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OpenSim user growth slows due to cold weather – Hypergrid Business

The weather in the United States, where I live, is getting cooler. At least for a few days. The weather has been a bit changeable lately. And there are other things happening in this country that are making us want to spend less time in the real world and more time in the virtual world. Therefore, it makes sense that both registered users and land area have increased in the public OpenSim grid.

What’s even more surprising is that the total number of active users dropped by more than 2,700.

Of course, Moonrose, which reported over 900 active users last month, appears to be having website issues and hasn’t posted any statistics this month. Additionally, Vida Dupla, which had 375 active users last month, did not report the number of active users this month. And the Great Canadian Grid, which had more than 600 activities last month, is now closed.

However, several grids have reported significant declines in the number of active users. OSgrid reported a decline of more than 800 actives compared to the previous month, Craft World saw a decline of more than 200, and five grids each lost more than 100 actives.

So we’re seeing more than just grid closures and some reporting issues.

Maybe everyone goes to Halloween parties and spends less time in the world? Or perhaps you like the cool weather, wearing a cozy sweater, and enjoying the fall foliage and refreshing walks?

no! According to Wolf Territories reader Paul Clevett, OSgrid is down for maintenance. And I found the notice. Thanks for letting me know, Paul!

Apparently OSgrid is currently offline and has been offline since November 7 due to lack of space in the storage cluster.

“OSgrid has 17 years of data spanning hundreds of millions of assets,” the release said. And the situation gets even worse. The grid stores both asset data and redundant copies, but not at actual size. This means that all your assets appear larger than they actually are.

To fix the problem, you need to reconfigure the grid’s storage. This involves moving millions of assets and removing additional ghost space to reclaim it. Doing this while people are using the grid can lead to a bad user experience, so put the grid into maintenance mode during most operations.

The bad news is we don’t know how long it will take. The good news is that you don’t expect to lose any of your assets.

Anyway, I’m currently tracking a total of 2,677 public power grids, of which 295 were active this month and 232 have published statistics. If you have a statistics page that you do not want to track, please email maria@hypergridbusiness.com. The grid will then be mentioned in this report each month to provide additional visibility to both search engines and users.

This month, OSgrid was the largest grid by land area, with 32,867 standard area equivalents, despite losing more than 2,000 regions, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active, recording 7,379 unique logins over the past 30 days.

OpenSim land area as of November 2024. (Hypergrid business data.)

Our statistics do not include most grids running on DreamGrid, a free and easy-to-use version of OpenSim. Because these grids tend to be private grids.

OpenSim is a free, open-source virtual world platform, similar to Second Life, that allows non-technical people to quickly and inexpensively 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 minded, or another distribution, with commercial hosting starting at less than $5 per region. It works.

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

Meet the Hypergrid Business Newsletter now

On the 15th of each month, right after the statistical report comes out, we will send out a newsletter containing 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 more crowded the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Sellers looking to sell content go to the grid with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the largest audience – you get the idea.

The top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. Wolf Territories Grid: 7,379 active users
  2. OSgrid: 4,046 active users
  3. GBG World: 2,498 active users
  4. DigiWorldz: 2,190 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 2,058 active users
  6. Darkheart’s Playground: 2,011 active users
  7. WaterSplash: 1,497 active users
  8. Trianon World: 1,092 active users
  9. Neverworld: 1,042 active users
  10. AviVerse AlterEgo: 1,020 active users
  11. AviWorlds: 994 active users
  12. Astralia: 867 active users
  13. Littlefield: 861 active users
  14. Party destination grid: 822 active users
  15. AvatarLife: 672 active users
  16. Groovy Verse: 605 active users
  17. Eureka World: 595 active users
  18. NakedWorldz: 576 active users
  19. Sun Eden Resort: 553 active users
  20. Gentle Fire Grid: 514 active users
  21. Herederos Grid: 494 active users
  22. Kitely: 462 active users
  23. ZetaWorlds: 452 active users
  24. Jungle Friends Grid: 434 active users
  25. New Life Italia: 434 active users

Online marketplace for OpenSim content

Currently, Kitely Market has 20,973 product listings with 41,105 product variants, of which 35,866 are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 632 OpenSim grids to date.

(Data courtesy of Kitely.)

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 (green area in the graph). The red zone for non-exportable content has remained at the same level for the past eight years.

Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available on OpenSim. You can access both hypergrid-enabled grids and closed private grids. Instructions on how to configure Kitely Market for a closed grid are available here.

Kitely also announced support for PBR materials and larger textures earlier this month.

new grid

This month I added one new grid to my database: NakedWorldz.

If you know of a missing public grid, please email maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

hanging grid

This month, nine grids were shut down: Angel Grid, Ares World, Binders World, Cajun Grid, DreamNation, Ghost Area, Homeland, KubwasWelt, and Nosso Lar.

If it doesn’t come back online soon, future reports will show it as closed.

In some cases, Grid changes the login URI or website address. If this happens, please let us know by email so we can update our database.

Top 40 grids by land area

All region numbers in this list are based on standard regions whenever possible. Active user counts include Hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many schools, companies or private grids do not make their numbers public.

The raw data for this month’s report is available here. A list of all active grids is here. Below is a list of all HyperGrid supported grids and their HyperGrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful when creating hyperports.

You can view all past OpenSim statistics, including opinion polls, dating back to 2009 here.

  • OSgrid: 32,867 regions
  • Wolf Territory Grid: 29,987 locations
  • Kitely: 18,126 locations
  • ZetaWorlds: 13,032 locations
  • Alternate Metaverse: 10,437 locations
  • Groovy Verse: 8,756 locations
  • Virtual Vista Metaverse: 6,217 regions
  • DigiWorldz: 3,515 locations
  • CandM World: 2,094 locations
  • Discovery Grid: 1,714 locations
  • Tag grid: 1,465 locations
  • Shoalwater Bay: 1,104 locations
  • Friends Grid: 1,040 locations
  • Simulation grid: 1,024 regions
  • ArtDestiny: 961 locations
  • GBG World: 961 locations
  • Virtual world grid: 914 regions
  • AviWorlds: 818 locations
  • Craft World: 711 locations
  • Kinky Haven: 669 locations
  • AvatarLife: 597 locations
  • Littlefield: 478 locations
  • Furry World: 373 locations
  • Neverworld: 372 locations
  • Virtual World Zones: 364 locations
  • Darkheart’s Playground: 323 locations
  • Nemesis 3D: 305 locations
  • EdMondo: 300 locations
  • Open virtual world: 229 locations
  • MisFitz grid: 213 regions
  • Counter Earth: 199 locations
  • Cater & Friends: 198 locations
  • Japan Open Grid: 197 regions
  • Adreans-World: 161 locations
  • Utopia Sky: 156 locations
  • XTalent: 142 locations
  • GerGrid: 141 regions
  • WestWorld Grid: 126 regions
  • Outworlds: 126 locations
  • Logic Camp: 120 regions

Do you know of any other grids that are available to the public but not in the database? Please email maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

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