Increased Visitor Traffic to OpenSim Worlds During Spooky Season – Hypergrid Business

With Halloween just around the corner and the chill of fall creeping in, the United States is fully embracing the spooky season. This time of year often finds folks sticking closer to home, perhaps spurred on not just by the fear of things that go bump in the night, but also the tumult of upcoming elections. As people cozy up indoors, OpenSim appears to be benefiting, with a noticeable uptick in active users lately.

The overall numbers paint an interesting picture. Public OpenSim grids have welcomed over 3,000 new active users compared to last month. However, due to some grid outages and adjustments in statistics, the total registered users have slightly decreased. Land area has also shrunk, dropping the equivalent of 24,000 standard regions.

This decline in land doesn’t come as a shock. Last month, Simation Grid reported an impressive 25,408 regions, but it has scaled down significantly to 1,024. Simation is a small grid in terms of users, featuring only three active participants this month. It’s likely that much of the land was used to test server capacity. Testing like this helps developers understand how many regions a server can handle. Once the experiment is over, there’s no need to keep those unused regions running.

We’re monitoring a total of 2,675 public grids, with 301 of them active this month, and 233 publishing their statistics. If you have a grid that isn’t included in our stats, reach out via email at [email protected] to ensure visibility in future reports, which will help both search engines and potential users discover your grid.

Currently, OSgrid claims the top spot for land area, boasting 34,103 standard region equivalents. Meanwhile, Wolf Territories Grid takes the lead in activity with 6,950 unique logins over the past month.

The plot thickens when you check out the data chart included here. The spike caused by Simation regions during summer is evident, but things have now returned to more typical growth levels.

Our data doesn’t account for most grids running on DreamGrid, a convenient free version of OpenSim, often utilized for private grids. For those not familiar, OpenSim is a free and open-source virtual world platform, akin to Second Life, that allows anyone to create virtual spaces with ease and navigate between different worlds. Tech-savvy users can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers free of charge, with DreamGrid or the official OpenSim installer available. Commercial hosting options are also reasonably priced, starting under $5 per region.

For those looking for hosting solutions, a list of OpenSim hosting providers is readily available. Grab the recommended Firestorm viewer to get started, and explore where you can obtain content for your OpenSim world.

Here’s some news worth noting—Hypergrid Business has launched a monthly newsletter. Released on the 15th, shortly after the statistics report, it’s your source for all the latest OpenSim news. You can subscribe through a link or by filling out a form on our website.

Now let’s dive into the top 25 grids by active user count. In social grids, especially closed ones, activity levels are key. The busier the grid, the more attractive it is for those seeking new connections, merchants eyeing potential sales, and event organizers hoping to draw a crowd.

Here are the standout performers this month:

1. Wolf Territories Grid: 7,122 active users
2. OSgrid: 4,910 active users
3. GBG World: 2,435 active users
4. Darkheart’s Playground: 2,206 active users
5. DigiWorldz: 2,186 active users

And the list goes on, capturing the vibrancy of the social tapestry within OpenSim.

Turning our attention to marketplace offerings, Kitely Market boasts over 21,000 product listings with a staggering 41,164 variations, 35,920 of which can be exported. This marketplace has stretched its reach, fulfilling orders for 632 OpenSim grids to date. A striking trend is the steady increase in exportable content (the green section on the chart), whereas the non-exportable content remains static over the past eight years.

Kitely Market stands as the largest legal repository of OpenSim content and can be accessed from both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. There’s guidance available for setting up Kitely Market with closed grids too.

In terms of grid database entries, no new additions were made this month. If there’s a public grid you think should be included, again, reaching out via email is the way to go.

Among the changes, we’ve marked 13 grids as suspended this month, signaling potential closures if they don’t bounce back online soon. Grids like Angel Souls, Free Life, and others all face this fate. Often, grids may alter their login URLs or website addresses. If you notice such a change, a heads-up via email would help us keep our records up to date.

In conclusion, here’s a look at the top 40 grids by land area. While some entities like schools, companies, or personal grids may not share their numbers publicly, the list gives a comprehensive overview wherever possible.

Do you know of any public grids missing from our collection? Send an email with your suggestion, and help us maintain the most thorough directory available.