It's the spooky season here in the United States, with Halloween coming up soon and all sorts of creepy scary stuff happening, and cooler weather outside. Also -- we've got the elections. So, three reasons for people not to want to leave their house and spend time in OpenSim as well.
Or maybe there's another reason why active user numbers went up. Who knows? Whatever the cause, the public OpenSim grids gained nearly 3,000 new active users compared to this time last month. However, with grid outages and stats changes, total registered users dropped slightly -- and land area went down by the equivalent of 24,000 standard regions.
But the drop in land area is easily explained. Simation Grid, which reported 25,408 regions last month is now down to 1,024. Simation is a tiny grid -- well, not in size, but in users -- with just 3 actives this month. So the land area was most likely a test of server capacity. That happens. People try to see how many regions they can cram into a server, play around with it for a while, then eventually shut it down. After wall, why keep servers running for regions nobody is using?
We are now tracking a total of 2,675 public grids, of which an even 300 were active this month and 232 published their statistics. If you have a stats page that we're not tracking, please email me at [email protected] -- 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 34,103 standard region equivalents, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active, with 6,950 unique logins over the past 30 days.
As you can see from the chart above, the Simation regions created a spike in land area this summer, but the land growth is now back to normal levels.
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.
Please leave this field empty
Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.
Email Address *
We don't spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.
Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.
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: 7,122 active users OSgrid: 4,910 active users GBG World: 2,435 active users Darkheart's Playground: 2,206 active users DigiWorldz: 2,186 active users Alternate Metaverse: 1,980 active users WaterSplash: 1,593 active users AviWorlds: 1,081 active users AviVerse AlterEgo: 1,020 active users Neverworld: 965 active users Trianon World: 963 active users Astralia: 943 active users Moonrose: 916 active users Littlefield: 862 active users Party Destination Grid: 807 active users AvatarLife: 735 active users SunEden Resort: 692 active users Great Canadian Grid: 675 active users Craft World: 673 active users Groovy Verse: 597 active users Herederos Grid: 566 active users Kitely: 523 active users Gentle Fire Grid: 499 active users OpenSim Fest: 432 active users Eureka World: 427 active users Online marketplaces for OpenSim content
There are currently 21,048 product listings in Kitely Market containing 41,164 product variations, 35,920 of which are exportable.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 632 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.
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 [email protected].
Suspended grids
The following 13 grids were marked as suspended this month: Angel Souls, Free Life, Insight Concepts, New Life Italy, Nordlicht Grid, OB, Phantom Rose, Pineapple, Planet, ProxyNet, TinkerLand, Trans Sidera, and TUIS Open Grid.
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: 34,973 regions Wolf Territories Grid: 29,566 regions Kitely: 18,165 regions ZetaWorlds: 13,023 regions Alternate Metaverse: 10,513 regions Groovy Verse: 8,459 regions DigiWorldz: 3,501 regions Virtual Vista Metaverse: 3,259 regions CandM World: 2,094 regions Discovery Grid: 2,056 regions Tag Grid: 1,465 regions Shoalwater Bay: 1,104 regions Friends Grid: 1,040 regions Simation Grid: 1,024 regions ArtDestiny: 961 regions GBG World: 960 regions Virtual Worlds Grid: 914 regions AviWorlds: 838 regions Craft World: 696 regions Kinky Haven: 677 regions AvatarLife: 597 regions Littlefield: 514 regions GorGrid: 429 regions Furry World: 373 regions Virtual Worlds Zone: 364 regions Neverworld: 336 regions Darkheart's Playground: 312 regions Nemesis 3D: 305 regions EdMondo: 300 regions WestWorld Grid: 270 regions Open Virtual Worlds: 229 regions MisFitz Grid: 213 regions Japan Open Grid: 196 regions Counter Earth: 196 regions Kater and Friends: 185 regions Adreans-World: 161 regions Utopia Skye: 145 regions GerGrid: 141 regions XTalent: 140 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 [email protected].
Author Recent Posts Maria KorolovHypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at [email protected]. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction. Latest posts by Maria Korolov (see all) Spooky season brings more visitors to OpenSim worlds - October 15, 2024 Storylink Radio plans spooky fall events in Kitely and Second Life - September 15, 2024 OpenSim active users rise with cooler weather - September 15, 2024