Blue Mars beta

I have to admit, this video very nearly rocked my socks off. Much more impressive than what I saw so far. BUT I will still wait until this goes live to judge if it was just a pretty demo reel or if the online content can match the promise.

That's doesn't look like "a company using Blue Mars", that's the Blue Mars product itself being sold to companies.

When they talk about "millions of committed supporters" they mean "people who subscribe to the National Geographic magazine"... not "people who are actually going to spend time and money in-world".

And the video I saw is clearly a demo, it doesn't represent what you're going to see in-world... it's even got cuts between live RL video and the simulation.

Yeah, that spoiled the impression a lot.

Do you think there will be a place for my Pink Plastic Garden Flamingos and step on Dog Poo?

Quick! There's still time to become a registered developer!

I think I would be given "The Order Of The Wellie".

<sarcasm>

Yeah, VSE is probably just blowing smoke - check out:

http://www.virtualspaceentertainment.com/

then click EXPLORE and then ARTIST PROFILE and go through some of their team. Obviously just a bunch of hacks and wannabes.

</sarcasm>

Virtual Space Entertainment is a development company for the Blue Mars World. There will be more coming because of the potential of a virtual world with a real game engine will be attractive to professional game designers who will take it to a whole new level. But this wasn't a pitch - they state in the Overview that they already have partnerships with the companies. The cuts to RL video were probably necessary because the thing is in development, it's just not all built yet. But the first part of the video, before the part about the corporations and educational institutions, is about providing living spaces and things to do.

Overall, this raises the bar pretty high in my opinion.

it does say Blue Mars 2150, that's 141 years away right?

That's the TIME!

Rock

Sheesh. Just because they do have a reputation doesn't mean they'll live up to what they promise. Can we curb the fan love until some of what they promise is actually there to check out?

And there's raising the bar (as in you can see it move up a peg or two), and there's raising the bar (as in where's my bloody telescope?).

I was playing today with a chainsaw on a tree in the Sandbox. I don't know how they do it (yet), but the tree will fall in a direction dependent on the cuts you make. If you get it wrong and the tree falls on your house, the house will be demolished!!

I just cannot imagine how that could ever be replicated in SL. BM just keeps getting amazinger and amazinger (bad English deliberate).

Rock

I'm sorry, you appear to have completely misunderstood the point of my comment. I have no doubt that they have many many cool people working for them. I have no doubt they have many real life companies working with them.

* That doesn't mean that Blue Mars is going to look as exciting as it does in their demo.

* That doesn't mean that the customers of those companies are going to follow them to Blue Mars. Companies have been showing off ever-better VR environments ever since the first demos in the early '90s using "Myst" style technology.

I have seen disks produced by big name "serious" companies, using a variety of 3d tools, from Myst-style canned backdrops onwards. They all had lots of real money spent on them, looked really nice, and attracted attention at the time... and then vanished. Entertainment is where the money is, where the users are... not education and VR museums.

Bye then!

Well, the same applies to SL as well - if SL goes down, everything you built in it is worthless.



And now megaprims are standard. Of course BM will have bugs, but hopefully it won't have the attitude to bugs that SL has, which has been criticised before - it allows businesses to use bug reports tactically to hinder competition, which I'm sure isn't the intention.

A city in Blue Mars going down isn't like SL going down, it's like a creator or an estate owner leaving SL. I've got several avatars that were made by people who are no longer in SL, and if they'd quit working when the creator left I'd never buy a thing in SL again.
The Megaprim Hack (which is not megaprims, do pay attention, Bond) is disabled in the RC already. Avatars using the Megaprim Hack don't work in the RC, which will be a mandatory upgrade within a few months.

From the way things are developing, it seems that the intent of BM is that cities are a good deal more substantial than that.



Megaprims themselves, then, are a better example of what I was talking about.

How so? The developer pays for the city he hosts. If the developer stops paying I don't think BM will keep the city online without costs. It's gonna be a LOT like estate land in SL. Just with no mainland alternative.

*nod* But it seems like hosting a city isn't something that Joe or Jane Average would want to do, that it's far more likely to be the domain of larger barons or maybe even professional companies.

I dunno. If land is priced by the number of avatars you want to be able to support then buying one for personal space could be very cheap. I'm going to get a "city" as soon as I can, terraforming in the sandbox is just too darned fun to believe You can generate your vegetation, birds, animals, etc., paint on textures for amazing details, create actual running rivers, have non-player characters and set them up to be interactive ... and they can be up to 2km in size. That's almost as big as 8 sims in SL.

You don't have to be a professional company to compete with one for creativity. You just have to have the balls to do it. All the terraforming is done in the Blue Mars Sandbox Editor (CryEngine), you don't need a 3d program for that. I got it for free, just by emailing Blue Mars and asking for it.

Wanna see how it works? Check these tuts from the CryWiki, almost identical and not against the NDA
http://wiki.crymod.com/index.php/Category:Official:Tutorials

After you play with it for a while you realize that it isn't even harder than SL, just different.

That will probably be true, although AR have not made announcements regarding this yet. However, one of the big benefits of BM is that all builds are created externally first, then uploaded, so everyone who builds for BM will have complete backup copies of everything on their HD.

As the tools for creating BM content are industry standard (not proprietory, like SL) those assets can be uploaded in many other virtual worlds that use standard 3D tools, like 3DS Max, Maya, etc. Same for the scripts, which are also created using an industry standard, Lua (the divergence in Opensim now means that scripts created in SL usually fail now in Opensim, and vice versa).

It is so much nicer to have your inventory on your HD, instead of on someone else's.

Rock

Incidently, you said 'Bye', where are you off to? BM?

Only the stuff you make yourself. I highly doubt you'll be able to download what you purchase from others.

Well, some people stated that "for sure it will be cheaper than an island in SL". If it is indeed lower or similarly priced, then I don't see how this will keep the amateurs and rip-offers out.

That's the stinger, though. As I understood it, land is not priced by the number of avatars you _want_ to support, but by the number _who actually visit_. This means that hosting a city will require taking out a contract with variable payment amounts, and presumably meaning that BM have to know that you'll be able to pay if for some reason 10,000 people decide to rush your city.

Plus, of course, if content _is_ restricted to the city it's created in, then it won't make sense for everyone to run their own.



That is still exclusive, though. As I mentioned, I didn't get in.

Oh man, and people bitched and moaned about SL killing the dwell bonus. BM is going to charge for dwell.

So much misinformation and speculation!

SL is not going away any time soon, Blue Mars is very cool and if you really want more information about it sign up for the beta and get it first hand.

As I'm sure has been pointed out, In this pre-beta phase Blue Mars developers are under NDA so this back and forth bantering only serves to create rumors and prove to the poor forum readers how little you know. (Rock excluded!)