OpenSim land, active users down this month

The public OpenSim grids lost the equivalent of nearly 4,000 regions, for a new total land area of 80,671 standard region equivalents. The number of active monthly users dropped by 2,580, to reach a total of 35,399. Most of the land area losses were due to a regular cleanup on OSgrid, while several grids did not report stats this month.

OSgrid dropped the equivalent of 4,000 regions from their map to allow other users to take unused slots. Typically, these regions come back quickly as region owners reconnect to the grid — or other users grab coveted spots.

Meanwhile, only 217 grids published their stats this month compared to last month’s tally of 232 grids. Kalasiddhi, for example, didn’t show active users this month — but had more than 300 actives last month — and a couple of grids underwent maintenance or had other technical issues.

Islands of Enlightenment gained the most active users this month at 257, followed by Neustadt with 127. A couple of dozen grids gained between 1 and 100 active users.

Dorena’s World lost the highest number of active users at 491, Gevolution was down by 379, Neverworld by 185, and then Kitely by 166.

The registered users number continues to increase and was up by more than 6,000 this month to a near 600,000.

When it comes to land area, HGLuv added the highest number of regions at 202, followed by Out & Proud Grid at 112, and Grid Nirvana with 100 regions and Kinky Grid with 95 regions.

Land area of OpenSim’s public grids, in standard region equivalents. (Hypergrid Business data.)

Nevertheless, Kitely remained the largest grid at 17,393 standard region equivalents, followed by OSgrid with 16,769 regions, Atek Grid with 7,283 regions. DigiWorldz with 5,097 regions and Lost Paradise in fifth place with 4,342 regions.

To calculate standard region equivalents, we take the total land area of the grid and divide it by the number of meters in one standard 256 by 256 meter region. That is because the same land area can be counted in different ways by grid databases, depending on whether the regions are regular regions, megaregions, or variable-sized regions.

OSgrid, as mentioned above, lost the highest number of regions at 4,258, followed by AllCity with 156, then Neverworld with 136, and DigiWorldz 121 and Metropolis at 76 regions.

These stats do not include most of the mini-grids running on the DreamWorld distribution of OpenSim, or private company or school grids. DreamWorld has counted more than 8,483 mini-grids created with this installer alone so far.

OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then 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 — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.

A list of hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here. And find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

You can also add your grid in the stats if it is not being crawled by OutWorldz. OutWorldz also provides OpenSim users with free mesh items, OARs and free seamless textures that you can download and use on your grids.

Popularity

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.

OSgrid remained the most active grid with 3,957 active users, followed by Metropolis with 3,237, AllCity with 2,569, GreekLife 2,557 and DigiWorldz closed out the top five with 2,062 active users.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

OSgrid: 3,957 active users (HG hg.osgrid.org:80)
Metropolis: 3,237 active users (HG hypergrid.org:8002)
AllCity: 2,569 active users (HG login.allcity.com.br:7002)
GreekLife: 2,557 active users (HG hg.grid-greeklife.info:8002)
DigiWorldz: 2,062 active users (HG login.digiworldz.com:8002)
Sacrarium: 1,727 active users (HG sacrarium24.ru:8002)
Eureka World: 1,192 active users (HG 54.77.238.20:9000)
Kitely: 1,086 active users (HG grid.kitely.com:8002)
Lost Paradise: 784 active users (HG lpgrid.com:8002)
Exo-Life: 709 active users (HG hg.exo-life.onl:8032)
Virtual Brasil: 677 active users (HG mundo.virtualbrasil3d.com.br:8002)
ZetaWorlds: 625 active users (HG hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Welcome)
Craft World: 608 active users (HG craft-world.org:8002)
Neustadt: 555 active users (HG neustadt.ddns.net:9000)
Party Destination Grid: 547 active users (HG partydestinationgrid.com:8002)
Eros Resort: 536 active users (HG opensim.bci3d.com:8002)
Nextlife World: 484 active users (HG nextlife-world.de:8002)
Gevolution: 483 active users (HG login.gevolutionworld.com:8002)
DreamNation: 448 active users
Dynamic Worldz: 433 active users (HG grid.dynamicworldz.com:8002)
FrancoGrid: 425 active users (HG hg.francogrid.org:80)
Freedom Grid: 397 active users (HG freedomgrid.world:8002)
EdMondo: 393 active users (HG slw.indire.it:8002)
Littlefield: 369 active users (HG lfgrid.com:8002)
Tranquility: 322 active users (HG tranquility-grid.info:8002)

DreamWorld stats

The Hypergrid Business database currently tracks 1,278 grids, of which 303 were active this month and 217 reported their stats.

OutWorldz has another system for tracking grid counts, and has currently counted a total of 13,824 Dreamworlds or grids created with the DreamWorld software owned by OutWorldz. This is an increase of around six percent from the last month’s tally.

The DreamWorld software allows users to easily create and run grids at home as well as to connect to other OpenSim grids. Out of the 8,483 Dreamworlds, 9,905 are private and 3,919 are hypergridabble.

The details of statistics can be found on Hyperica directory of grids. and the daily summaries here on the OutWorldz website.

Any grid owner can add their grid into the list on the OutWorldz website if OutWorldz is not currently tracking its online status.

Kitely exportables continue to grow

There are currently 12,016 product listings in Kitely Market containing 23,369 product variations, 18,322 of which are sold with the Export permission.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 261 OpenSim grids to date.

Exportable products on Kitely continue to increase. (Kitely Market Data.)

Exportable content has been growing at a much faster rate than non-exportables since Kitely turned the hypergrid export functionality, as merchants increasingly become comfortable to selling to the hypergrid.

However, non-hypergrid grids can also accept Kitely Market deliveries, giving their residents ready access to a wide, legal, and ever-growing collection of content.

VirTec reports a drop in revenue

VirTec network revenue dropped by more than eight percent and the number of merchants by less than one percent, even as the number of transactions shot by seven percent in the last one month.

The value of transactions in revenue went up in VirTec network last month. (VirTec Data.)

Gloebits network transactions continue steady climb

Gloebit, which operates the Gloebits in-world currency, recorded a more than three percent increase in the value of transactions in the last one month. The number of accounts reached a new high of slightly above 1,800 and the number of app users is now over 3,200.

Number of transactions and users up in Gloebits network. (Gloebits Data.)

Craft World to enter maintenance mood for GDPR preparations

Craft World grid usually does maintenance in the summer but is kicking it off early this year in order to prepare for the GDPR regulation compliance.

GDPR is the new European General Data Protection Regulation, which applies to all companies doing business with users in Europe and goes into effect on May 25. Craft is based in Sardinia, Italy.

The maintenance will include a complete renewal of all the grid’s servers and website before end of the month.

They have already updated four of the main five servers of the grid and the central server now has 12 terabytes of disc space. They will also change other servers that they share with other groups and organizations in the grid before the end of June, grid owner Raffaele Macis — known inworld as Licu Rau — told Hypergrid Business.

“Something is changing also about the protected school regions that allow access to underage students with limited permissions,” he said. “Now we will not allow anymore personal accounts of underage students but their teachers will receive a certain number of anonymous accounts — 10 or 15 — with limited permissions that they can use to allow their students to enter educational regions in complete anonymity.”

Macis is also the OpenSim specialist of the Italian educational grid edMondo, belonging to INDIRE, part of Italian Education Ministry. He installed it in Florence and is the one taking care of it.

The grid will also be updating the pricing for its region rentals in a few days.

Landscape regions, currently supporting a maximum of 400 prims for 2 Euros per month will be replaced with 1,000-prim regions at 5 Euros a month.

Standard-sized 15,000-prim region will now be 12 Euros per month, replacing the previous offer of 10,000-prim regions for 7 Euros a month. And 25,000-prim regions will see their prices increase from 15 to 17 Euros.

“As usual all our regions have their own web panel in which owners can stop and start them, such as after a crash, and save, download, upload and load in region their OARs,” he said, referring to the OpenSim’s OAR region archive format that allows users to save entire regions, including all the terrains and objects on them.

Karmalot Kingdom Grid continues with reconstruction

Karmalot Kingdom Grid is reporting that they are progressing well with reconstruction of the grid. They have also set up two new regions called Non-Karmalot Members for new members who want to explore OpenSim offerings.

“These regions have been sub-divided to offer a place for a person to live free while exploring OpenSim and what it has to offer,” grid owner Karma Fride told Hypergrid Business. “We do ask the person create an avatar with us to qualify and must be an adult in the real world of 18 or more, however they do not need to take part in our role play currency or be of the mindset of liking Fetishes.”

The hypergrid address is karmalot-grid.co.uk:8102.

GreekLife offers 10,000-prim residential regions for $4 a month

GreekLife is offering 10,000 prim standard-sized residential regions for $4 per month.

Several other grids offer regions for $5 a month, including Nara’s Nook and Neverworld. Panthera offers a 20,000-prim region for $4.90.

In addition, many grids offer variable-sized regions that work out to $5 per region. For example, both DigiWorldz and Kitely offer two-by-two varregions for $20 a month.

See our Grids Renting Land page for full details.

Free land for trial at GeVolution

GeVolution is offering free-at-no-obligation 14 day trial regions for anyone . You can use this to set up a commercial oriented virtual community or explore other possibilities using the land. Afterwards, you can rent at prices starting from $10 per month for a 20,000-prim standard-sized region. There is also the role-play region option when upgrading.

However, you can not operate a business there but can build ready to run when the trial period is over. You can rename and move the region after upgrading once the trial is over. The offer is open to anyone on the hypergrid.

Mobius grid offering 50 percent price cut on land

Mobius grid is offering 50 percent off for land sales this month until May 31to celebrate four years of operation. The grid turned four years on the May 18. . The offer is open to everyone with an account at the grid and who uses the coupon code “4THANNIVERSARY” when ordering.

“This is open to both account new and old,” Head of Mobius grid Roy Corr told Hypergrid Business. “The coupon code is entered on the second page of the order form were you choose the region type.”

Transitions

The following grids were added to our database this month: Angel Souls, Biker World Grid, Foundation Grid, McDonnaghs, and Skooko.

The following 17 grids were marked as suspended this month: AviUnite, Birikkina, FreeLand, Jazzn’s DreamWorlds, Kokomo-World, Microgrid Sundance, Moonglow, Old Fuddy, Omega Grid, Our Hometown, Outworldz Pirateland HG, Outworldz.lnk, Pathlandia, Sunlight, TheGrid, Virtual Eden, and Your2Live.

Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.

And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at editor@hypergridbusiness.com. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.

By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.

In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be under-counted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.

We posted a stats FAQ page here.

March Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,278 different publicly-accessible grids, 303 of which were active this month, and 217 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.

Below are the 40 largest grids by total land area, in terms of standard region equivalents.