Blue Mars Blows

I'm signed up as a city developer with Blue Mars, and this is pretty much the case. As a software project it's about 60% complete at this point. Even for developers, let alone regular users, it's a long way from done.

The main reason they have opened it to the public right now is to get feedback from real users, not to display it as a finished product. For example, the beeping cone for movement is universally hated by users, and that's supposed to change with the next beta release.

If you just want to try it out as a player, come back when it's closer to launch. If you want to poke around the technology (like I am) and help steer what ends up in the final version, then come join on a regular or developer account.

What Daniel said. Without getting into specifics (sorry!), there are a fair number of exciting worlds coming to Blue Mars. But what you're seeing is essentially "proof of concept". People dropping in and playing with the platform are important for feedback, though-- Lord, I hate that blue cone, too

If all you'd seen of SL was the beta grid, with a few basic structures and largely bereft of people (to say nothing of an active community), you'd probably think SL a silly place, too.

Personally, I think Blue Mars has a lot of potential, but I don't think it will be at that potential for another year. It takes time to develop worlds, and time past that to develop communities. Will it be a "SL killer"? I hope not. I hope SL continues to evolve, and I hope that evolution will be enhanced/spurred on by the emergence of other virtual worlds-- and not just Blue Mars.

I think we've just begun to see the potential of virtual worlds. Thank goodness I've a dog and a bicycle thatremind me to get outside on occasion

This explains alot thanks. BUT, if the management behind this makes a decision to open beta something that might be completed....well who knows when. I start to question their business plans and future decisions. This should have remained closed to avoid the bad press they are receiving now.

They better hurry with development as now they are open to the public at only 60% complete with their platform.

u do need hal2000 to run that crap

I agree that the camera and movement controls in Blue Mars suck. And that pretty much ruined the whole experience for me. Maybe they'll make improvements to it, but why anyone would develop such a system in the first place is beyond me. Having your camera turn with you is pretty much standard in every game (not to mention logical). I also got the impression there'd be a considerable learning curve for making content.

I still think Second Life is pretty unique to be honest. Yes it has its problems, but its level of avatar customization and creative freedom has yet to be surpassed.

That learning curve you speak about is irrelevant since the platform is built for professionals..........nothing at like SL. Those professionals who will (might) use BM's platform for whatever they develope are the relevant ones BM is interested in.....not us lurkers. We serve to only bitch about it so the devs can see how their developed product needs improvement. Thanks to Daniel it now makes a little more sense to me why we were even allowed to visit.

I understand we are only peeking at the builds in progress without the benefit if the blueprint or even an artist's rendering of the concept. It's not a game/platform for us at all..........it's for people wanting to build games/platforms/worlds for us. We are just being allowed to peek in while they do that.........and offer suggestions. If you look at BM in that way you can see what's happening. If you look at what BM is without knowing what the devs have in mind you wind up wondering (like I did) what's the point? The point is........it ain't what you think it is.

You're wrong, it IS their fault that their client is a 1.4 gig download. 20 Gig bandwidth is not typical for the average user. I do see alot of people complaining about 5-10 hour downloads, and I have no clue what sort of connection they have, the download took me about 45 to 50 minutes with my Time/Warner cable connection. I just ran a bandwith test on CNET, and it showed 1848.7 kbps, which is faster than a T1 connection, and, I believe somewhat typical of most cable users. I haven't checked lately, but everyone I know who has DSL complains about the speed, typically because they have the lowest end $15 a month package with much slower download speeds. How they exist in SL is beyond me.

It is the fault of the Blue Mars folks for coming up with such a gigantic client download. I think the reason it's so big is because they want you to basically download the welcome area and company ran sims that you visit so those graphics are local rather than transmitted over the network like SL is. Ultimately, that would be stupid, because if Blue Mars were to grow, most people would spend most of their time outside the pre-made areas. Typically the SL client download takes me a minute or two, and the installation about the same. As a matter of fact, over time, the SL client has shrunk in size, and is a quick and easy download/installation. I think the Blue Mars folks are setting the system requirements bar so high because they don't want to be constrained by the limitations of what's typical hardware currently. I sort of see the logic there, but then they're going to give up being anything more than a niche in the virtual world market. Apparently they're not in this to present serious competition to LL, they seem to want something that blows away SL graphically that most people can't use because they can't meet the system requirements. 20 Gig bandwidth makes me jealous, but that's a ridiculously high end connection that only a comparative handful of people have access to.

How long does the SL client take by comparison at that rate?

The Blue Mars download and installation with my average cable connection and P4 (single core) 800Mhz FSB, 1 Gig of dual channel ddr2 mem and nVidia 9800 1 gig video card took me over an hour to complete the download and installation, that's just plain stupid on their part. One of SL's selling points is the fairly light client that runs on the majority of systems currently out there on the market.

Right, so you'd think they'd have a decent core client/server system for people to use. The complaints are not so much that there's nothing to do or anywhere to go, it's how difficult it is to simply navigate around the environment, or get started developing.

I think they realize now the movement controls were a mistake. They tried to make it easier for newbies with a point and click interface. What they forgot is that the Cryengine 2 system requirements are so high, that anyone who has a graphics card good enough to run Blue Mars is probably not a newbie, but an experienced gamer/virtual world user.

The hardest part about learning to make content for Blue Mars has been the poor to non-existent documentation (they have started to work on that, but only just barely started). I have been writing my own "how-to"s as I go, and the other independent devs have been sharing their hard-won knowledge, so we are getting there, slowly.

I'm already doing stuff I can't do in Second Life (after a couple of months of messing around with it):

http://picasaweb.google.com/danielravennest/BlueMarsSnapshots#

The next version will move away from "downloading all available cities at once" to a smaller application installer, and choose your cities to visit after.

One of the big reasons for lag in SL is the "download all the stuff after you teleport" system they use. If you could select a region ahead of time, and start it downloading 5 minutes before you leave your last place, the percieved lag would be a lot less. That's the model Blue Mars is following, get all the static content ahead of time, so you only need to load avatars and other non-static items when you actually arrive.

As far as system requirements, yes they are pretty high at the moment. But then my 2002 vintage PC, which was top end for it's day, could barely run SL either. That PC is the same age as when SL was designed. My brand new PC (1 month old), has no trouble running Blue Mars, on 19% CPU and 25% memory. In a couple of years, when people past early adopters might want to use it, it will be more mainstream system requirements.

Except in Virtual Worlds YOU are the story. If there is a missing story, look no further than the nearest mirror.

Rock

Pretty neat looking stuff! However, I about fell off my chair laughing when I saw that stained glass window texture... Where'd that come from by the way??? LOL

But once downloaded, you need never have to do it again.

It comes down to a simple choice:

You can have centralised servers like SL has, where everything is streamed to your client (viewer), and hence all the lag.

Or you can have all the content on your HD and they only need to stream dynamic data (the positions of avatars and objects that move, and new objects). This makes the streaming overhead very tiny compared to SL, and means that 1000s of avatars can be in the same region at the same time, with no crippling lag, as you get with SL and 20+ avatars. It also means that there is no need to wait for things to 'rezz', they are there instantly.

If you take the time it takes to download the SL client, plus all the time you spend waiting for things to rezz, and for textures to complete loading when in a busy store, before you can start your shopping, you will see that the one-time download for a city is way shorter in time than all the waiting you have to do in SL. That is what I have found.

Blue Mars are planning a web portal where you can see all the cities that are available, with pics and descriptions (something SL does not have), so you can plan where you would like to visit, and following your choices, the first city will download then the rest will download in the background, it will be quite painless. I plan to download the cities I am interested in overnight. Then I will look forward to visiting them, lag-free.

Avatar Reality are also exploring the On Live technology http://www.onlive.com/, to fully stream Blue Mars as well, (as SL does, but way more efficiently) so you can explore their world via a browser, making Blue Mars accessible via your mobile phone as well. This is vitally important, as the next generation are used to doing everything on their mobile phones. As far as my son is concerned, if he cannot do it on his mobile phone, it doesn't exist. SL should heed this.

Rock

How do you explain then that I never had a problem with finding a "story" in SL?

Don't you dare blame their blandness on my supposedly "missing creativity".




Wrong. I have downloaded their client at least three times now, including cities data, and I am not even a constant visitor. Plus, every time you visit a new city, new content needs to be downloaded en masse.




That decision is quite easy for me if I recall how many places I have visited in SL so far. I have no inclination to reserve a terabyte harddrive just for a "game".





This sentence alone is bringing tears of laughter to my eyes. No. Friggin. Way.

Cory Ondrejka (Cory Linden), freebie texture. Actually I was testing how hard it was to move items from Second Life to Blue Mars. It's *possible*, but it's a pain in the ass to do at the moment.

Project Entropia, now called "Entropia Universe", and yes, it was designed as a MMOTC -- Massively Multiplayer Online Themed Casino.



Still there. Advanced -> UI -> Double-Click Auto-Pilot

If I can't be a neko, go to sex and/or dance clubs, make freebies to hand out, and build my own home on my land - there's no point in me going there.

Actually I'm of the same mindset myself...........but that is one of those "to each their own" things. That does NOT make BM a crappy platform or game or whatever you want to call it. It makes it different is all.

Edited to add.........I'm not a neko either. I'm a mermaid or fairy or denizen or, or.........hell sometimes I'm even me.

And I love SL because I'm a neko, you're a mermaid, there's a furry trying to jump both our bones, a vampire trying to bite us, and a a Tiny and a child AV around the corner looking at us like we're freaks.
- and we're all sitting on our own little plywood prims and turning out 'useless junk'.

You can right click on the ground and use the Pie Menu "Go Here" function. I use it to enter sims that are full, this way i can go afk while my avatar still attempts to enter the sim.

This is serious sig line material.

I still question the basic business and user model of Blue Mars even assuming they can get it all to work.

Say there's one very long download to get started, then everything comes in as needed but gets stored on your local disk and hardware progresses over the next couple of years so Blue Mars is reasonable for an average machine. The nice part is that there's no texture or object lag at all, everything appears pretty much instantly as you move around and the objects can be much more complex and detailed than in SL.

Because content providers need to be verified there probably will be almost no serious griefing. Anyone who builds a griefer's script will be banned and the scripts deleted.

There will be a bunch of relatively small "cities" each with it's own set of rules, physics, objects and prices. This means that there may be quite varied environments , but it's not at all clear that it will be possible to move objects from one city to another. It's almost certain that it won't be possible to buy a house or shop, then move it to another city.

Setting up a city, the equivalent of owning a sim, will be too expensive and have too high a technical barrier for anyone less than a small organization, or a very dedicated individual to contemplate. This means that real estate will be like buying / renting from estate owners in SL, except there will probably be just a handful of owners to choose from. You'd better trust your landlord and the owner of the city not to go away or change the deal since you won't have the option of moving back to the mainland.

Most user's won't be able to create objects and even positioning and resizing objects will be very constrained. Relative to SL, decorating and landscaping options, such as positioning or re-texturing, will be extremely limited. It's even more constrained than RL, for example terraforming for normal users won't be possible in Blue Mars, but I can take a shovel to my RL backyard.

Even technically expert regular users who want to create or modify objects or textures will have to get each one approved and uploaded by their landlord or his superior. It's not possible for anyone other than a senior member of the City hierarchy to add content by themselves. Unlike SL which is very egalitarian, Blue Mars is going to be a hierarchical society with distinct classes, Royals (City Developers), Nobility (Block Developers), Industrialists (Content Developers) and everyone else.

Since there is no mainland and ordinary users can't create content, everything has to come from City Developers and their partners. It's going to take a long time before there's enough content in Blue Mars to attract users, so they'll need to be pretty speculative and have deep pockets. Avatar Research has been very remote and secretive, not supplying any basic inventory, tools, documentation or even direction to City Developers, so it looks like they'll be on their own to create their worlds and attract residents.

Bottom line is that from what I've seen, this is a non-starter. I'm doubtful it will ever get out of Beta.

Shadowcat Tiger, never thought of it that way.
Thanks for the thought!

Well I look nice, sort of:



But I'm no Neko.

And it was a pain in the keester editing my appearance.
1. Very laggy.
2. Adjusting one slider in advanced moved -ALL- of the others in various directions, rather than having complete control.
3. No edits for body.
4. Only found clothing and hair choices -after- logging in.
5. Couldn't figure out how to move my camera around. The 'Camera' button just jumped between some presets.
6. No button to take screenshots, had to take them with window's print screen, paste them into photoshop, and go back and get another.

Cities can range from 128x128 to around 16384x16384m (that's the largest size I can spawn on my PC, and I have a new PC). Personal items (like clothing) are part of your avatar inventory, and goes with you. Blocks are parcelled out from cities, and sent to block owners to put content into, then merged back into the city data. Your house would be a 3d model and associated textures. However you obtain it (make it yourself or buy it from someone), you would still have the original 3d model, so you can reuse it in another city.



Neither you nor I know what the prices will be. Check back in a week or two when they are announced. What I expect is more technically minded people (points at self) will offer setup services for folks who want a city, but don't have the skills or time to do it themselves.



Enforceability of tenant rights is indeed an issue, and I'm adding it to my list of things to nail down about Blue Mars.



If you are a block renter (equivalent to parcel owner in SL), you will have the block editor to work with. That allows you to drag items from your inventory, position, rotate, scale, clone, etc. You can play with textures using the material editing window. And terraforming is within the block editor also (which I didn't know till I looked just now LOL)
see the 5th photo here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/danielravennest/BlueMarsTechnical#


I made that bump in the block editor just to make sure it works. Not all features of the editors are functional or bug free - its still in beta.



If I was running a city I would take care of block updates quickly because that's good service to my tenants. I would also look for a way to automate the process. While city data package updates do indeed require the city owner to feed the data to the Avatar Reality servers, its possible to "spawn" items you already own, assuming the city rules permit it. In a role-play city that function may be turned off, so you would be limited to items available there only, and not stuff you bring in.

Content creation is done purely local on your PC. Once you create a 3d Model and its supporting files, you can give it away or sell it completely outside the Blue Mars system. Its just a bunch of files. If you are a non-city developer, you still have the ability to upload items to the Blue Mars system to sell.



You mean like in SL where there are basic, premium, concierge, concierge plus, and enterprise accounts? What's different about Blue Mars is the building tools are not part of the base game install. It's a separate download, and it's free. It's going to be individual choice about whether to learn how it works or not.



Considering the developer tools are not even finished yet, there isn't much content *yet*, but I've already made a prim set, a texture starter pack, and am busy making trees and rocks (see the other photos from my link above). What I think you missed is since *any* 3D software that can output the right format can be used, there's a lot of content already out there that can be imported. I've even been able to move objects from SL to Blue Mars. Not easily, but it's possible.

They have supplied us developers with basic inventory items and tools. Documentation is just barely started, but they are only 60% done with development, so that's normal. Direction? No, they are not doing that. The early adopters will be geeks who like messing with new technology, and creating stuff for the sheer fun of creating. In fact, if the rates are not too high, a good idea is to set up a "sandbox city" where for a small fee people can mess around with it.

Blue Mars will not grow to rival places like SL in a week or a year. Heck, it took SL 5 years to go from early beta to masses of users.