anybody else beta testing blue mars

Anyone who thinks SL doesn't have professional level content hasn't been going to the right places. (I say, "professional LEVEL" because the best stuff generally isn't made by "professionals" or corporations, but individuals). Last night I visited a roleplay sim, a dark sci-fi themed place called Insilico. It was reminiscent of the city in "Blade Runner", and it was an utterly amazing build.

After being wowed by the soaring buildings and the neon displays, I drooled over a sporty red hovercar, and then ducked into a club to use their restroom. The walls were heavy with grime and graffiti, and there was a sign on the wall that made me laugh: "Do Not Fist Android Girls", with a graphic of a hand getting smashed between two gears.

Why move? We've got it all, right here.

Blue Mars itself has no entry level for designers. But the developers can have a certain amount of retail shops in their region. The community developers can distribute the clothing and avatar editor to whomever they like. Just like a land baron-run continent the stores are approved by the developer.

I'll wait and see how the real thing looks. Trailers are one thing, but when you stuff the best bits into a short clip, anything can look great.

About a week ago, Rock posted some stills from New Venice on Blue Mars, and honestly, it did not strike me as a huge leap past SL now. The big wow factor about Blue Mars seems to be the eye candy. There's a lot of incredible eye candy in SL.

I'm also skeptical of "professionally produced" content from big RL names. SL has a lot of that stuff, and often the big names put little effort into their content, and rely on their name to draw people.

I hope not. I have had all the talking body part's I can handle.

Yeah, I actually do take your point, and Lindal's, about the tag "professionally produced"; the most amazing things I've seen, like AM Radio's installations, have been produced by extraordinarily talented individuals, not "companies."

The eye candy IS important, but it's really the content that will determine my decision, I think. Certainly, the things they are promising look GREAT, but one of the beauties of SL is, of course, the variety. One can only visit a virtual museum or historic recreation so many times. Will Blue Mars have this kind of variety? Maybe that's where the point raised by Cortex and Lias becomes important, I guess.

As for Xcite outlets in Blue Mars, I hate whispering body parts anyway. I prefer to do my own talking, tyvm . . .

Am really hoping that this release is alpha and not a beta as there are nil features for the end user to test. Not talking about goods to buy, avatar shapes and skins, or even the ability to build, just basic features that would make a virtual world attractive to the end user. As an alpha test, it works like expected: Stripped down, and working out the basic bugs. Let's have a beta with end user features to test.

Or, am I mistaken and this really is the developer beta? Serious question.

Yep, I've heard all the comparisons, "just think what SL was like when it first started," but that is nonsense. Avatar Reality is starting with an excellent, well developed, firmly established, graphics engine; numerous technological, hardware and software, advances overall since SL was released; and years of experience to draw upon from other virtual worlds and online games.

If you are a developer, then it may be a wonderful place to display and further your skills. Certainly, it will not cost you millions of dollars, and years of time, to develop a game/island as would the usual video game, and you may actually be successful in achieving a paying following.

Included in the beta should be the users ability to adjust graphics settings.
The first place you enter is room and choose which world to TP to. If this is not the intended method of entering an island, let's see what is intended.
Even if just very basic, also included should be zoom features and simple panning controls.
Improved movement controls. Yes, arrow keys work for most movement, but point and click is a must in some situations, and IMO that "cone" is annoying. Being able to jump a little would help.
Shadows under water should not appear sharp, nor splashes on the sea bottom occurring for that matter.
The communication system should be more robust, and I'm not talking about including voice.

As for all the hype about its superior beauty, it just isn't true. BM is beautiful, not superior, let's give it the credit it is due, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and not everyone enjoys photo realism for their in-world life. SL offers jaw dropping beauty, if you open your eyes and go and look for it.

If a public release is a year out, then fine, new features may be added and bugs worked out before then. As an alpha release, this offers some insights as to what is possible. As a beta, it is sorely lacking end user features to test.

I have to disagree here. I have seen dozens of things in Blue Mars already that we simply do not have in SL. And because Blue mars allows the import of output from industry standard tools huge databases of objects are already available. Check the contents of the Google 3D Warehouse, all of which can be imported into Blue Mars. Check out Content Paradise. Poser is also fully supported, and any type of avatar, human or non-human can be created.

I think you'll find that the vast majority of clothing designers in Sl do their designing outside of SL, using programs like Photoshop (not cheap). Blue mars, on the other hand have produced a free Cloth Editor, with built in templates and skeletons, to design clothing. What does SL provide to the clothing designer?



Yes, if you are a tenant you can shop, buy furniture, furnish your home, move stuff around etc. None of this is being tested right now in the closed beta, we are currently working on the Cloth Editor, Object Editor, and Cosmetics Editor, and trying out the start of the commerce module. Next will be the Avatar Editor and Animation Editor.

Rock

My beta test acceptance came yesterday. I went in an looked around a bit. I will do more tonight. There does not seem to be a lot for the user to test at this point. I can also see the adjustment curve will be pretty steep for your average SL user.

As far as the eye candy goes. Yes BM was beautiful with a nice draw distance. But right after I left the beta I went into SL and visited a beautiful sim, and to be honest SL won that contest hands down. Understand I have a pretty good system and have my draw distance set to 512 most times.

It is still VERY early in the development cycle it seems. So I will reserve any judgement on BM until it is much farther along. It does look very promising.

ps.. I got my name on Blue Mars too, so if anyone wants to look me up there I am still Lizz Silverstar.

see here moo, if i hadnt been able to play sl i woulnd never have played sl, it wouldnt haveheld my interest NOT beong able to log into a virtal world much less even get the login screen is a big turn off. means the virtual world sux. like i said being more good generally in sl and nicers to lindens ingenral their crap worx!

i aint goin over to blue mars after a 30 min download the thing wouldnt run i deleted that crap and went on twitter and told them dev fools to get on like they been sh@t on! i'm sure my beta test invite has been revoked!

They don't know what they are missing with the Jumpman.

Yer good to go!!!

I don't know that it's possible to get Blue Mars to display properly on a 1024x768 screen. If you can't, that's a big drawback for me, even for casual observation of the game's development progress.

SL's windowed mode works well, and is like other more normal programs like Firefox or Notepad and such, in that you can have your taskbar showing, and SL, Firefox, Notepad, etc. can determine the size of the screen minus the size of the taskbar and make the program occupy that space precisely.

Hipihi, Novoking, and a number of other programs (games and virtual worlds) I've tried that use DirectX share the aggravating inability to fill the screen minus the taskbar. The want to be fullscreen, or some stupid size that leaves a border around the program where you can see the edges of other programs underneath. I hate that. I never want little bits of other programs sticking out around the edges of the program I'm using.

I can change my screen resolution to something higher in order to get Blue Mars to cooperate better, but that means every other program won't be displaying in the manner of my choice.

Nice one that place is great. I nosed around for half an hour and will be back.A thought came to mind ,with the new branding policy how will LL police oriental places ,I saw loads of brand names and my Japanese is non existent.

i know! right!

Hehe.

I meant, starting a BM thread.

I agree with ya. Only they don't even want my business cos I have a Mac. So stuff 'em.

FWIW, not very Windows 7 friendly either. Seems peculiar they geared it toward Vista because that OS will be soooo yesterday by the time BM has a public release.

If anyone reads the BM forums, then you will see that the standard answers are already being given as to why the program won't run under any system, blame the end user.

BTW, not sure why people posting on the BM forums need to take digs at SL. Oh yes, I am poking at BM but doing so because it is held up to be vastly superior to SL, e.g., BM is jaw dropping gorgeous, etc. So is SL. And, to be clear, BM is not jaw dropping anything, what you see are islands made by developers. BM is a name. BM quality is developer dependent just like in SL.

Maybe, the public release will be superior when there are developers who understand the needs of the end user. Until then it is vaporware, and those who talk about BM superiority might do well to tone down their awe struck gushy outbursts, put downs of SL, and get a grip on what BM is today and not brag about what it may become.

Can you own land and build your own structures or are all the buildings owned by Blue Mars? I got the impression from their site that you can only rent from them, not make your islands and such.

My understanding is that BM, i.e., Avatar Reality, will not be in the land business. If you want to rent, it will be in cities/islands where the developer allows such to happen. Your entire in-world experience is dependent on individual developers. Avatar Reality provides a platform and tools. That fancy vehicle you purchased in one city, may not be allowed in another. This gives complete control to the developers for keeping their theme consistent and predictable.

BM is more a platform for third-party developers rather than a unified world. This is one of the things that makes it very different from SL.
Third party developers will rent server capacity for their largely autonomous cities /worldlets(?). The rates are apparently related to the maximum avatar capacity that the city developer cares to budget for.
City developers can sub-lease space to others who want to set up a shop or other build.

BM has a long way to go before people would leave SL in droves for it.

Build your own home, make your own furniture, create your own clothing, terraform with hand grenades...?

Ah, that old "predictable experience" thing again.

Having my avatar look the same and my stuff work the same no matter where I am is my idea of a "predictable experience", but I guess Avatar Reality isn't any better at understanding what a "predictable experience" is than Linden Lab.

I've been beta testing Blue Mars and am loving every second of it.

I've been teaching myself Google Sketch-Up and have successfully uploaded several things I've made into the BM Item Editor. Sketch-up is actually pretty darn easy to learn, with a wealth of tutorials and videos. Sketch-Up is also free, which makes entry-level creating for BM free. If you are used to working with prims, Sketch-Up seems to me like not that far removed.

I signed-up for and was immediately given a Developer account. If I decide to, I can become a City Developer, a Block Developer or simply a Content Creator. I don't feel any limitations or what I am going to be able to do with the platform.

So yes, you can make your own house, your own clothing, your own furniture (the very first thing I made in Sketch-Up was a chair that I got into the BM Item Editor following Rock's tutorial), your own lil ferret avatar. Your avatar will remain the same whichever City you decide to visit, your house, chair, and pretty outfit will be available in your inventory wherever you go. You would of course need permission from the City/Block developer to be able to put your structures/builds somewhere, but that's the same as not being able to rez your nifty car anywhere you want in SL or being able to set up shop in any empty mall space you see with out asking the sim owner first.

Why would not being able to use the sports car you bought in one BM city that caters to racing enthusiasts in the Victorian themed city you visit next be any different then being told to change out of your "furry" avatar when you visit a sim that restricts furrys?

When it is impossible to travel in SL from one private estate to another without teleporting, how does "unified world" apply to SL other then the Mainland?



I don't think I'm bragging about what BM "could" become, but I am gosh darn excited by the possiblities. Much as I was excited about the possiblities of SL in 2004, when it too bore very little resembleance to the SL you have today.

What Blue Mars is today to me is... full of possiblities. Good enough for me.

Your avatar will look the same, and your stuff work the same - as long as you don't leave a BM city where that is allowed to happen. See! Cool, eh?

Would be interesting to understand Avatar Reality's perspective, but we'll never know because it is leaving all the day-to-day decisions to the developers. Only when a fully developed BM city is opened will any one know for sure how predictable it is and how much control a developer will allow for end users.

I suspect a BM city will be like an off the shelf video game in which you know the rules and buy it because you understand those rules, and accept what is offered. The video game developer controls every aspect of your experience, and although users may make mods, that won't change the overall experience because you are still limited to the rules set by the developers.

Yeah, SL has rules, but rules that are much more flexible than the BM experience will ever be.

What exactly are you beta testing? The tools? Because the viewer interface and cities are devoid of anything to test. Alpha release, yes. Beta, no.

Have you seen any prices for this priviledge? That may put a damper on your enthusiasm.

The key phrase you used is "Permission from the City/Block developer." All the fun stuff you talk about as possibilities is just a dream based on assumptions. As for being able to rezz an item in different places in SL, that adds to the experience, and I have met many wonderful people by alerting them to items left by others.

I bet Argent has a excellent answer for this question.

Uhm, because there is no teleporting between BM cities at all?

There are posters who drool over the beauty of BM cities, don't find any beauty of equal in SL, and call us regulars blingtards and trailer trash. Thank you for not being one of those.

I am glad you see the possibilities as a developer, sounds like you are a creative soul. But, please, you do make assumptions about what you will be able to do in a BM city. We end users may all be happily surprised at the end result, or BM will remain a developers paradise no different than any off the shelf game.