Where OSgrid refugees can find land — some of it free

OpenSim grid owners are rolling out land offers for the residents of OSgrid, the largest grid in the OpenSim metaverse, which announced on Monday that it will shut down at the end of the year — and some of that land is free.

Ten grid owners responded to my questions this week about what they offer, what it costs, and how to bring content over. Prices for a full region start at as little as $2.50 a month, and several grids will hand over a parcel or a whole region for nothing.

“Our wonderful virtual world continues,” Friends Grid admin Safine Mahoe told Hypergrid Business, “and there are many welcoming grids and thriving communities ready to open their doors to those seeking a new home.”

I’m also in the process of updating our free land in OpenSim page and our list of grids renting land with all these offers below.

If you run a grid and you’re not on this list, email me at [email protected] and I’ll add you.

Free land

Friends Grid, a free-to-play grid with about 750 active users, is offering complimentary islands with 10,000 prims to anyone who stays active, Mahoe told Hypergrid Business.

The islands are parcels, not regions, so residents can’t save or load OARs on them, she said. Residents who want that can rent a four-by-four var region for $25 a month, with a control panel and OAR uploads. Friends Grid doesn’t accept IAR files or self-hosted regions, Mahoe added, so new residents should box up their inventory and carry it over by hypergrid teleport.

Free parcels can be reserved on the grid’s land page.

Hypergrid address: login.friends-grid.com:8002

Gentle Fire Grid, a small 38-region grid, has free parcels available for anyone who needs them, as well as free parcels on land owned by other residents, grid admins told Hypergrid Business. Interested users can contact Ruby Tuesday or Adornment in-world, or reserve a parcel on the grid’s land page.

Hypergrid address: login.gentlefiregrid.net:8002

Neverworld Grid, which has about 560 regions and 400 active users, will take self-hosted regions — for free.

“We have always offered self-hosted regions since 2015, as we believe that anyone who wants to have a region can self-host, without cost,” Neverworld’s Govega Sachertorte told Hypergrid Business. The grid doesn’t officially take IAR uploads, Sachertorte said, but residents can move transferable items by hypergrid and load OARs from their own region console. The self-hosting software and instructions are on the grid’s website.

Neverworld also has several hundred free parcels, houses, and apartments, rented by clicking a mailbox, according to the grid’s website. For those who’d rather pay, grid-hosted regions start at $2.50 a month for a 20,000-prim region, billed quarterly.

Hypergrid address: hg.neverworldgrid.com:8002

Virtual Life Brasil, a Brazilian grid, is building something similar. Owner Milton Teixeira da Silva, who is known in-world as Jonny Carter, said the grid has started a project with the working name “VLB Grid Free” — an open grid where residents can run a region on their own computer and connect it, much as OSgrid allowed.

“A resident downloads one installer, answers a few questions — avatar, password, region name — and the installer sets up OpenSim, registers the region, gives it a permanent address through our free dynamic DNS service, and keeps everything updated automatically,” da Silva told Hypergrid Business.

It will run on separate servers, every region will be approved before connecting, and each region will have upload limits and monitoring, “so that one bad actor cannot flood the grid,” he said. There’s no release date yet, and the grid is looking for testers, who can write to [email protected].

AviWorlds offers free parcels of up to 5,000 square meters to residents, one per account, according to the grid’s website. OSgrid refugees can also move their regions over with the grid’s hosting arm, Hosting4OpenSim, AviWorlds CEO Josh Boam told Hypergrid Business.

Hypergrid address: login.aviworlds.com:8002

Here’s the free land at a glance:

• Friends Grid — island parcels of about 60,000 square meters, roughly a full region, with about 10,000 prims. Residents only, residential use.
• Gentle Fire Grid — parcels of 3,000 to 4,000 square meters with 600 to 670 prims. Residents only, residential use.
• Neverworld Grid — full regions, as many as you want, on your own computer. Prim limit is up to you. Anyone with a Neverworld account.
• Neverworld Grid — public-use parcels, houses, and apartments on 30-day renewable leases. Prim counts not published. Hypergrid visitors can rent, but can’t set home there.
• AviWorlds — parcels of up to 5,000 square meters. Prim count not published. Residents only, one per account.
• Perfect Life — quarter regions with 200 scripts, or sixteenth regions with 50 scripts. Prim counts not published. Residents only, residential use.
• Party Destination Grid — 7,400-square-meter plots and free shops. Prim counts not published. Residents only. The grid’s free full regions have all been taken.
• Alternate Metaverse — free homes for residents, advertised on the grid’s front page.

Commercial land offers

Wolf Territories Grid, the largest grid by land area, rents standard regions starting at 7 British pounds — about $10 — a month, owner Lone Wolf told Hypergrid Business. Land can be bought on the grid’s land page, and residents can upload their own OAR files through the control panel.

But the grid won’t take self-hosted regions.

“This requires complete trust in the self-hoster, which obviously has backfired very much for OSgrid,” Lone Wolf said. “Plus we have 14 servers of our own to look after and we can give a much better experience to the user on our infrastructure.”

The grid isn’t loading IARs right now either, “due to the OSgrid issues,” he said. Instead, residents should take their Wolf Territories avatar to OSgrid and pass items over, or do it the other way around.

Kitely, the commercial grid that also runs the Kitely Market, takes OAR uploads but not IARs, co-founder and CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business.

He recommends that people who don’t have a Kitely account create one now to get a free avatar, teleport in from other grids to the Kitely Welcome Center, and give items from their old avatar to the new one. The other option is to order a Kitely world and upload an OAR file with boxes of items rezzed inside it.

“People who self-host their own region or want to move regions to Kitely from other grids can export them to an OAR file and upload it to Kitely,” Tochner said. The grid’s hosting plans are private var regions up to eight-by-eight regions in size and start at $15 a month for a 15,000-prim region.

Hypergrid address: grid.kitely.com:8002:Kitely Welcome Center

Kitely is also upgrading to the latest OpenSim code and adding WebRTC voice to replace the discontinued Vivox service, Tochner added, with a rollout expected next week.

Virtual Life Brasil rents full regions starting at 40 Brazilian reais — about $7 to $8 a month for a 15,000-prim region, and will load a resident’s OAR at no extra charge, da Silva said. Residential parcels are 5 reais a week. Payment is by PIX for Brazilians and PayPal for everyone else, and the grid will import IAR files case by case, by email to [email protected].

The grid has its own Firestorm-based viewer, VLBViewer, pre-configured for the grid and working with both Vivox and WebRTC voice, he said. Land is sold on the grid’s land page, which is in Portuguese.

Hypergrid address: login.virtuallifebrasil.com.br:8002

OliGrid, a new grid started by hosting provider Fernando Oliveira of Oliveira Lands, will import inventory IAR backups at no cost, Oliveira told Hypergrid Business. Self-hosted and third-party-hosted regions can move over on Oliveira Lands’ hosting plans — users just bring their OAR files.

“As we are still a small community, our grid currently has a few regions,” he said.

Prices start at $7.50 a month for a standard-sized, 15,000-prim region.

Here are the commercial offers, cheapest first, for a 15,000-prim region or the closest thing each grid has:

• Neverworld Grid — 20,000 prims, $2.50 a month, billed $7.50 every 90 days.
• Fire and Ice Grid — 20,000 prims, $4.50 a month on a standard server.
• Alternate Metaverse — 10,000 prims for $5 a month, or 40,000 prims for $10 a month, with the first two weeks free.
• Nara’s Nook — a region in a shared instance, $5 a month. Prim count not published.
• Virtual Life Brasil — 15,000 prims, 40 Brazilian reais, about $7 to $8, a month.
• OliGrid — 15,000 prims, $7.50 a month.
• 3rd Rock Grid — 16,000 prims, $8 a month.
• Wolf Territories Grid — standard region, 7 British pounds, about $10, a month.
• Amaryllis Grid — 20,000 prims, $10 a month. No hypergrid.
• AviWorlds — 20,000 prims, $10 a month.
• Dynamic Worldz — 16,000 prims, $10 a month.
• GeVolution — 25,000 prims, $10 a month, or 10,000 prims for $5.
• ZetaWorlds — 15,000 prims, 8.99 euros, about $10.50, a month.
• DigiWorldz — 25,000 prims, $11 a month for a First Land region, limit one per user; a 35,000-prim standard region is $22 a month.
• Swiss Grid — standard region, 12 euros, about $14, a month. Prim count not published.
• Kitely — 15,000 prims, $15 a month.
• Tag Grid — 15,000 prims, $15 a month. No hypergrid.
• WestWorld Grid — 15,000 prims, $15 a month, priced at $5 per 5,000 prims.
• GerGrid — 15,000 prims, 19.95 euros, about $23, a month.
• Friends Grid — four-by-four var region, $25 a month. Prim count not published.

Not everyone is opening the doors

Some smaller grids are being careful.

GroovyVerse, a community-supported, non-commercial grid, welcomes OSgrid residents but currently requires a referral code to sign up, Hyacinth Jean Landry, the grid’s owner, told Hypergrid Business. “I am working on ways to streamline that to strike a balance between being welcoming and maintaining the safety of our residents.”

They also had some blunt advice for OSgrid itself.

“They have lost my inventory more times than I can remember over the years. Their problems aren’t insurmountable,” Landry said. “Just do the deed. Wipe out everyone’s inventory. Make them re-sign up. Start over. Be smarter. The alternative they are deciding on now is to just give up and go away, and break up a whole community.”

And Spax Orion, who runs the standalone Ozone Miniverse, said a one-person grid simply doesn’t have the capacity to take in a wave of refugees.

“I do not have the resources with which to provide massive land resources to refugees,” Spax Orion told Hypergrid Business. “I have always had a screening process before someone can become a member.”

Check before you move

While putting this together, I checked every website on our grids renting land list and our free land page.

Several grids have changed their prices since they last sent in an update, and a few have gone dark. ZetaWorlds, for example, now starts at 8.99 euros — about $10.50 — a month for a 15,000-prim region, and Alternate Metaverse has added a $5 region with 10,000 prims alongside its $10 40,000-prim region, with two free weeks for any new buyer. 3rd Rock Grid, which came back this year, now lists a 16,000-prim “Pioneer Region” at $8 a month. Alternate Metaverse also advertises free homes for residents on its front page, which I’ll be adding to the free land list.