Blue Mars beta

The funniest thing ever about this is that after two years in SL, my sister and I just "upgraded" our living arrangements, set aside the old stuff and made our home the most beautiful system of... caves. *giggles*

Let me answer as a woman. I don't own a single handbag and barely a dress. I buy new shoes when the old ones fall apart, same goes for jeans. I own an old prepaid card phone because it does a good job and it offers all the service I need. I have never owned a car because I never saw the need to even acquire a driver's license.

I can, however, spend hours and hours looking at the same old illustrated books about art nouveau, William Turner and romanic architecture I have owned for ten years.

Admittedly, I might be a bit of a freak there because truly good things never tire me.

That's another reason you need us. You're a lousy guesser.

There are two types of people: those who fear change, and those who change fear.

There are three types of people, those who understand maths, and those that don't.

Rock

LOL.....

Well, I was just trying to make a point, that Humans tend to see something nicer and want it (generally) from caveman wanting his neighbours better spear and jaw bone hammer, through to perhaps me thinking a Ferarri would be nice at times

(As long as I didn't have to pay for it's upkeep and I could plant lots of tree's to offset it's environmental harm!)

Some things I like being the same (Home Sweet Home) whilst other things I quite like change.

As I say, perhaps a LOT of this comes about due to my age. I was just entering my very early teens as the microchip was being invented. I was one of the very 1st at my school to have a digital watch and a calculator (christmas gifts back then)

So, all throughout my live (from black and white tennis games on the TV "PONG" thru to today, I've seen massive changes and looked forward to the next greatest thing that's just around the corner.

Wishing my life away some may say, but always waiting for the next BIG thing which is coming out next year.

Guess that's kinda why I'm always keen to see what the new thing will be like, or would like the old thing to keep up with then new things.

I cannot believe that Linden are not (in some way) working on, or in talks with someone that's working on a "Second Life 2" to come out in the next few years.

You can only Patch, Fix, and Add-on for so long.

We all know SL is just really a chat room with graphics. the graphics is what's makes our world and the current SL world is indeed plenty good enough to get the job done.

I suppose, for what it needs to be, a 3D environment where the real point of being there is interaction with others then it does not really need to be any better, any better is just worthless eye candy.

That's not to say I would not like it better.
I'd love to see nicer flowing waterfalls, real grass on the ground, proper animations of real animals grazing the landscape, a more REAL 3D world environment, but perhaps I'm wrong and that's some other game and not what SL is for.

It's not for wandering around looking at eye candy, it's for social interaction and financial reasons.

Tricky.............

Actually, all the content will be developed by users. Avatar Reality is providing the world. Pretty much the same idea as SL there.

And the idea that you need a super-computer to run Blue Mars is a myth:

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/03/blue-moon.html

"We've put together $400 machines that run Blue Mars quite well. Most 3D cards on the market today have plenty of power to run Blue Mars. We've tested Blue Mars with ATI 4850 cards that go for about $120 after rebates and their performance is very strong."



SL allows land owners to impose whatever limitations they want too. And indeed, no sane content creator puts up with anything extreme, they rent from someone less extreme. I must be missing something here. Why would this be different in Blue Mars?

Once you have an established API redesigning it, as opposed to re-implementing the same API in a patch, fix, or add-on, is about the hardest thing in the world.

The most popular desktop operating system is almost 20 years old.

The second most popular one is almost 40 years old.

They're using a character set that dates back to 1960.

The HTTP protocol is based on a quick hack to provide network access to personal information files to support a networked version of a command that originated in the '70s, so you could find out classmates and coworkers schedules by displaying their "plan" files.

Everything we do on computers is patches on patches on patches. Even when someone "started from scratch" they were only successful in the long term if they supported as much as possible legacy from previous iterations. Which is why Windows NT is (according to Bill Gates) the best version of UNIX ever.

I'm not exactly a big booster of OpenSim, but it's much better placed to supersede Second Life than Blue Mars is.

For interaction with others, you don't even need the graphics. Virtual worlds go back to the '70s and most of them have been LESS restricted than SL, not more so.

No it doesn't. There are VERY strict limits on what landowners can do to limit what avatars can do. About the only meaningful limitation on avatars is "no build". Landowners can't even prevent avatars from running scripts!

Estate owners have even less capability to prevent landowners renting on their estates from doing anything they want. They can't even reliably tell what their renters are doing without using an alt that doesn't have estate manager rights. And whether you're renting land on an estate or owning land on the mainland, or owning your own estate, you can't keep my Flight Feather or Otter Monitor from running when I arrive on your land.

and yet here u r, a FANBOI, diffending SL like its not made by a bunch of incompitant greedy liars like LL when every1 knows there r a billion things like this wrong with it and they won't fix it even though every1 is leaving and going to BM

[sic]

I gotta ask ...

Did you use that for a reason? Like is there a point to it? Or is it one of the few words you can spell properly?

SL technology is becoming dated, there's only so much patching up you can do....it reminds me of a mothball with band aid plastered all over it, to hold it together! They've been patching up this game for the last 6 years! On any given day,some of the most basic expected functionality still doesn't work!

I remember playing World.com during the 90's (didn't have an Economy)...one of the first online 3D VW's around, you could actually Teleport back then.....anyway compared to SL in terms of functionality and graphics it was totally sucky!!!

In 10 years time, wherever you are in this world, you'll all be chuckling on how crude SL was back then! I forsee a new generation 3D VW's appearing soon....Blue Mars, possibly Mycosm are just start of that evolution. IMO these type of platforms all have a limited shelf life (including SL), due to IT technology & capabilities moving at such a rapid pace.

If LL wants to stay in business, they'd better start developing a new Generation "Second Life" with a complete new "underbelly". I'm not sure whether parts of inventory could be transferred over.....maybe "prims" are too crude and they require a different "standard" object.....who knows! They could keep the same world map, they could still have the same region measurements (65536 sqm for 1 Region)

The most important grouping for any Game to succeed are the "consumers" the ones that buy products, do not create, do not own a VW business....without those.. Land businesses would not exist and nor would there be a requirement in opening a Store to sell products. You need an audience....a consumer one!

If this "consumer grouping" can play "happy families or GOR or BDSM or whatever" on a more advanced 3D VW platform with better graphics, better capabilities, better stability, better customer service etc......people in time will naturally migrate over. So the bottom line is that LL better get it's sh!t together...because they can't stop the inevitable!
The current SL platform won't cut it, not in a few years time!

yes, but look at other code, such as quakeworld. its lived on in halflife for a near 15 year lifespan. millions of people played half-life every day on code that was written in like 1990. quake3 engine has also been powering games for nearly a decade.

Yeah they're games, like Wow and whatever, millions still type away on IRC chat channels that are from the late 80's (IRC was originally written by a Finnish student named Oikkarinen in 1988 as a communication system for his own computer system)......what i meant is 3D VW with an economy. SL still has a monopoly in that area.

u r obveosly not reading ne of my other posts

or perhaps my incredibly elegant and erudite standard style is indistinguishable from leetspeak rubbish

(goes off to watch idiocracy)

yes, they have a monopoly, but that doesnt mean that they cant squeeze many more years out of this if they regularly do things like havok, mono, windlight, (shadows), etc.

This is important, and it's part of the reason that Blue Mars fascinates me so much.

When Second Life was relatively new, the community was relatively small and content was relatively sparse. So much so, that it was quite easy to define parts of the world by building. And I don't just mean "your world"; I mean "the world", the one shared by everyone.

But since then, with the explosion of users and the market in SL, that's no longer really possible. No individual can define a part of the whole world now: if they discover a new market, competitors will be along in a few weeks. The result of that is that SL's community is now basically split into three groups:

- The content creators, who can create content for whatever they like.. but can't ever use it, because they have to keep working all the time to maintain their positions in the market. But that's ok - most of them enjoy creation for creation's sake. (Note: just to make it clear, I am not saying that these are the only people who ever create anything, just that they are a definable group)

- The social facilitators, who combine content together and organize the social side. They might create some content too, but not too much: creating really good marketable content would leave no time for being social. They can define the world more than any other group, but there's a catch: they have to generally be social, pleasant, and get along with others, and a key part of that is not pushing their own vision too hard. They'll have to compromise, and can't have the world exactly how they want, or even behave in exactly the way they want, because they have to remain social and facilitating.

- The facilitated, who participate in the interactions above. They are not passive, and are still a critical part of the world. In fact, they have the most freedom to behave in different ways that they like, because they don't have to bring people together - but they can't control the world at all.

Second Life's stagnation seems to be happening because none of these roles is satisfying to many people.

Blue Mars is starting off, from the outset, based on these roles (unlike Second Life, which evolved them). It will be very interesting to see how it deals with this, and it's notable that Avatar are keeping their cards close to their chest regarding the end-user experience for BM.

The jury is out on both Voice and Windlight...a lot of PC's can't optimise to Windlight. For skins its a disaster! How many use Voice? I've heard LL haven't fully utilise all the capabilities of Havok 4....and Mono is pretty standard.

Sure there will always be a hardcore crowd that will stay onboard to the bitter end.....but for the casual user (consumer) they will tend to migrate to the latest "hip" game. If you supply land or content, it's wise to have your eggs in different baskets.

I will remain in SL as long as i'm profitable, when the day comes when i'm not....i'll start selling off sims and closing shops etc,...doesn't mean i'll close my a/c or AV.......just means i'm likely to spend more time elsewhere.

You're making stuff up again, Yumi. I'm in this group and I don't see this happening. Not for me and not for other content creators I hang out with.

From what I'm given to understand, you mainly create new content and show it off to people and share it around open-source. That's more like being a social facilitator than a content creator in my grouping. (I acknowledge that "content creator" wasn't really the best name to give that group.)

You do not understand correctly. I have both open source and conventional content, and pay my tier with the income therefrom.

Are those the items on XStreet, or others too?

I hardly do any business at all on XStreet. Most of my sales are in-world.

Oh... one other thing. Just because I sell some products open source, that doesn't mean I'm not actually selling them, or that I don't get income from them. NOt only is it possible to compete with open source, but it's possible to compete with your own open source code.

Again, that depends. Do you play the aggressive marketing and competition game that's common at the top ends, or do people buy your products because they know and like you and you're a part of the communities they operate in?

I've bought some of those items, both to play with directly, and to look at the source

I wanted you to know that someone asked specifically on the Blue Mars forums whether avatar customization could support things like non-humans, and while I cannot relay the exact answer, I think it would have sounded pretty encouraging to you. At least you know it's on their radar.

.