IMPORTANT NOTE: Effective July 26th, 2018, I have moved this list over to a separate page on my blog. I will only be updating that page instead of this blogpost, so the information you see on this blogpost will become dated over time.
Platforms marked with an asterisk (*) support users in VR headsets. In some cases, VR support is experimental or still in beta.
- Active Worlds (the granddaddy of all virtual worlds, now 23 years old)
- AltspaceVR*
- Anyland*
- Avakin Life
- Bean VR* (which appears to have closed down)
- Bigscreen*
- Blue Mars (now closed, as far as I know)
- Ceek*
- Cisco Spark in VR*
- Cloud Party (officially closed in 2014 after they were bought out by Yahoo!)
- Community Garden*
- Cryptovoxels*
- Decentraland (not yet available)
- The Deep (not yet available)
- DiveReal*
- Dual Universe (I would classify this as an MMO/MMORPG instead of a virtual world)
- Edorble*
- Elysium VR (not yet available)
- EmbodyMe*
- Endless Riff*
- Engage*
- Ethernia (not yet available)
- Eventual VR*
- Ever, Jane
- Facebook Spaces*
- Geekzonia* (which appears to have closed down)
- Guru Gedara*
- High Fidelity*
- Hyperfair VR*
- IMVU
- Inlight Spark*
- InWorldz (This grid will close on July 27th, 2018.)
- JanusVR*
- Kiss or Kill*
- Kitely
- LivCloser
- LiveLike*
- Mark Space
- MeetinVR* (not yet available)
- MetaWorld (not yet available; Buyer Beware!)
- Mozilla Hubs*
- Myst Online: Uru Live (although I would classify this as an MMO/MMORPG rather than a virtual world)
- NeosVR*
- Neutrans*
- Occupy White Walls
- Oculus Rooms* (this one is only for Gear VR and the new Oculus Go; we Oculus Rift users are still stuck with Facebook Spaces)
- OpenSim based virtual worlds (e.g. OSGrid); here’s a complete list
- Pluto VR*
- Rec Room*
- Rumii*
- Sansar*
- Second Life (Now 15 years old, the most commercially successful and popular virtual world to date. Note: If you are looking for the Second Life freebies section of this blog, please scroll down and select “Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies” from the Categories section, or just click here.)
- Sinespace*
- Somnium Space*
- Staramba Spaces (not yet available)
- STYLY*
- SurrealVR*
- Terra Virtua (not yet available)
- Topik*
- There.com
- TheWaveVR*
- Twinity
- Utherverse/Red Light Center
- VIBEHub (not yet available)
- VirBELA
- Virtual Paradise
- Virtual Universe* (a social VR/MMO hybrid)
- VRChat*
- vTime*
- Worldopoly (more of a game than a virtual world, from what I can tell)
- Worlds Adrift (I would classify this as an MMO/MMORPG instead of a virtual world)
Well, I figure this is pretty much the canonical listing of social VR spaces/virtual worlds. Have I missed any? It’s like Pokémon, “gotta catch ’em all”…if you have heard of one that I haven’t covered yet, please let me know in the comments, thanks!
Great list,
Speaking of those which are barely alive… vSide and There.
…and the ancestor “Active Worlds” has somehow an up-to-date website.
That said, IMVU, pictured as Second Life competitor back in 2007, even if it is more a 3D chat room, is still very much a thing, (number 1 site visited by teens in 2017). It doesn’t support VR natively tho.
On the sandboxes side, Roblox is even more enormous. It was in beta in 2005, but lately attracted 90 millions in funding. Roblox is strong of 64 millions users monthly in 2017 ! It looks like Minecraft but you can monetize your creations like in Second Life (some come millionnaires out of it). And it is Oculus and Vive ready.
Speaking of role playish virtual worlds, if World Adrift makes the list, I would add Dual Universe which has a down-to-voxels building tool.
I think you forgot to mention Mozilla Hubs which you have talked about in the blog. Or may be you are not considering it as a VW which seems legit 🙂
Thank you Nicolas! Yes, I did forget forget Mozilla Hubs. I will fix that! 🙂
And yes, There.com! Another one that gets my vote for the stupidest virtual world name (ever try to Google “There”?) They’re still around, and their website seems pretty up-to-date too. Some of these older virtual worlds are still hanging in there!
As far as I can remember THERE was all about driving buggies cars 🙂 And that’s right, “there” is an updated schedule of events! I guess the $10 a month membership is sufficient to sustain servers and CM and makes it profitable (as the technology must be amortized since long time ago 🙂
What about Cybalounge? https://www.cybalounge.de/
I believe the founder/creator is Thinkerer Melville, at: https://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.co.uk/
Where’s Virtual Paradise? https://www.virtualparadise.org/ it’s really awesome
I just heard about it from someone on the Active Worlds Discord server, but when I tried to sign up an account for Virtual Paradise, it confirmed my email, then told me my just-created username was invalid *shrugs* oh well…
Definitely check out IMVU. It can be really busy there. I haven’t hung out there myself lately, but my sales there continue to tell me there is an active community, perhaps second only to SecondLife.
Also, if you are ready for a bit of an experience, you might want to check out Red Light District/Utherverse. It’s definitely another world with its own set of rules. Certainly it’s different enough that you would want to be careful what sort of pictures you post from it 😉 Or at least rate your blog entry as X if you want to show all.
Ah, there is one that uses isometric graphics called Furcadia. It’s a really interesting community, and the pixel art is quite beautiful! A lot of talented artists there.
Some old platforms for you that don’t really exist anymore that you might want to check out on a slow week if you’re going to play at being History channel:
-blaxxun (used VRML 3D)
-dreamland Park
–worlds.com
-cybernetworlds
-Moove (I think this might still be around…)
-Kaneva
-Friends Hangout
-Nuvera Online
-Blink3d
-Atmosphere
Speaking of Atmosphere.. there is a small community of friends who used to hang out in atmosphere on facebook called Atmosphere Junkies. Someone is still running a multiplayer server, so you can actually get in there if you contact the right person and see some Atmosphere worlds that have been saved.
Great, thank you!
To help you out with Atmosphere, look for “Adobe Atmosphere”. It was discontinued in 2004. There is a wiki about it.
I notice Opensim is absent from the list which is surprising considering it still has quite a large community spread over many connected private, community and commercial grids that is was designed to support via the Hypergrid protocol. Like Second Life, which Opensim is based on, they both have dedicated supporters that don’t show much interest in VR or giving up on their desktop virtual experiences. Second Life is still the biggest community for adult themes and role play and Opensim also has a bigger community collectively spread over hundreds of grids than Sansar and High Fidelity combined.
Open Simulator is still loved and in use by many people for sharing and for commercial enterprise so should be up there in the list.
I did mention at the very end of the blogpost that I wasn’t going to try and cover all the OpenSim virtual worlds, there are just too many! I do sometimes visit InWorldz and OSGrid.
I meant it should be listed with the other virtual worlds platforms since you list defunct worlds like Cloud Party which you can’t visit anyway and also ancient worlds like Active Worlds and There.com. But ok if you say you only list what you can visit. Inworldz BTW is not regarded as Opensim anyway although it’s roots are in Opensim. Inworldz runs on the in-house developed Halcyon platform while OSgrid runs on current Opensim. There are also several other Opensim derived platforms included in the Aurora branch such as Whitecore and Arribasim. Perhaps the branch versions don’t warrant a place in the list but Opensim once hosted teleports from Second Life in the more progressive days of Linden Lab and this gave rise to the Hypergrid concept. For that reason and many others I think Opensim deserves a place in the list rather than a footnote.
I agree with you that OpenSim should be added to main list, instead of a footnote. I have added a new OpenSim blogpost to the blog and added OpenSim to the main list. Thank you for taking the time to comment!
Thank you Ryan for accepting my suggestion regarding Opensim-based worlds and giving the a proper placement in the list where I felt it belongs. I would add though that there is a better and more up to date list of Opensim worlds at https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/statistics/active-grids/
Hypergrid Business has been publishing monthly metrics for Opensim grids for many years and there this forms a great source of historical data.
Thank you also for mention of the G+ Opensim Virtual community which I have maintained for over five years and now has some 2000 members or more that use Opensim worlds. The beauty of Opensim, and perhaps its single most powerful feature, is the Hypergrid which enables 100’s of grids to form a network of connected worlds. Kitely Virtual, which you wrote about in another blog post here, has provided a very effective market in virtual goods and can deliver to any grid automatically. Add to that a universal currency like Gloebit which can be used from a single account in the many grids that accept it and thereby supporting a collective community of private, community and commercial worlds. And much of that community are still members of Second Life which interests in both platforms.
Second Life, Inworldz and many Opensim grids are closed worlds or walled gardens so to speak but to be honest that doesn’t stop people opening accounts in the many worlds and grid hopping anyway. The Hypergrid protocol just makes it easier and means one can use a favourite name on a single account with Gloebit in their chosen grid and effectively teleport out and travel the Metaverse and enjoy the same entertainments, shopping, socializing and role playing they might do in Second Life.
You forgot TAG https://frontpage.theadultgrid.com/ which is a closed Grid
Thanks Rosa! I am not even going to *attempt* to cover all the OpenSim grids, there’s just too many! That’s why I put the OpenSim active grid list after the OpenSim entry 🙂