Blue Mars Blows

I suspect this might be a regional or even a generational thing, because "BM" was common "naughty American slang" when I was growing up in Australia in the '60s. I guess the "ICBM" joke, and the old "IBM, UBM, we all BM, for IBM" rhyme, have lost their effect.

It's a common enough euphemism in hospitals on this side of the pond.

A proud contribution to the content of this thread, that.

As I observed across the street, LL and many of its residents put a lot of stock in "things to look at". When they want to showcase things that are good in SL they tend to mention things that are pretty, but not interactive. And the best of those pretty things are created by people who are really good at content creation. The kind of people who can use tools that BM can take advantage of and SL can't.

So, BM will have prettier things to look at. If things to look at is a big draw for SL but BM does that better...

If LL had a clue about what the majority of residents want this would be a much happier (not to mention less doomed) forum.

We have had some events in Blue Mars with 40 people in view, with no noticeable lag. I don't think thousands of people at once has that much use, but for concerts and meetings having up to 100 avatars present at one time without lag would be an improvement over SL.

The reason all the avatars look the same is they only created a couple of basic avatars for demo purposes. In fact almost all the content you see now was created for demo, to get feedback from users and content creators (and we devs are giving them a LOT of feedback, much of it informed from our SL experience).

If you look at Blue Mars as a work in progress, that opened itself up early to get inputs from the future users (both general users and content creators), it's OK as it is. It's a long way from done. The last version out was v0.56. So far, they seem to be listening to us. Whether they listen well enough to make a good finished product, I don't know yet.

Good things so far:
- Much better graphics engine, which can do many things you cannot easily or at all in the SL viewer.
- Much greater data storage local on your PC, reducing bandwidth overhead.
- Ability to import from standard 3D design formats.
- Content protected from casual ripping.

Downsides so far:
- Higher minimum PC requirements to play, only Windows OS supported
- Harder for casual players to get into creating and building

Unknowns:
- The economy and social sides of Blue Mars are pretty much undefined right now, relative to the technical and software part. And those will have a critical impact on who and how many people will use it.

@Argent: "If LL had a clue about what the majority of residents want this would be a much happier (not to mention less doomed) forum."

That's why I'm encouraged by the BM approach of taking feedback. They have done some dumb things, like the beeping cone click-to-move, which about 99% of the users hate, but they seem to be listening and willing to change. The actual code guys are posting in the dev forum and taking actions, and they are setting up their developer wiki for us to add stuff in (its sparse and barebones right now, but as I said, they are only 60% complete on the whole project).

Whether it will be "good enough" once it hits v1.0 release, I don't know yet.

LL used to take feedback very well. But not when it didn't match their "vision". I don't imagine AR will be any different.

I've had a BM account for several months now and a dedicated e:mail address and I've loaded the programme and got myself a really cool name. I've contributed to the volunteer name programme and blogged on the forum site. I've given feedback and thoughts on ways that could improve the beta module and do you know how much e:mail correspondence I have received back?...........zilch, nada, not a sausage......disappointed doesn't come into it.......if I haven't heard anything by the end of the month, I'll be uninstalling the programme......which is a shame, but from the times I've ventured into that world, there's nothing to keep me there, except good looking bots.

Now if you could place them on some pose balls, things might get interesting.

They haven't decided yet if people were allowed to do the sexy. With the crowd they're trying to attract? I doubt you'll get a lot of adult activity there.

Good luck finding poseballs on Blue Mars. Or much of anything to interact with.

:d

Actually, they have pair animations, for example shaking hands. If they have that, they can have the sexxies, it's just a different animation. And given how popular sex animations are in SL, how long do you think it will be before animators from here start making them for Blue Mars?

If they totally ban adult activities (which is possible, they have not decided that yet), that will surely kill off a significant share of the potential users.

The next Beta version for Blue Mars has been expected about now (their CEO had said "less than two weeks" as of Nov 30th). As of today the updated package for city developers has been posted to the private download site. Therefore I expect the general public beta to be updated any day now.

I wasn't impressed with Blue Mars....i un-installed it! I might have a look one day, to see the final version, but it's not on top of my Priority list.



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Second Lifers will feel right at home:



They already have a bot farm!

ah..............the bots, especially BOT 1997....she was very attentive. I asked her out on a date, but she was very coy, played hard to get and skillfully avoided my blatant come on........still I've got her number and will call her once she decides to wear undies and they do the sexy..............

The Halloween zombie bots were fun, they would chase you around:

http://picasaweb.google.com/danielleeberSL/BlueMarsOnlineBeta#5398649590340595458


That does bring to mind the question of in-world search. They have not said boo about that subject yet.

/me goes to add it to my list of unanswered questions for their staff....

Meanwhile, we have been getting good info from their staff about technical limits, I should have something written up for SL builders pretty soon.