Blue Mars beta

Don't be silly. I didn't make the first flight aid. I didn't even make the first flight aid whose source you could read. Flight Feather is still not the only flight aid people use, it's just the currently most popular one... before I wrote it, that was X-Flight.

I just made the first one that was explicitly BSD licensed.
You have the source code. You don't need anything more than that.

People can fly anywhere in the US except over military bases or airfields, but most craft have a flight ceiling that's far below the troposphere... does this mean they can only fly in 1% of the US?

I suppose you might say that, but most people would look at you like you'd grown an extra head.
Give me the script, here or in a private message, that I can run anywhere in BM, the way I can run the Flight Feather script anywhere in SL. If you can't, it's nowhere NEAR the same as in SL.

Ah, yes. Develop, almost everyone can and almost everyone is approved. Upload and use... only those who want to pay out. (And don't tell me in SL it costs money too - 10L for an upload is most likely nothing compared to the cost of setting up a server in BM or renting from one of their landlords to get upload rights.) And what happens with those who are NOT approved, btw?

Wrong because your 'nitpicks' are based on something that just came out of alpha into beta. I mean, are you really serious going on like that about features (and currently poorly implemented functionality) that have yet to be added into a beta or are working improperly in a beta??? It is a work in progress...You might as well be in a car factory complaining that the tires are not on the car yet when they are still putting on the doors.

Your lack of imagination is the only reason you see BM as having "hollow" appeal. The system is everything SL is and more, without in-world build tools - which is a deal breaker for some people. The ability to have fully interactive environments with A.I. creatures light years above what LSL can do and none of that glitches that constantly occur through lag is just one sliver of what can be done.

Oh, and this thing on interface you are going on about needing a super PC...I was in SL 3 months after it went live, a super-PC was needed then too. Big whoop, people get them and people use less than super-PCs and still have a stellar life in SL - the most system intensive virtual world/game that exist.

You also mentioned something about interface in your previous post and how limited it was or something. I just want to point out that the interface can be anything the region owner wants it to be ~anything~, look anyway they want, with controls and functions they want as well as a plethora of other unheard of possibly mind blowing types of innovations...So any interface you see in any demo, could just as well be made to be like Star Wars, or Free Realms, or whatever.

There was a very kind person who answered my questions. I still don't understand your need for a personal attack against me.

What, you mean when I go from one city to another the user interface of the viewer changes under the control of the city owner?

From what I can see Blue Mars, just like SL will be a niche product, just a different niche.

Blue Mars will attract experienced builders, people who are ready to move beyond the constraints of SL's building tools, computer hobbyists who don't mind upgrading their hardware on a regular basis, and seasoned VR enthusiasts.

But SL is still the best place for an entry level user who either has no building experience and wants to learn,you don't need expensive free standing programs, or for those like me who have no interest in it at all. Someone mentioned bad building and scripting as one of SL's problems and that may be true, but how else are people going to learn?

It's better set up for the social player, and also for entry level entrepeneurs. Despite it's technical shortcomings, SL is still by far the best place for someone to get their virtual feet wet, to find out what, if anything about virtual worlds they like , without a big investment in money or computer hardware. That alone can keep SL on top for a long time,IF it can survive it's severe mismanagement by LL.

But that's missing the point - the point is, _most_ people could not have made a flight aid until you effectively granted approval by open sourcing yours. Some very small number of people, of which you were one, could have.



Being able to look at the Mona Lisa and break down what it is made from, is not the same as being able to paint it.



That's interesting - it means that BM is using Metaplace's model. I'm not sure how successful that's proving to be.



Sort of. The problem is that there is far, far too much "hidden information" in the SL interface. There's sculpties, there's prim shapes that you can only create by using modified viewers, there's megaprims, there's microprims, there's unexpected and undocumented script behaviour, etc. And a serious factor in SL that I've seen put people off learning is the feeling that unless they happen to meet the right people to learn these tricks, they're stuck. BM may be harder to get into, but assuming that it's better maintained, it should be a leveller playing field in this regard which may appeal more to progress-driven people.

Still on that "level playing field" kick I see?

But you can't become progress oriented until you start to learn. Yes, SL 's documentation is awful, but then again, so is Life's. Most things of value you have to seek out and learn on your own, they aren't handed to you. An inexperienced, novice builder would be better served by spending time in SL as an entry point, where he/she can put their ideas into practice and learn from their mistakes.

I'm not going to get into an infinite regress of what people can or can not do. I'm not going to get into another one of those unending discussions about what's fair or not, either. There are at least four different approaches to bypassing the flight limits in SL, even neglecting vehicles. And this whole issue is irrelevant, because the idea that only being able to fly up to 200 meters in 99.44% of SL is equivalent to only being able to fly in 1% of SL is idiotic casuistry in the first place.

Sure, and I agree with you that being able to put ideas into practice right away is a strength of SL (although Rock seems to be saying that city owners in BM will be able to allow people to do that too)

But "having bad documentation" is a whole world away from things like having prim shapes you can only make by using a modified client. Or some of the scripted tricks used in making weapons - yes, technically anyone could find them, but only by just trying things blindly and at random until something happens to do something unusual, and hoping to get lucky. Probably 90% of scripters who use these have been told them by someone else, either the person who originally got lucky and found them or someone who learned it from someone else.

I guess what I'm saying is that assuming Rock's correct, and BM city owners can allow users to build, that SL's advantage seems decidedly less then. Saying that SL has a friendlier environment is moot when, in order to reach the high levels of skill, you have to disregard or actively work against that friendly environment. For people who enjoy building in its own right, this is fine as they don't care about those levels; but progress-oriented people want to know they at least have a _shot_ at the big leagues eventually., even if it's a lot of work.

This is very true in some ways, although I think you are overestimating the system requirements for Blue Mars. It certainly won't require people to continuously upgrade (at least not anymore than SL does).

The game Crysis 2 uses the same basic engine (CryEngine2), and the system requirements for that are listed here:
http://www.incrysis.com/wiki/index.php/Crysis_System_Requirements

Are those higher requirements than SL? Yes, though probably on par with what you need to run Windlight. As a side note, it recommends Vista, but I've been running the Blue Mars beta on XP pro.

But will those requirements be so onerous in a couple of years? I don't think so. I don't pretend to be computer smart (I just use the blessed things, their inner workings are a mystery), but it's obvious even to me that today's speedy supercomputer is the bargain bin model of two years from now.

Even now, you can get a fairly amazing desktop for less than $1000:
http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4664174&Sku=B69-1067
Still pricey for the casual user, but that's just today.




And this is a real downside to Blue Mars. I am one of those who learnt scripting and modeling in SL. That's one of the things that so hooked me on SL, and I'm not leaving anytime soon, either. But in order to have that, SL had to compromise on many other fronts. No game is going to be perfect, and I find the middle ground of Blue Mars exciting. Yes, you have to work harder to use the tools, and yes, you have to be approved-- which means learning elsewhere. But you don't have to work for a game company in order to create, either.

Really, the only people who lose out here are the casual builders. Don't get me wrong, they're a real segment of the SL demographic. But the SL demographic isn't everyone. Most people just want a fun game that they will be engaged in, where they will have a chance to socialize, explore and play. Blue Mars can certainly provide that, but it will be up to the city owners and developers to make that happen.

yes. saying you can only fly in 1% of sl is beyond misleading, no matter how one chooses to reinterpret 'flight'.

Within that city. And when the city shuts down, everything you made that way goes as well. Building under those limitations is worthless. It's like owning land on an eccentric's estate.
I don't know what bad documentation you're referring to, but SL doesn't have prim shapes that can only be made in a modified client. Some quirks in the client make it accidentally treat some invalid combinations of parameters in a way that people have decided should be new prim shapes, and they've created a client to create prims with these invalid parameters. I wouldn't use these prims, myself, because it's too likely that they will be rejected by the servers in the future.
Yes, I've found some such bugs. If you think there's any system as complex as SL or BM that doesn't have such bugs, you're fooling yourself.

I don't depend on bugs like that unless and until the vendor gives them their blessing. I've had too many decades experience of what happens when you depend on them.

But lots of people don't agree. The people I warned about the megaprim hack didn't.

The simple idea that items I acquire/buy/build could be specific to some regions alone and not be transferred to and used in others is so offputting I fail to come up with a descriptive enough word for it. What good is there in buying stuff when you can't use it in the whole "game"?

I don't know for absolutely sure that objects are that tightly bound to sims, that's just what it sounds like, based on repeated ignored and evaded questions about what kind of independent building it's actually going to support.

Oh, but I know. From the AI site itself:

How wonderfully unspecific and unquantified.

I'm sure that just as in Activeworlds and There.com they have the equivalent of shapes and clothing layers and common accessories like handbags. But while these are not completely uninteresting to me, it is (alas) the scripted objects... like those necessary to implement full avatars... that are most likely to be among those items and pieces of clothing that are "city specific".

Like most of the ... statements they have up in their FAQs...

Why do you people worry about what Lindens do or don't do.

Well number one because people received warnings and suspensions just a few months ago. Number two; You do know that you are replying to a post that was 400+ posts ago?

I was accepted as content creator almost overnight, maybe the people saying they havent got a response didnt follow the correct links.
Its exciting to get to know another 3d community, lets see if its not a big blooper as others have been.

The answer to 400+ is no [in my case lol] Speaking of alternative stuff, I'm not sure Blue Mars is "the answer" but I read an interview done by Nazz Lane about another world that is looking very promising as an additional market for folks. http://laneslist.blogspot.com/

Dunno if you have seen that but this seems to be like a side company that is taking advantage of the new engine of BM to create content inside of it , so this shows what's actually possible to make inside that platform ....


http://www.virtualspaceentertainment.com/

It's a team that has come together to develop a "city" for Blue Mars:

http://www.virtualspaceentertainment.com/

If you click EXPLORE on the left and then MEDIA the OVERVIEW video there is a pretty good idea of what this company is doing and what their city will look like.

This is also worth a read, "Smithsonian taps virtual world technology to take us to Blue Mars"

http://venturebeat.com/2009/06/09/smithsonian-taps-virtual-world-technology-to-take-us-to-blue-mars/

I think that there will always be people in SL. Blue Mars is going to get a whole new genre of virtual tourists though, people will go virtual for the first time just to experience the content, it's that compelling. Blue Mars will get more of the corporate & education sector than SL. Why? Because the creation tools available in SL are like crayons compared to what is possible in Blue Mars. Find this hard to swallow? View the Overview video mentioned above and you won't.