid Celebrates 15th Birthday This Week

OSgrid starts it’s 15th birthday celebrations starting today through until Sunday 31st July 2022. There will be live music and live DJs to celebrate all things OSgrid. There are special events planned for Saturday 30th July and Sunday 31st July. See below for the event schedule…

OSgrid now is the largest OpenSim grid in terms of active users and land area. The OSgrid has been growing steadily over recent years and I would expect it to grow further in the months/years ahead.

Well done to all of the grid owners, creators, testers, scripters, developers, artrists etc who has kept the OSgrid actively going. 15 years is a long term in terms of the operations side and the OpenSim community has helped keeping things running.

OSG-15B Event Schedule 2022

OSgrid teleport locations (must be user of the OSgrid for access)

• hg.osgrid.org:80:OSG15B1
• hg.osgrid.org:80:OSG15B2
• hg.osgrid.org:80:OSG15B3
• hg.osgrid.org:80:OSG15B4

Please spread the word about OSG-15B! 🙂

Advertisement

OpenSim Usage Drops Due To Closure Of The Metropolis Grid

According to the July 2022 OpenSim grids report apparently OpenSim suffered a noticeable drop in the overall usage for active users, registered users and standard regions for the past month. There was a seasonal drop in OpenSim statistics as its the summer holidays which is worth pointing out. Some smaller grids experienced downtimes this month.

OpenSim Stats as of July 2022

• Registered OpenSim Users: 464, 887
• Standard Region Equivalents: 112, 581
• Active Users: 38, 957
• Stats Collected: 276 grids in total

The main reason was the popular Metropolis grid closed down at the end of June 2022 due to the owners/admins shifting their focus to Yunis and not having the time to take care of it anymore (likely more reasons). The Metropolis grid had more than 1, 600 active users, almost 20, 000 registered users and more than 800 regions.

The decision to shut down the Metropolis grid has sent shockwaves around the entire OpenSim community. It’s such a shame because its been a popular grid on OpenSim and it’s been around since 2008.

Latest OpenSim Stats as of July 2022

• OSgrid (4, 779 active users), AviTron (2, 861 active users) and DigiWorldz (2, 140 active users) are now the most popular grids by active users.
• OSgrid (36, 590), Kitely (18, 678) and Wolf Territories Grid (13, 200) have the most regions by land area.

Kitely Market

• There are now 19, 576 product listings on the Kitely Marketplace which now contains 38, 622 product variations and 33, 477 of which are exportable to other OpenSim grids.
• Kitely Market has delivered orders to 554 OpenSim grids to date

Future of OpenSim Grids

With the cost of living including inflation going up in the months/years ahead there could be more OpenSim grid closures as unless there is massive money support behind them and further grid investment. It’s been reported that many users have been cutting down on virtual land ownership during the past few months.

Hopefully most OpenSim grids will be able to survive the upcoming economic downtime but time will tell. I hope those that have used the Metropolis grid are moving now to other OpenSim grids.

2022 is not over and there may be some shocks in the down the road.

OpenSim Monthly Usage Goes Up

On 18th March 2022 David Kariuki published this month’s statistics on Hypergrid Business. It seems like the OpenSim monthly usage has gone up while the land area drops on grid outages. During the past month OpenSim gained almost 2, 000 active users which is good news.

The OSgrid is the biggest OpenSim grid at the moment with 35, 553 regions with Kitely in second place with 18, 936 regions which is quite a difference don’t you think. OSgrid has the most active users at the moment with 4, 804 with DigiWorldz in second place with 2, 070 active users.

Since last summer the total OpenSim land area has been steadily been increasing staying around the 100, 000 mark. OSgrid has seen a huge increase in new regions and active users in recent months. OSgrid is doing pretty well over on OpenSim at the moment and it will be interesting to see if this trend continues through the rest of 2022.

Many OpenSim grids actually offer free land and hosting is pretty cheap for those interested. See the breakdown here or grids renting land.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform similar to Second Life that allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and to 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.

The Kitely Marketplace is still doing well with 19, 432 product listings which contains 38, 568 product variations (33, 431 are sold with the export permission). The Kitely Marketplace has delivered orders to 540 OpenSim grids to date which is pretty amazing. The Kitely Marketplace is accessible to private grids, closed grids and the hypergrid-enabled grids. In second place is the Tag Grid Marketplace featuring avatar appearances and accessories etc.

Hypergrid Business normally releases monthly statistics each month in the middle half part. It’s good to still see these reports being released and to see there are monthly OpenSim news/events happening.

VWBPE 2022 Program Released

All sessions of the upcoming VWBPE 2022 conference have been published on the VWBPE Program page. This year marks the 15th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education conference which opens officially on Thursday 31st March 2022 through until Saturday 2nd April 2022 in Second Life. The theme for 2022 is Phoenix Rising and the conference is free for everyone to attend. All times are SLT!

The Kick Off Event of VWBPE 2022 starts at 8am to 8.50am SLT where Phelan Corrimal (Executive Director) will officially declare the beginning of VWBPE 2022. It’s best to arrive early to make sure you get a seat and to be able to access the VWBPE regions before they become full. On the VWBPE Program page you can add events to your personal calendars by clicking on the selected session. There is a Subscribe button at the bottom of the page to stay updated.

What’s Up at the Lab? – Thursday 31st March 2022

• Patch Linden
• 11am to 11.50am SLT
• Join Phelan and Patch at this Above the Book interview as they explore what’s new at Linden Lab and the impact on educators and non-profit organizations in Second Life.
• VWBPE Auditorium

Looking at a glance overview there are many interesting sessions and keynotes planned from The Beauty of STEAM education in virtual worlds, Out of this World Parade, Phoenix Egg Exhibit Hunt, Spirit Light Dance Company performances and much more. Virtual Worlds after COVID is a must for those that want to know what’s coming next.

There is a special Above the Book Interview with Maria Korolov (Hypergrid Business editor and publisher) live at 3pm-3.50pm SLT on Friday 1st April 2022 talking about the state of virtual environments.

The closing ceremony will be on Saturday 2nd April from 6pm to 7pm SLT including closing remarks and highlights of the conference held at the VWBPE Auditorium. The 2022 Thinkerer Award Recipient will be named during this ceremony. The dance away night party will be held from 7pm to 8pm SLT. There will be live music and dancing. It’s going to be great fun.

The wait is almost over. Yay! 🙂

The Kitely Market Surpassed 500 Grids Milestone

According to Hypergrid Business latest statistics published recently the Kitely Market has now passed the 500 grid milestone which is very good news indeed. Kitely has now delivered content to a total of 506 OpenSim grids in terms of closed and hypergrid enabled ones.

In recent years exportables and listings have been increasing on the Kitely Market offering a useful way for OpenSim users to buy legal and legitimate content. The latest stats show that there are “currently 18,469 product listings in Kitely Market containing 36,871 product variations, of which 31,736 are exportable”.

Here is a graph showing exportable (green) and non-exportable (red) growth on the Kitely Market since July 2014.

Kitely Market strong growth continues (Hypergrid Business Data)

Kitely now has 19, 101 regions, there is roughly 1, 130 active users that have logged in during the past month and in total there are 123, 936 total residents on the Kitely grid.

• April 2021 OpenSim Grid Stats
• (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)

OpenSim land area increased this month however active users fell for a second month running. There was a net loss of 452 active users in the last 30 days.

OpenSim land area over the years (Hypergrid Business Data)

The Kitely grid recently announced that they now support the Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) where you can change the world’s environment in terms of the sky and water. Kitely now runs on the latest stable release of OpenSim 0.9.1.1.