Blue Mars Progress

The 7950 GT was released 3 years ago this month, and was the best video card available for SL even after the 8000 series came out because of the driver problems in the early 8000 series cards.

The actual usable part of the city was in the middle, a lot of the edges are just "scenery" in low detail in comparison. Since New Venice is under construction, if you go explore out on the edges like I did, you can find piles of objects obviously not put in their right places yet, just dumped to get them in the region.

The useable area was quite detailed, Ill try to get some better pics up when I have a chance.

I actually bought this PC Jun '07, and carefully considered what components to get at the time. the 7950 was not the very top card available, but it was the best that was not stupidly overpriced. I think it was about the 3rd best card they had at that time (about $200 for the card)

My previous computer really is 7 years old, with a Geforce 3 Ti200 card (good for its day, but barely runs SL on the lowest settings).

Yes, I know graphics cards get better very quickly, but if they set the bar too high for a game, not many people will be able to run it at decent frame rates. And top of the line system from 2 years ago is still pretty high end for the average user. If they want millions of players they may need to think about that a bit.

(Im saving up for a new PC by the way *smile*)

From my experience with BM, I would say they are still a while from release. I imagine by the time the have a release viewer they should have the graphics able to be lowered.

From what I've experienced in BM, the graphics are the least of their problems. The movement controls are just bad. Camera control is painfully Kaneva-ish.

Quite frankly, if people were hoping that BM was going to shake things up from LL, the only shaking I can see happening are the big bellies around the boardroom table quaking from laughter whenever the Lindens take a look at BM.

What does BM do better than SL... umm.. well you can watch your avatars fingers wiggle.

....and their eyes narrow at you creepily while they stare into your soul....

Everytime my avvy turns around and stares at me like that I get an instant complex. I want to say.."Me? Stop looking at me..I'm not here...I'm just some typist trying to get immersed, and you've gone and blown it again......"

I've only visited briefly. Find the interface really hard, and the world quite silent and cold. Looking forward to reading the rest of this thread though and catching up un what I need to know.

Wow, yours did that too, I thought it was just me. Did it also whisper in a low voice, "I am the angel of death, the hour of the cleansing is at hand" like mine does?

After over a week and hours of play time in Blue Mars my impressions would be inline with what others are saying. BM does offer that sense of immersion though. For example, I ran into Rock there who was very helpful in getting me started and answered my noob questions. As we sat at a table in an open plaza and chatted, I got that sensation of “place” similar to what I enjoy in SL. But still there seems to be a lack of what I can only describe as hard matter or physical substance. In SL there is substance and matter. Even the sky and water has substance. Right click on this and that and gain a wealth of information. Everything has substance and presence. It’s tactile. And as such there is a sense of presence as well. Walk around in a sim where there is no one else and still you feel you are surrounded by things you can experience. “who made this tree?” touch it and find out. BM to me is flat. It’s beautiful but no more so then an artists rendering.

LOL..nooo..but it *is* very disconcerting. I'm glad mine isn't the only one to do it to it's typist. I won't take it so personally now. And, this is the first time I've been conscious of being relegated to 'typist'...my SL me *is* me, while so far the BM 'Tiffy' is some young kid who keeps watching me like I'm some weirdo.

Time will change this, and I'm aware that I'm coming to BM with a very strong affinity with my previous online 'me'.

I'm glad to hear that you do get a sense of immersion. I'll be spending some time and trying to get over that initial clunkiness, and judging more then

When in SL, we aren't ever really alone, you are right, as there is always a connection with community, even in inanimate objects....I'm a habitual clicker of things, checker of profiles, collector of links and landmarks. In BM, I couldn't even see the names of who I was talking to. Very isolating.

One of my first bug reports was after someone’s chat bubbles covered my screen so much that I couldn’t get to the teleport button I had just opened. I couldn’t do anything until they stopped talking and the bubbles faded. BM support said it’s a known bug.
What surprises me is that Avatar Reality had to know that in order to attract the SL crowed early on there should be some similarity in the user interface. Its such a complete departure from the functionality we are used to.
Only 4 levels of zoom? wth

I hope the updates come soon.

Yeah, like there was this really nice boat in the Venice city, and no way for me to sit on it. It just bobbed up and down with the water very realistically

When I Tp'd myself into the sky, I just gently floated down, no "ahhhh Im falling" animation, and no wind noises, and kept right on falling through some hills down to the bottom of the water level, where I guess there was ground.

I can see the potential, but a lot of the pieces to fill in the details are just not there yet, especially user interface stuff like IM, map, money, freaking menus dude, the interface is *too* simple.

You would think with SL as an example to draw on, they would be able to take the good stuff, and improve on the bad stuff or leave it out. Having large seamless regions is a great improvement, having good visual graphics and
animations is fine too, so they demonstrated the potential to me, now we just need to see all the other stuff thats missing get added.

I was not here prior to 2006, so I cant compare it to early days of SL, but I get the feeling its about like SL2002 or 2003.

I do plan to mess around with the developers kit and see how hard it is to make stuff.

That happened to me once. But then I realized I wasn't in front of the computer.

Hmmm, I am very interested in this virtual alternative, but I can't figure out how to access it. I put in my email, but discovered that I am already a recipient. What should I do next? Did they send me something?

BT

Took about 4 days after requesting a beta account to get an email accepting it (and this was a week after requesting a developer's kit).. Their procedures are not very clear. Once you get the invite, you can access the download page and download the beta package (1.25GB), that contains the basic software and the "cities" that have been built so far.

I had received an email some time ago and deleted it … didn’t feel like dealing with another virtual world at the time. Then when the hub bub started up again I added another email and got a replay within about a week. So if it says you’ve already registered and its been longer then a week or so try registering again with a different email.

No, it just means that they already have your email in their database. The emails giving the link to register and download the client have been going out in their thousands every day since the open beta began. Jim Sink of Avatar Reality told me yesterday that they have almost caught up with the huge backlog of applicants, so you should be getting your email shortly.

Rock

Here's the post I almost made but canceled because it didn't say much...



I was going to embellish it by suggesting that virtual worlds may not ever be successful until bots can be made intelligent enough to be fun to talk to, but since I think that's a long way off I didn't bother suggesting it.

Then I went out in search of humans in SL, ran across the same old inane, random chat, and it dawned on me...

Maybe LL is jumping the gun? Do you think some of the chat bots are put there by LL to make their world seem not so empty?

There are some places in SL where I wonder what other than ego would be the incentive for making places seem busier that they really are, using bots that aren't up to the task, since in many instances the financial reward for traffic gaming isn't obvious. There are some large clubs that persist day after day for months or years on trivial amounts of tipping and no conversation at all. Who would want to run a place like that? No money; no actual social success to feed the ego. Why do these places exist, if not to fool people into thinking there are people here?

It has occurred to me that some of these places may be run by Linden alts, but I have no reason other than cynicism to think that. Except that sometimes it's the simplest explanation for what I see. They do seem to have an unreasonable fondness for automation and for creepy pictures of dancing avatars.

Edit: My point is that I don't think BM can be successful on pretty scenery alone. I think virtual worlds aren't going to do well until bots can be made truly interactive. I think LL may already be trying to do this, badly.

Most healthy people in the real world don't care for befriending folk over the internet (especially not anonymous folk). And they definitely wouldn't find a bot interesting.

Virtual worlds will become more popular when they become less virtual.

(not the box, thats built in for scale, the door)

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/members/danielravennest/albums/blue+mars+snapshots-333/my-first-door-2511.jpg
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/members/danielravennest/albums/blue+mars+snapshots-333/my-first-door-2511.jpg

It only took 37 steps, and learning two new pieces of software (Sketchup and the BMO item editor. Now if I could just figure out how to load it into their database.

I'm not kidding about the 37 steps, by the way. I had to first create a library in Sketchup with the door texture, draw the door shape, texture it, export the .skp file, change it to a zip file, open it and convert the jpg to a tif, and diddle with the contents of the dae file, move the items to the developer folder, open the BMO item editor, open the files, convert them to an itemdata.zip, then open the Blue Mars Client to see what it actually looks like in-game (and took the snapshot above).

After all that, its still files on my computer and not an asset in the BMO database, cause I have not found out how to upload it. I sure hope someone writes a script to do all that.

I know you listed ever step
But .. really are you serious?
37 STEPS?

I still cant believe it.

for all i've read so far, you CAN'T.
Unless you buy a whole city from them.
At some unknown point in the future.
For some unknown amount that will most likely be a multiple of the cost of a single sim in SL.

You're completely wrong about that. If you weren't, we wouldn't have so many people upset about the imminent closure of these forums.

But this, yes. Bots aren't interesting. Get one that passes a double-blind Turing test, and odds are the bot still won't be all that interesting. Simulating a dull human isn't interesting. Simulating an interesting human is tough even for humans.

And, Anya: no, those dull people dancing in clubs are dull people, not smart bots.

I have read that too, but as far as I remember there are also some small sentences about renting homes and small shops in these cities with the ability to decorate the homes or to sell selfmade things. It should be possible to store these selfmade items in their database, but maybe not while beta-phase.

But 37 steps to create a door or something...

Here we need 10 seconds..., rezzing a box, stretching, texture on and ready. And another single step for throwing a basic free door-script in and it works.

I still think that BM is only a museum, made for tourists.

No, he's right about that. Coders seem to think the world is full of people just like them, but it isn't. Even the most internet-savvy "normal people"--even the geekiest of them--find real-life contact so much more engaging that internet contacts they don't know personally are pretty unimportant. We fretting over this forum? Very unusual. Not at all like the vast majority of people. We are not "normal people."



I think it will be decades, if ever, before a bot will pass a Turing test, but I think the bar for "interesting" is a lot lower than you think. "Normal people" aren't looking for intellectual debate in their social contacts. Smalltalk seems to suffice. A bot that passes the Turing test will suffice. Fill a virtual world with them and most people will have all the intellectual challenge they find in real-life conversation. Heck, even the really stupid SL bots seem to fool some people now, as evidenced by...



No, they're dull bots. A few of them are people that don't know how to socialize *at all*, but most are bots. Of course I'm not talking about all clubs, but anyone without something at stake in the deception can tell there are a lot of clubs, including some big, long-term ones, with few humans present.

When I first suggested that clubs were using bots people found it a curious possibility or a ridiculous suggestion. The resistance is much less these days because anyone without a stake in denying the obvious has seen them by now.

What's your stake?

Here's where I first suggested that bots were being used for *conversation* at clubs. Note that at the time people found the behavior I described weird, but now it's considered normal.

/327/b6/231809/1.html

And the quality of conversation I've described recently is far worse than I experienced that night two years ago.

Some would have me believe the real conversation is all private now, as if this behavior was never unusual. Some would have me believe I'm imagining that I used to find actual conversation everywhere.

What is at stake that some people so strenuously deny the obvious?