Summer is a slow season for OpenSim and the virtual world in general, as people spend more time outdoors, take vacations, and educational projects are put on hold.
The total number of active users decreased by more than 3,700 to 43,001.
For example, DigiWorldz lost 1,220 active users and 21 territories this month, according to its statistics report.
Additionally, several grids did not report statistics this month, including German World Grid, which had 235 active grids last month and previously reported 623, and The City, which reported 265 active grids in July.
However, the total land area of OpenSim’s public grid increased by about 1,494 regions this month, and the OpenSim grid registered a total of 1,545 new users.
We are currently tracking a total of 2,675 public grids, of which 311 are active and 244 have published statistics this month. If you have a statistics page that we are not tracking, please email us at maria@hypergridbusiness.com so that your grid can be mentioned in this report each month, giving you more visibility both for search engines and users.
This month, OSgrid was the largest grid by land area with 33,203 standard regions equivalent, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active with 6,733 unique logins in the last 30 days.
Our statistics do not include most grids running on DreamGrid, a free and easy-to-use version of OpenSim, as these are typically personal grids.
OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform similar to Second Life that allows non-technical people 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 DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for the more technically adept, or other distributions, with commercial hosting starting at less than $5 per location.
A list of OpenSim hosting providers is available here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get OpenSim world or local content here.
The Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available.
On the 15th of every month (right after the statistics report comes out) we will send 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
For general purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is that the busier the better. People looking to make new friends will go to the grid that already has the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grid with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience will get the idea.
The 25 most popular grids this month:
- Wolf Territories Grid: 6,733 active users
- OSgrid: 4,844 active users
- GBG World: 2,295 active users
- Double Life: 1,987 active users
- Alternative 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 a new grid to the database, Virtual Vista Metaverse, which has been well-received since its release.
Online marketplace for OpenSim content
Currently, Kitely Market has 20,965 product listings including 41,073 product variants, 35,835 of which are exportable.
Kitely Market has delivered orders to 628 OpenSim grids to date.
As you can see in the chart above, almost all of Kitely Market’s growth has come from content that can be exported to other grids. This is the green area on the graph. The red area of non-exportable content has remained flat for the past eight years.
The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available for OpenSim. It is accessible for both HyperGrid-enabled and closed private grids. Instructions on how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are available here.
Kitely recently upgraded their version of OpenSim, improving startup time and improving compatibility with scripts imported from Second Life.
Kitely continues its $90 sale on Mega Worlds.
New grid
We didn’t add any new grids to the database this month.
If you know of a missing public grid, please email maria@hypergridbusiness.com.
hanging grid
This month, the following 11 grids were marked as down: Butschiland, Butschiland, Destiny Grid, Fire and Ice Grid, Galactic Virtual, IMA Metaverse Depot, KoolPheller Estates, The Public World, Tropical Isle, UCI Mondego vLab, Virtual RBM.
If it doesn’t come back online in the near future, it will be marked as closed in future reports.
Sometimes the grid changes the login URI or website address. If that happens, please let us know by email and we will update the database.
Top 40 grids by land area
All area numbers in this list are based on standard area equivalence where possible. Active user counts include HyperGrid visitors where possible.
Many schools, companies, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.
Here is the raw data for this month’s report. Here is a list of all active grids. And here is a list of all HyperGrid-enabled grids and HyperGrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful when creating HyperPorts.
Here you can see all past OpenSim statistics, including polls and surveys from 2009 to present.
- OSgrid: 33,203 locations
- Wolf Territories Grid: 29,276 Territories
- Simulation Grid: 25,408 regions
- Kitely: 18,246 locations
- ZetaWorlds: 12,980 locations
- Alternative Metaverse: 10,605 Regions
- Groovy Verse: 8,334 locations
- Discovery Grid: 4,945 locations
- DigiWorldz: 3,506 locations
- Virtual Vista Metaverse: 3,269 locations
- CandM World: 1,849 locations
- Tag Grid: 1,464 locations
- Shoalwater Bay: 1,072 locations
- Friends Grid: 1,040 locations
- ArtDestiny: 961 locations
- GBG World: 957 locations
- Virtual World Grid: 914 Regions
- AviWorlds: 809 locations
- Kinky Haven: 669 locations
- Craft World: 630 locations
- AvatarLife: 586 locations
- Littlefield: 513 locations
- GorGrid: 430 locations
- Furry World: 373 locations
- Virtual World Zones: 364 locations
- Neverworld: 318 locations
- Nemesis 3D: 305 locations
- EdMondo: 300 locations
- DreamNation: 284 locations
- WestWorld Grid: 274 locations
- Darkheart’s Playground: 244 locations
- Open Virtual World: 229 locations
- Japan Open Grid: 197 locations
- Carter and Friends: 191 locations
- Counter Earth: 183 locations
- MisFitz Grid: 175 locations
- Adreans-World: 172 locations
- GerGrid: 141 regions
- XTalent: 138 locations
- Outworlds: 127 locations
Do you know of any other grids that are publicly available but not in our database? Please email us at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.