OpenSim active users are up by 3,220 this month, reaching a new all-time high of 47,343. It was the biggest one-month increase in active users since May of 2022.
The number of regions on all OpenSim grids is also up by 3,021, the biggest monthly increase since this past June, for a new total of 130,366 standard region equivalents.
We usually witness an increase in activity during this season since more people spend more time inside on the computer, and grids ramp up for holiday events. Also, the OpenSimulator Community Conference — which took place this past weekend — reported 326 active users.
You can see all the OSCC23 presentations on YouTube here, and the livestreams from both days of the conference here.
Or watch Maria Korolov’s State of the Metaverse presentation here:
She also gave a talk about how generative AI will change content creation and coding.
Meanwhile, the number of total registered OpenSim users tumbled by a massive 8,055 this past month, mostly attributable to the indefinite closure of AviTron, which had 10,179 total registered users and 898 actives last month at this time.
We are now tracking a total of 2,652 public grids, of which 340 are active and 274 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.
The Wolf Territories Grid is the largest grid by land area, with 26,832 standard region equivalents, followed by OSgrid and Kitely.
Our stats do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid which is a distribution of OpenSim since these tend to be private grids.
DreamGrid has so far recorded more than 3,000 unique DreamGrids that have launched since it was launched, according to this year’s update from Micro Technology Services CEO Fred Beckhusen. Micro Technology Services owns both DreamGrid and OutWorldz.
The total list of grids for which OutWorldz reports stats is available here. Anyone can easily add their grid to this list from the same page.
With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, anyone can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature on their home computer. 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. Learn here how to create and host a new Dreamgrid on your home computer using the software.
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 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 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 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: 5,324 active users
- Wolf Territories Grid: 4,428 active users
- GBG World: 2,230 active users
- DigiWorldz: 2,113 active users
- Alternate Metaverse: 1,919 active users
- Darkheart’s Playground: 1,320 active users
- WaterSplash: 1,297 active users
- Moonrose: 1,277 active users
- Neverworld: 1,080 active users
- Littlefield: 1,073 active users
- Trianon World: 1,062 active users
- AviWorlds: 1,014 active users
- Party Destination Grid: 806 active users
- Craft World: 780 active users
- Herederos Grid: 763 active users
- Astralia: 735 active users
- Jungle Friends Grid: 712 active users
- Kitely: 685 active users
- Eureka World: 668 active users
- German World Grid: 654 active users
- Virtualife: 560 active users
- New Life Italy: 546 active users
- AvatarLife: 517 active users
- ZetaWorlds: 517 active users
- Vivo Sim: 510 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. The most popular grids are also not necessarily the most active.
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.
Online marketplaces for OpenSim content
There are currently 20,500 product listings in Kitely Market containing 40,366 product variations, 35,192 of which are exportable.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 600 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 eight years.
Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties on Littlefield
There will be four holiday-themed parties, the first starting at 6 p.m. on December 23, a Christmas Eve party from 9 p.m. on December 24, and a Christmas Party from 8 p.m. Pacific Time on December 25, at the Christmas Island in Littlefield grid.
There also will be a New Year’s Eve formal dance at the grid’s New Year’s Island starting at 9 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, December 31.
All events will feature music, dancing, DJs, and Ball Drop and Fireworks every hour on the hour. Free tuxedos and gowns for the events are available at the grid’s formal wear shop located in the region, grid co-owner Walter Balazic told Hypergrid Business.
The region also hosts the Christmas Mall where visitors can find free Christmas decorations and other types of freebies. The region also hosts Santa’s Castle, Santa’s Flying Sleighride, Christmas Sleighride, ice skating with free ice skates, and many other Christmas-themed attractions.
The hypergrid addresses are lfgrid.com:Christmas Island and lfgrid.com:New Years Island.
Holiday party this weekend on Kitely
Kitely will host a holiday party starting at 12 noon Pacific Time at the Kitely Events Center, featuring skating, snowball fights, dancing, and music with DJ Rosa. The event is open to hypergrid visitors. If you want to give a gift contact Kimm Starr or Koshari Mahana for details.
The hypergrid address is grid.kitely.com:8002:Kitely Events Center.
AvatarLife grid plans mobile app
AvatarLife is currently developing a mobile-based viewer for the grid which will see AvatarLife members playing all types of games on the mobile devices by next year, AvatarLife co-owner Sushant Chandrasekar said.
“We are working with them to make this possible,” he told Hypergrid Business. “By September 2024, we should be on mobile. We are keeping the mobile app purely for gameplay, roleplay, and entertainment. Creators who want to create content on AvatarLife will still need to do it from their computers. The objective of the mobile app is to open the virtual worlds to a lot of younger generation users who prefer to use mobile apps as compared to a desktop viewer.”
AvatarLife already has a working prototype but mesh and texture rendering is still pending. It is partnering with the Crystal Front Viewer team in the project. The team will continue to build for Apple Vision Pro and other immersive VR devices in the future once the mobile app is complete and shows traction. The company also has a new CTO, Alok Singh Mahor, who is heading the technology department.
The grid will also launch premium membership this month starting at $6 per month. Premium members will get weekly stipends of in-world currency, and marketplace discounts, as well as other benefits.
Neverworld has a new role-play continent, Gloebit bonuses and free land
Neverworld is currently developing a new continent for role-playing games, named Neverrealms, and is seeking role-player coordinators. The role play area currently includes Lucidus and Stilwater, two large cyberpunk post-apocalyptic sims. The role play will center around land grabs by warring factions, grid owner Govega Sachertorte said.
“We will be adding other sims we have such as three Fallout-inspired sims, combat sims, and zombie hunt areas,” she told Hypergrid Business. “Also some fae and elven regions. The area is already the size of 32 standard regions and we have plans to actively expand this in the new year.”
The grid is also offering Gloebits bonuses and free regions for new creators and DJs, particularly creators who can offer original creations including clothing, skins, hair, builds, scripts, and vehicles, she said.
The grid has also been running a promotion where anyone who buys new land gets free additional prims on the purchased land. Each new region order gets a 5,000 prim increase at the end of each quarter up to 15,000 extra prims in total until December 31 this year, said Sachertorte.
Additionally, there are hundreds of free premium parcels available for new members joining the grid. Most are homestead-sized, 16,000 meters and up.
AviTron closed indefinitely again
AviTron grid is currently offline following a Facebook post last month from owner Alex Ferraris discussing yet another closure. He’s previously closed AviTron or his previous grid, AviWorlds, more than twenty times. There’s no information available about how residents can get their content out or get refunds.
The grid came back up online in October from yet another indefinite closure. A few people have sent us emails complaining about it but the majority of the 10,000+ residents the grid claims to have, seems to have no complaints at all about the many business closures, most of which are not even planned or announced in time. The grid numbers may also be another attempt by Ferraris, who also runs a blog about several other things including cryptocurrencies, to market his grid.
If you are into virtual worlds and are planning to rent a region or create a region, we recommend a bit more predictable grids where the content will not disappear without a warning from the owner.
The three oldest grids in OpenSim that are still active today are OSgrid, founded in 2007, 3rd Rock Grid, founded in 2008, and AnSky, founded in 2009. In addition, Kitely and Digiworlds are two other extremely well-regarded grids that have been continuously operational for years and rent land. Kitely has been around since 2011 without any major outages, and DigiWorldz has been around since 2015 and is also well-known for its stability. Hypergrid Business editor Maria Korolov recommends Kitely for anyone just starting out and looking for an extremely low-cost, reliable, and high-performance region and OSgrid for people who are interested in running a region on their home computer for free.
OpenMic Arts this Saturday at Alternate Metaverse
The OpenMic Stage is seeking bands, singers, musicians, poets, storytellers, comedians, free-stylers, and other artists who are interested in showcasing their talent during the OpenMic Arts event which will happen from 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, December 16 on the OpenMic Arts region. The event happens every Saturday and is hosted by Chris Dayellis.
The hypergrid address is alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Open Mic Arts.
The Open Mic Arts and the Arts regions were created by Cataplexia Numbers and host all things arts including an art gallery that has exhibitions from artists from all around the hypergrid, the Arts Magazine which also accepts 2D and 3D art submissions including photography, a live performance stage, and an annual arts festival during the summer.
Win Amazon gift card at Omnopolis
The Ithilien gaming region of the Omnopolis grid is hosting a Hi/Low game contest in which one player with the highest score will win a $25 Amazon gift card. The rest can win in-game tokens. The game has been ongoing since August but will conclude at 11 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, December 24 when the winner takes home the prize.
The region, which is already winter and Christmas-themed, hosts free-play games in which players earn free game tokens.
The hypergrid address is omnipolis.com:8002:Ithilien.
New grids
The following grids were added to our database this month: Ankabi, Arcadia Asylum, Mister Grid World, Resurgence, Tiffany’s, VR-ESC, and Tropicana Grid.
If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.
Closed grids
The following 42 grids were suspended this month: 3D Worldz, Avalonia Virtual, Avequest, Bubblesz, CLC grid, Dark Shadows, Destinationz, Dreamland Metaverse, Dynamic Worldz 2, EthanWorld, Exo-Life, Floyd World, Focus 360, Great Canadian Grid, Holo Neon, Holoneon, Hypergrid City, Ikora’s World, Joe’s Place, Kantarobasta Grid, Lake Kindred Spirit, Linkwater, Lost World, Martin Dimitrov Music, Neogrid 3, Old Europa Metaverse, One Life Grid, Online Plunder, Piggy Bank Grid World, SiLi, SiN Grid, Terranei World, Thug, Troiwia, TSim, Vanessa , and Vrugs Kingdom.
Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address — if that’s the case, email us and let us know and we’ll update our database.
Top 40 grids by land area
The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 2,642 different publicly-accessible grids, 337 of which were active this month and 273 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.
- Wolf Territories Grid: 27,664 regions
- OSgrid: 25,650 regions
- Kitely: 18,296 regions
- ZetaWorlds: 11,743 regions
- Alternate Metaverse: 10,162 regions
- Discovery Grid: 5,296 regions
- Groovy Verse: 5,067 regions
- DigiWorldz: 3,574 regions
- German World Grid: 2,133 regions
- Tag Grid: 1,480 regions
- Shoalwater Bay: 1,072 regions
- GBG World: 951 regions
- Virtual Worlds Grid: 916 regions
- 3rd Rock Grid: 873 regions
- ArtDestiny: 841 regions
- Friends Grid: 816 regions
- AviWorlds: 815 regions
- Tomi’s World: 784 regions
- Kinky Haven: 653 regions
- CandM World: 581 regions
- Littlefield: 511 regions
- GorGrid: 430 regions
- AvatarLife: 419 regions
- Craft World: 393 regions
- DreamNation: 378 regions
- Furry World: 372 regions
- Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
- EdMondo: 298 regions
- Neverworld: 280 regions
- Open Virtual Worlds: 241 regions
- Six Sides: 233 regions
- Counter Earth: 197 regions
- Japan Open Grid: 192 regions
- Adreans-World: 173 regions
- MisFitz Grid: 166 regions
- Kater and Friends: 151 regions
- Outworldz: 149 regions
- German World: 144 regions
- GerGrid: 140 regions
- OpenSim Fest: 140 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 david@hypergridbusiness.com.
