Blue Mars beta

The build tools were inside the program reminiscent of second life, you were in a region, they had like a sanbox flat area, brought up the building tools and of course was probably alpha version I saw but you got a default prim then you warped, pinched, pulled, drag and drop and sculpted it to what ya needed, you could also build more than one but the short time messing with it I didn't get to get into linking, root, etc or any type of detail other than pretty much making the equivalent of a sculpty while in world that was real time rendered as you adjusted it.

of course again it being alpha or beta at the convention, didn't get to see any other tools like any script or texture editors, mainly the bulk of the presentation was a longer video showing a blank wall, then brick textures, then the wall warping into differnet shapes and textures, then an extended trailer and talking about commerce and such for registered vendors and stuff.

Sounded interesting and to be honest it sounded too good to be true so to speak, lots of promises that I doubt people will see at release.

Not even that if you're running Windows XP, Linux, or Mac OS X.

Back in 2005, at least, content creators were getting free mall space because they brought shoppers and shoppers brought dwell, so having content creators in your sim let you offset some of the cost of your tier.

They didn't kill dwell and the reputation bonus and all until they were established.

I read something about limited editing ability in the sandbox/SDK. I don't think it's possible to edit anything inworld alongside others.

If they were going for real-world photo quality they'd have based it on OpenRT and contacted the folks in Germany who developed it for info on their raytracing accelerators.

Here is a very informative Q&A on Blue Mars: http://npirl.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-answers-and-more-questions.html

- No Teleporting
- Probably no sex (undecided at the moment)
- No Flying
- No Gambling
- Sharded servers if regions get full
- Developers will be able to limit what you bring into their region. I.e., they can allow only certain clothing outfits like speedo's or tuxedo - and since sex is undecided, no nudity if they want.
- No Inworld content creation tools
- Will not run on Macs without Boot Camp

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Sounds like crap.

...with a shadow

Back in 2004, at least, content creators who were making any sort of "professional income" thru dwell or reputation bonuses were a very rare breed and responsible for only a very small percentage of the creative content on the platform. So if you are trying to compare dwell and reputation bonuses to being paid as a professional to create content for a virtual environment... I'd have to giggle.

O, and dwell and rep bonuses were killed because they were being gamed into the ground, not because anyone felt certain FIC content creators had established themselves. Those bonuses were replaced with the Traffic system that is currently being gamed into the ground. Linden Lab is very efficient that way.

I didn't say they were getting "professional income", I said they were getting "free store space".

Your message was referring to Blue Mars *charging* content creators, implying that Linden Labs was doing the same thing. My response: most content creators didn't have to pay a penny of tier for land or store space until after they killed dwell. Mall and store operators were more than happy to provide stall and even store space rent-free so THEY could get the dwell. That doesn't mean "Linden Labs was paying them", that means "Linden Labs was not charging them".

*sheesh*

Another interview with the Blue Mars foks: http://rock-vacirca.blogspot.com/2009/04/interview-with-jim-sink-of-avatar.html

Here is one question and answer i found interesting:

6. In SL the unit of land is the Region, 256x256m. Will Blue have a ‘unit of land’, and if so, what will it be?

JS: No. Land masses can be 2Km by 2Km or more. There will be a minimum size, but that has not been finalised yet. However, land size is not what will drive the pricing structure. We will use the concept of ‘capacity’. For example, if you want sufficient capacity for 1,600 concurrent users, the price will be X. The more capacity you buy the cheaper will be the ‘per concurrent user’ price. Unlike other Virtual Worlds, such as Second Life, you really will be able to host a concert in Blue Mars attended by several thousand avatars!
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You will be paying for the number of avatars your region can host.

In an odd way, it actually makes sense given that most of the lag in a sim is generated by agents (avatars); and even more if they have retarded attachments.

It does make sense. But, it will kill the idea of making big public areas that everyone (or those with specific interest) can come share unless you are making money out of the region to pay for the number of visitors you want the region to support.

It will be interesting to see what a minimum region fee costs and how many avatars it supports.

What about the costs to house the content being placed in the region? I wonder how that is governed.

Has anyone seen any info on age limitations?

It works with XP.

I just can't do that fly-eye thing (shards). I really don't like that at all.
I'm sure lots of people will enjoy Blue Mars, and all that really ends up being, to me, is greater acceptance for the idea of virtual worlds in general. That's good.
There needs to be variety in VR as one size does not suit all, but the initial hurdle is just to get VR to be a normal thing.

You'll have to explain that, since nobody else has been able to see Blue Mars.

I think that this here is going to be the multi-million dollar question. I know they are aware of SL, interesting that most of the interviews have been conducted by SLers. Yes there will be a big buisiness demand, especially with the ability to host thousands. But I am hoping that they paid attention to the OS fiasco and the potential market for regions with a capacity of only a handful.

I'm just going off Bettina's experience and interview. She asked:
"I’m working off of Windows XP. Will I be able to run it? And what about Mac users?"
And Jim Sink said:
"Yes, no problem for XP, but Cryengine doesn't run on OS X, so no support for Macs. Boot Camp works if you want to dual boot, and server-side rendering services like Online should help expand our market to netbooks and Macs."

Not being able to fly, though - that's a dealbreaker.

Will the gravity be .38 earth gravity?

What about the air pressure and atmospheric composition?

According to what I read , there wont be fees based on region sizes , but based on "traffic"possibility , of resources to consume , also will be City developers that will host eventual lands , island openspacelike areas etc , and this time they dont have 256mx256m areas but over 2km or more to develope , and the citydevelopers can manage theyr cities as they like , also an interesting feature is the one to develope on the same platform whole games , meaning a new world for rpg like games .....

Interesting. I suppose that there is no need for teleporting if your world doesn't even exist at any given time. I don't think it's a good idea but if vehicles work, then who cares.

No sex... nothing can stop people from having cybersex. People have been cybering since the all text days, and lack of animation or other visual aids isn't going to stop that.

No flying... see above about teleporting.

No gambling... no big deal.

The rest... meh. I don't mind. I'm still interested, for the creation capability, and hope I can get in as a developer. I wonder what the pricing is going to be like.

You'll be able to purchase extra air pressure.

I was just wondering what the majority of their income is going to come from.
And it seems obvious now that it will be from the registered devs those who create and control cities as they will be paying for the concurrency parcels. As they will be paying to get their city and sharing a percentage of income.
And since the concept model is an entire planet it sounds like there will be room for a heck of alot of cities.
To sum up if their income is mostly from reg devs/city controllers then it would seem that they would want to approve quite alot of them.

Content devs sound like they are a much lower power class where they would be able to only rent shops to put their content in.

One concern is there may not be much of a prefab market, but that could also depend on what city controllers allow on portions of land they rent out in their cities.
I suspect their will be heavy zoning rules.
In addition the reg devs maybe have some pretty heavy zoning rules in terms of allowed content builds themselves.

No flying, now that would seriously suck. In the demo tho there is a flying vehicle. So if there
is flying available through vehicles or a jet packs or something that could lessen the pain.

Their will be content registration for copyright protection this will most likely be good and bad
depending on how long it takes to get something registered. In addition what if someone gets
their rip off copy registered first, then the real creator comes along and objects will BM be
looking thru the evidence themselves? Whoever loses that type of battle would probably be
permabanned. Sounds like there will be plenty of potential for drama.

About the flight , I think its a good thing to not allow flight , and this becouse it would put a bigger mark on the vehicles , in SL are almoust useless , but in a world with no flight , there could be plenty of other ways of locomotion , and eventually even a jetpack thrusters to wear that will allow the actual "flight" so I wouldnt worry about that and instead welcome it ... another feature that comes from the crytek engine is the 0 g simulation , that wil allow a whole new world of effects and movements ...

I think read it some where "blue Mars" use Cry engine so windows plataform will be(i dont know if cry engine run in linux or mac plataform)