Blue Mars beta

I got to try out the build tools at a presentation, was really amazing, best way to describe it would be like having a sculpty maker built in to the program you could drag and pinch the edge of prims and sculpt it in real time. hold left click to grab an edge, pinch, pull, push etc as you moved the cursor, and adjust by numbers as well. Create new vertices on the fly.

Was really awesome stuff. Lots of fun.

Yep, good question.

Although I do think that the CryEngine is obviously far better than the Kaneva engine, it wont really matter when a bunch amateurs get their hands on it.

Amateurs could quite easily make the real world look like Habbo hotel.

Was that a special purpose Blue Mars built build editor or was it a nifty standard program like, say, Mudbox?

Heh, this reminds me to check out Kaneva again, haven't been there in a while.

I hope I like Blue Mars better than Kaneva.

the graphics and system requirements would have killed my old machine, we'll see what the new one does with it. I'm attempting to get in the developer beta atm, but I came late to the game... the whole 'pay to have creator content hosted' has me a little concerned, but it may not amount to much more than store rental fees like in SL.

collaboration and wholesale to retailers looks like it might be troublesome to accomplish effectively. and consignment style deals may be nigh on impossible.

their business model is quite a bit different than SL's in that it defenately focuses on resident level consumerism right out of the gate, hoping to engage residents as consumers, rather than creators. unfortunately that means it may be difficult for those same people to make a jump up to developer status, which limits their options.

I'll repost some time and tell everyone what I think of it when I can more properly evaluate it.

O.o That will leave me out on the cold. I don't have a clue how to use 3DSMax or Maya. I buy scultpies in SL when I need to use them to supplant what I know how to build.

Combine that with the assumption that it probably won't run on my hardware anyway and the whole thing becomes a yawner for me.

Open ended content creation is an absolute must. Limited content creation will be it's demise. I can't say how many times I've sent away a resident happy because they were able to describe to me what they wanted, and then I produced it for them. Limited content creation might mean nothing but high quality goods, but the ability to contract a builder or scripter to make custom goods won't be there, and it'll be another 'There'. It's doomed to fail.

that's exactly what I want to assess... because that's my main model of business... granted I can do other things, but I LIKE custom work... it gives me new problems to solve, in creative new ways...

Cito your comment is confusing to me, it sounds like there Will Be inworld content creation tools
in Blue Mars. Perhaps what you witnessed was one of the 3d programs you will be able to use
to create content for it. The reason I suspect this is due to the following info from the Blue Mars site.

"Does the Blue Mars client come with content creation tools?"

"The core Blue Mars client and interface is focused on enjoying the world through play and interaction, not content creation. Rather than force developers to learn new ways to create content through our own proprietary toolset, we support industry standard content creation tools like 3DSMax, Maya, and Flash. "

This definitely puts a much larger hurdle in front of any would be content creator. The programs mentioned are pretty high end and expensive. There are lots of less expensive 3d modeling programs out there. Possibly one work around may be if there is a compatibility with other 3d object formats such as .obj files.

The other thing I am concerned about is whether we or rather content dev's will be able to
build and sell structures. Possibly a non issue but from the teaser demo I saw it looks like
there is mass amounts of buildings and landscape that are already built. I got the feeling that
they may not want just anyone contributing to cityscapes and the look. I also did not see anything about owning land. I saw something about renting shops but that was about it.
Perhaps it will be much more centrally controlled than SL with all rents going to the House as it were.

Further reading showed that it will be a network of cities, which will be the centers of population and social activity. Avatar reality will be the host of the cities while the people setting the rules in those cities are referred to as "city developers". Which appears to be a
position that is only available to registered content develpers.

On the flip side for those capable enough or lucky enough to be chosen as content developers it is a potential goldmine.

I have'nt seen anything about textures or acceptable graphics file formats yet either.

I'm torn: on the one hand, the notion of graphics generated almost exclusively using industry standard tools such as Maya, 3dsmax and Flash hints at an overall better 'look' but on the other hand it might be painfully dull since the need to learn these tools will put a lot of creative folk off.

Nevertheless, I've been thinking that I need to come to terms with Maya for quite some time now - not just for SL but from the professional point-of-view.

I'm still concerned that content creators will be obliged to go into business on Blue Mars, unless they are have independent means in RL to support what will be an otherwise expensive hobby. Consumer culture will undoubtedly become a feature of Blue Mars and that is already one of my least favourite aspects of SL.

It requires hard work to manage a business well and I might have gone into business in SL a long time ago but for that fact: I just don't have the time or disposition to deal with customers.

I'm quite happy to stick with SL for the foreseeable future since I imagine the Lindens are not so complacent that they do not have a few interesting developments tucked up their collective sleeve.

Note: I did enjoy the Kim Stanley Robinson trilogy and 'Blue Mars', though it was slightly heavy going, was my favourite.

Maybe Blue Mars is the first instance of a competitor virtual world that LL should be taking a serious look at.

Hopefully we'll be getting shadows in our graphics before too long - they are on the agenda already. In-world sculpting would be good too. A few small tweaks to the avatar mesh wouldn't go amiss either. Would it also be posible to have an option where a linked object can be turned into a single, complex prim that loses all its hidden internal surfaces?

Perhaps we should express our thanks for this thread being kept open - it's an important topic and relevant to SL.

I was thinking about the potential advantages of such a feature just last night. It would work as a kind of sculpting tool.

Actually, This is the place I'm waiting for:

http://www.mycosm.com/blog/mycosm-screenshots




Isn't any creative process a form of socialization?

I would imagine that since the advent of SL Sculpties, many many more people have taken the time to learn some of the more popular 3D creation softwares out there. I'd guess that there are at least 100's of people with that dangerous little bit of knowledge just dying for a new social medium to flex their tiny creative muscles in. Not necessarily professionals, but people who have some knowledge of professional software. Perhaps these are the people Blue Mars or Mycosm hopes to entice.

Having experienced a good bit of the history of SL I will say that my perception is that LL provided a platform and rank amateurs who thought that modding thier Sims games was super cool built the world... for free to LL, while LL charged these people to host their creations. Because of SL, these new platforms will have a lot more people with a lot more skills then LL had looking into SL in 2003 to assist them in building new social environments.

And of course the hope always lives that maybe, just maybe, one of these other companies will know how to treat it's paying customers. That's probably going to be the biggest draw of any SL competition.

"The Blue Mars client is built for Vista based machines..."

Lost me right there.

It's possible. But it could also make exploring the mainland even less fun as the viewer would have to merge all those primitves together when downloaded, this would result in even more stuttering when flying. I suppose they could be merged and stored as a mesh on the server, but then they'd take ages to download.

I don't think there's enough hidden polygons to bother worrying about.


What it could be useful for is building complex organic forms by blending several primitives together. A method known as voxels can do this. Although this would be even more demanding than a simple merging of primitives.


Then again, I suppose today's multicore processors could help with the blending of prims.

* shrugs *

I don't see the incentive for skilled content creators to leave SL for Blue Mars. There'll be nobody there. Nobody will go there because there'll be no content there.

In the old days SL was fun space to build in. It was a novelty. It was the matrix!. It wasn't about money. Nobody cared about that stuff.

Blue Mars will never be fun to create for. It'll always be work. Most people will only work for money.

We'll see...

I'll meet you back here in a few months, Pie.

Lots of people cared about money and stock piled it. Chance Small, Rathe Underthorn, and plenty of other 2003 rich people and in early 2004 the Linden Dollar became exchangeable for USD.

That novelty thing with not caring about money lasted all of a year including the beta period.

In November 03 when we learned of the upcoming changes people started hoarding cash and land like crazy because they knew the USD was on the horizon.

@Infiniview Merit:
their development sdk includes a built in environment editor, and sandbox. I'm usre it'll also include templates, LUA scripting references for specific world relative functions, and other baseline definitions and limits. this isn't to say that more advanced outside editors won't be needed for some content types. I mage the big four will be a 3d editor (maya, or 3ds most likely), some flash building program (there are several to choose from), an animation studio (possibly anything that will put out a bvh file) and a texture editor (again lots of variety here). I think the inworld dev tools will be pretty limited, but basically allow manipulation and implantation of created content, with some overall environmental stuff, and maybe some minor 3d duplication.

@Kelli May
while it says it's built towards Vista machines (though for the life of me I can't find that quote now), it's using the cry2 engine (which has some scary baseline requirements by itself) it'll probably run on 2K/XP or better (I didn't see any mention of alternate platforms, and considering their target market, I wouldn't be surprised if they left mac and unix by the roadside, a poor choice IMO considering how much content development is done on them)

ETA:
the art competition registration lists win2K or older, XP(64), Vista(64) (with Vista(32) pre-selected, as well as nVidia8800 series or better selected (though there's a range below that)

I don't think the creators of BM are aiming it at us. Well not directly at least.

The creators they are after for their platform are the biggies like mindark or other RL game companies.

They will create these "cities", we will watch.

I say this because a group of highly skilled friends(and me) have had our reqests for information completely ignored. Except for a terribly miss spelled email I recieved confirming beta listage.

I thought the same at first but I received my dev package within about 2 weeks after applying. The responses are not machine generated, so they are looking at each request separately. If you were instead actually just asking for information, then no, I would expect a limited response. Until the beta is released, all the critical info, such as cost, is covered under NDA which you must sign and return.

There are several interviews available online with a lot more info, some conducted by SL residents with more information. A good place to start is:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/other-grids-virtual-worlds/

Oh.

Thanks for clueing me in. =) It's encouraging to hear of other SL creators being accepted. =)

I did put in a Dev request with all my company and important info a few weeks back(and have been on some beta list for close to a year).
I've yet to see a reply, but I'm sure they are busy and have some great talent to pick from =)

You might try reapplying or pinging them again. Believe me, I am good at scripting but for everything else I am just "fair". If I can get in then anyone can get in and this is inline with what Jim Sink has stated in some of the interviews.

I have taken a closer look at the small number of screenshots there seem to be of Blue Mars. Looking closely at these, the graphics only appear superior to SL in one or two respects. First and foremost, lighting, because of the shadows, which we still lack. Secondly tree foliage. The avatars don't actually look much better than our familar SL ones, though I'd need to see them dancing or running to say fo sure. Sculpts do look better too.

But as mentioned earlier, ordinary users won't be able to create stuff, they'll have to buy it.

I read that all this is 3-5 years from going mainstream. By that time SL could be as good or better.

A peek inside a Blue Mars store:
http://tech2.in.com/media/images/2008/Feb/img_50511_blue_mars.jpg
Other pics:
http://onpause.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/blue-mars-announcement-and-screens/
You have to remember we are talking about the CryEngine 2 with input from 3ds Max. This is as close as you can get to RL photo quality. BTW there are also some free and good programs that are available to create content with.

I said I thought the sculpts were good. I've managed for two and a half years in SL without a designer handbag, though.

This pic is from SECOND LIFE !!! ....

I don't suppose a model Blue Mars developer submission could be produced?