OpenSim grid stats decreased by 1,347 active users and 131 regions this month compared to last month’s tally due to several grids suffering outages or not publishing their statistics this month.
For example, New Life Italy did not report its active user stats this month — it had over 400 last month. Other grids that had over 100 active users last month but were either down or did not report stats this month include Arkham Grid, Sharing Is Caring Family, Virtual Melody, Calypso, and Impulse Grid. Finally, Eureka World, an educational grid, was down by over 500 active users, mostly likely due to the summer holidays.
We are now tracking 2,584 OpenSim grids in total, 419 of which were active this month, and 268 of which published statistics.
OSgrid, Wolf Territories Grid, and Kitely are still the three largest grids by land area.
OSgrid reported an equivalent of 28,808 standard-sized regions this month, followed by Wolf Territories Grid with 25,472 regions, Kitely with 18,255, ZetaWorlds with 10,099, and Alternate Metaverse with 8,896 regions. OSgrid added the most number of regions at 1,483 this month, followed by Groovy Verse with 487, Perfect Life with 199, Alternative Metaverse with 107, and ArtDestiny with 96 additional standard regions.
OSgrid offers unlimited free regions to all residents — as long as people run them on their home computers. They have an easy region installer here. No wonder they’re the largest grid in OpenSim.
ZetaWorlds, on the other hand, offers two-by-two regions with 75,000 prims for €18.99 (US $21) per month with other configuration options also available. Groovyverse land prices start at $25 per month for a region that can be configured to be as big as 16 by 16 standard regions. Both grids also offer free land parcels to residents.
Another option for people who want free OpenSim land is to use DreamGrid from OutWorldz, a version of OpenSim used by many people to create virtual worlds on personal computers, private company grids, or school grids.
Our stats also do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid since these tend to be private grids.
DreamGrid has so far recorded a total of 10,377 DreamGrids that have launched since DreamGrid started. However, when the grid name changes are accounted for, 3,435 Dreamgrids have been installed as shown by a count of unique, random IDs according to 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.
With the free-to-use DreamGrid software, users can easily create virtual worlds through a graphical interface and one-click install feature. 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.
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 own 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: 4,759 active users
- Wolf Territories Grid: 3,044 active users
- DigiWorldz: 1,950 active users
- GBG World: 1,633 active users
- Alternate Metaverse: 1,569 active users
- Piggy Bank Grid World: 1,327 active users
- ZetaWorlds: 1,264 active users
- Darkheart’s Playground: 1,229 active users
- Neverworld: 1,165 active users
- Soul Grid: 1,151 active users
- AviWorlds: 1,069 active users
- Moonrose: 1,056 active users
- Exo-Life: 993 active users
- Party Destination Grid: 816 active users
- Craft World: 783 active users
- One Life Grid: 665 active users
- Youth Nation: 630 active users
- Jungle Friends Grid: 617 active users
- Trianon World: 599 active users
- Kitely: 582 active users
- WaterSplash: 581 active users
- ProxyNet: 571 active users
- Barefoot Dreamers: 561 active users
- Kid Grid: 502 active users
- The City: 501 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.
Wolf Territories Grid is this month’s biggest gainer, with an increase of 404 in their active user numbers compared to last month. Next were Darkheart’s Playground, having added 369 active users, followed by Jungle Friends Grid with 247 new actives, Piggy Bank Grid World with 207, Dorena’s World with 147, and Caribou Grid with 107.
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.
OSgrid registered the highest number of users with 294, followed by Perfect Life with 102, Kitely with 99, Wolf Territories grid with 93, and Alternative Metaverse with 81 registered users. Baller Nation, which had 1,513 registered users last month, did not publish stats this month.
Here’s some information on how and why you should set up a stats page for your grid. Not all grids need a stats page — especially grids that aren’t open to the public like school grids, private company grids, small family grids, and so on. From prior surveys, this dark metaverse of OpenSim grids is significantly bigger than the one we know about, because those grids don’t need to promote themselves, and we never hear about them.
Online marketplaces for OpenSim content
There are currently 20,020 product listings in Kitely Market containing 39,735 product variations, 34,644 of which are exportable.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 592 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 seven years.
Offering a convenient and low-cost way for OpenSim users to buy legitimate, legal content not only offers creators sales opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise but reduces the need for pirated content, similar to the way that Netflix and other streaming services have reduced the amount of illegal video streaming.
In addition, restricting content to closed grids does little to stop piracy. Most stolen content is ripped from Second Life, the original closed grid. The only time that being on a closed grid offers additional security for content creators is when the content involves high-end scripts or proprietary animations.
Speaking of closed grids — where users are not able to teleport to other grids — the biggest such grid, Tag, also has its online marketplace. The marketplace lists 29,994 items both for sale and free.
Neverworlds’ Marketplace, which launched last month, is another option for OpenSim grids, and does support hypergrid shoppers. The site currently lists a bunch of items for sale to both residents and hypergridders. It is a place for sourcing free and extremely cheap items since most are priced at under $3.
Neverworlds also offers free virtual land to residents who can then set up shop and craft or bring in virtual items for sale or give away at the marketplace. The free parcels measures from 3,000 to 16,000 meters in size and of up to 5,000 prim limits, grid owner Govega Sachertorte told Hypergrid Business.
OpenSim grid news
Play VR games on Mech Lab; new security shop opens
Simphony Vive runs a virtual reality-enabled Mech Lab region in OSgrid where people can play VR games, explore VR scenes, and build their custom merchandise. Users who want to build items on the world can find add-ons for the items from the merchant stores such as the Mech Lab Security mini-shop, which opens on Sunday, July 16.
Pro members can also share 360 degrees and VR images with friends at the Mech Lab.
The hypergrid address is hg.osgrid.org:80:Mech Lab.
RRD fashion store to reopen with newer mesh styles
The RRD Fashion Exclusives fashion region store on the My Virtual Beach grid will close for one week at a time to be determined next month and then reopen with newer mesh styles and designs such as Athena, Athena Petite, Legacy, and Legacy Perky.
Trizzy Hunter, the store owner, announced that the currently available styles and designs will also undergo revamping during the closure. She is also open to suggestions and requests on improving the texture and colors of existing meshes and items.
The region hosts mainly clothing designs created for Rayvn’s Roost Designs and those made by Trizaria Hunter. The store also regularly releases new clothing designs and textures.
The hypergrid address is grid.myvirtualbeach.com:8002:RDD Fashion Exclusives.
Social region to open on I Love You Grid
The Sea of Tranquility is the name of a new social adult hypergrid-enabled region set to open on the I Love You Grid, with lots of activities and places for couples to explore. It will host, among other activities, weekly social parties hosted at the Beach Club, which is also set to open in the region. Other activities will include nude sailing for couples and safe moorings.
The hypergrid address is iloveyougrid.net:8002:Sea of Tranquility.
My Virtual Beach grid to close for backups
My Virtual Beach grid will be offline next Thursday, July 20 for a grid-wide backup exercise that is set to take between a few hours and the entire Thursday night, according to an announcement by grid owner Mistress Dalgato.
Al Capone Homes giving away free parcels
Region 002 of Piggy Bank Grid World grid has free parcels of up to 2,000 prims for residents. They can then build or bring in items on the land. Anyone willing to take land can join via this link.
The hypergrid address is al-capone.homes:8002:Free parcels 002.
New grids
The following grids were added to our database this month: Beha Second, Friends Grid, Neogrid 3, Farm World A Sua Vida Virtual, and Sparta II.
If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email us at david@hypergridbusiness.com or maria@hypergridbusiness.com.
Closed grids
After a grid has been inactive for two months, we mark it as suspended. Then, after it’s been suspended for a couple of months, we mark it as closed.
The following 22 grids were suspended this month: Angel Grid, Brillyunt, Chubelz Grid, CopyKat, Destinations, Destinationz, Fresh MetaVers, Grid Network, hg.rocketworld.top, Impulse Grid, KittyBlue, MajHome, Miki Kiti Tiki, NasMaison, PMGrid, Rainbow World, Rocket World, Slanted and Enchanted, Tenebris Mysterium, VirtuaLifeNewGrid, WestWorld, and Pmgrid.
Sometimes, a grid changes its loginURI 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 2,584 different publicly-accessible grids, 419 of which were active this month, and 268 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.
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.
