Summer is generally a slow time for OpenSim, and virtual worlds in general, as people spend more time outside and on vacation and educational projects go on break.
The total number of active users went down by more than 3,700, to 43,001.
DigiWorldz, for example, lost 1,220 actives this month, according to its stats reports, as well as 21 regions.
In addition, several grids did not report any stats this month, including German Grid, which had 235 actives last month, German World Grid, which previously reported 623, and The City, which reported 265 actives in July.
But the total land area of OpenSim’s public grids rose by nearly 1,494 region equivalents this month, and OpenSim grids registered a total of 1,545 new users.
We are now tracking a total of 2,675 public grids, of which 311 are active and 244 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.
This month, OSgrid was the largest grid by land area, with 33,203 standard region equivalents, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active, with 6,733 unique logins over the past 30 days.
Our stats do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid, a free easy-to-use version OpenSim, since these tend to be private grids.
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.
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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:
Wolf Territories Grid: 6,733 active users
OSgrid: 4,844 active users
GBG World: 2,295 active users
Vida Dupla: 1,987 active users
Alternate Metaverse: 1,885 active users
Darkheart’s Playground: 1,723 active users
WaterSplash: 1,447 active users
AviWorlds: 1,068 active users
AviVerse AlterEgo: 1,002 active users
DigiWorldz: 943 active users
Trianon World: 937 active users
Neverworld: 897 active users
Littlefield: 822 active users
Party Destination Grid: 796 active users
Moonrose: 774 active users
Astralia: 763 active users
Craft World: 723 active users
AvatarLife: 717 active users
Herederos Grid: 578 active users
Groovy Verse: 547 active users
Virtual Vista Metaverse: 494 active users
ZetaWorlds: 476 active users
Kitely: 460 active users
Gentle Fire Grid: 448 active users
DreamNation: 342 active users
The biggest change on this list was the addition of Virtual Vista Metaverse, a new grid in our database, which had a strong launch.
Online marketplaces for OpenSim content
There are currently 20,965 product listings in Kitely Market containing 41,073 product variations, 35,835 of which are exportable.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 628 OpenSim grids to date.
As you can see in 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 on the graph. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past eight years.
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.
Kitely has recently upgraded its version of OpenSim to allow for faster start-up times and better compatibility with scripts imported from Second Life.
Kitely is also continuing its $90 sale on Mega Worlds.
New grids
I didn’t add any new grids to the database this month.
If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.
Suspended grids
The following 11 grids were marked suspended this month: Butschiland, Butschiland, Destiny Grid, Fire and Ice Grid, Galactic Virtual, IMA Metaverse Depot, KoolPheller Estates, The Public World, Tropical Isle, UCI Mondego vLab, and Virtual RBM.
If they don’t reappear online again soon, they will be marked as closed in future reports.
Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address — if that’s the case, email me and let me know and I’ll update my database.
Top 40 grids by land area
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.
OSgrid: 33,203 regions
Wolf Territories Grid: 29,276 regions
Simation Grid: 25,408 regions
Kitely: 18,246 regions
ZetaWorlds: 12,980 regions
Alternate Metaverse: 10,605 regions
Groovy Verse: 8,334 regions
Discovery Grid: 4,945 regions
DigiWorldz: 3,506 regions
Virtual Vista Metaverse: 3,269 regions
CandM World: 1,849 regions
Tag Grid: 1,464 regions
Shoalwater Bay: 1,072 regions
Friends Grid: 1,040 regions
ArtDestiny: 961 regions
GBG World: 957 regions
Virtual Worlds Grid: 914 regions
AviWorlds: 809 regions
Kinky Haven: 669 regions
Craft World: 630 regions
AvatarLife: 586 regions
Littlefield: 513 regions
GorGrid: 430 regions
Furry World: 373 regions
Virtual Worlds Zone: 364 regions
Neverworld: 318 regions
Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
EdMondo: 300 regions
DreamNation: 284 regions
WestWorld Grid: 274 regions
Darkheart’s Playground: 244 regions
Open Virtual Worlds: 229 regions
Japan Open Grid: 197 regions
Kater and Friends: 191 regions
Counter Earth: 183 regions
MisFitz Grid: 175 regions
Adreans-World: 172 regions
GerGrid: 141 regions
XTalent: 138 regions
Outworldz: 127 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 maria@hypergridbusiness.com.
