Breaking OpenSim News
Sad news to hear that Hypergrid Business one of the best sources for all things OpenSim is slowly winding down after 9 years. Maria Korolov who is the lead editor and publisher of Hypergrid Business has said that it’s a lot of work each month to maintain from contacting grid owners to publishing the monthly statistics/news. Apparently the volume of coverage in Hypergrid Business has fallen over the past few months.
Hypergrid Business has collected grid statistics since summer 2009 and has published 105 stats report articles since then. More than 300 articles have been written by over 200 contributors since March 2009. Hypergrid Business has had more than 2.5 million visitors who have read a total of 6.5 million articles which is pretty impressive i think.
Apparently HG Safari has ended recently which is a real shame.
There was once a strong possibility that OpenSim would evolve into an open source, virtual reality metaverse. That’s not happening. Our viewers are still stuck where they were ten years ago, without any real support for web or mobile access or for virtual reality headsets. All projects to address that issue seem to have faded away. Instead, the focus has shifted to VR-native platforms from Google, Facebook, and, to some degree, Microsoft. We don’t know yet what Apple is cooking up, but they’re busy as well.
It’s increasingly looking like the whole SL-OpenSim ecosystem has hit a dead end. It will probably continue to exist as a niche platform for its half million active monthly users, shrinking slightly each year until it’s just a nostalgia thing, like text-based adventure games or manual typewriters.
Online Changes
- Hypergrid Business still be online and will be maintained. The article archives will stay up including all the resources which will be available to everyone.
- Maria will continue to publish the monthly active grids list, press releases, guest columns and the free ads will stay active
- Possible short news pieces or two each month
Offline Changes
- Hypergrid Business will no longer publish monthly stats reports and usage stats,
- No more updates to the list of popular hypergrid destinations – (no traffic numbers)
Stay updated on the latest OpenSim news, events and more.
However, if people want to stay on top of OpenSim news, I recommend subscribing some of the great Google Plus communities that are out there, such as OpenSim Virtual, The Adult Metaverse, OpenSim Everything, Hypergrid Safari, Hypergrid Events and Virtual Destinations. Full list of communities is here, and the largest ones are listed here
Thank you Maria for the Opensim coverage you have provided over the years. It’s definitely been the best source for OpenSim news, stats and events.
Wishing you all the very best Maria for the future.
