What is the Status of Blue Mars as we enter 2010?

Avatar Reality set up this comparison with their own teaser videos that were far beyond anything they were anywhere close to being able to deliver.

You mean like the SL website where they claim a region supports up to 100 avatars?

AFAIK Avatar Reality have not made a single teaser trailer.

Rock

that.



i don't even believe that those teaser videos were made in/with blue mars on current pc hardware anyways.

pixar or ILM, more likely.

OK, Rock set them up the bomb by posting teasers from other members of the twisty maze of companies surrounding Avatar Reality.

"This building was designed by Roger Dean, how cool is that?"

Get Roger Dean to design some avatars, then I'll be impressed. Or Hayao Miyazaki. Or Michael Whelan. Buildings are the *easy* part. I've seen builds as good as the cover of "Tales from Topographic Oceans" in SL already.

From what I've heard, SL started out all lily-white, and invited in the Pr0n to build the user base.

I'm not saying this was a a bad decision...far from it. It's a simple fact that Sex drives ALL the new technologies. The porn industry is always on the bleeding edge of the new. It was Porn that turned the internet from a text-based messaging system for academics into the graphics powerhouse it is today. It was Porn that won the day for Blu-Ray. When it threw its weight behind that format, it killed off HD-DVD.

Sex will also determine the success or failure of virtual worlds. Any VR that does not allow sex is going to be a backwater, a curiosity.

Blue Mars is taking the High Road, but it is a road to failure, ignoring a basic fact of human nature.

My bad, the trailer I'm thinking of was made by one of their partners, Virtual Space Entertainment.

"Virtual Space Entertainment" made the teaser trailer, and the Venice demo region in Blue Mars

http://www.virtualspaceentertainment.com/


If you read their staff bio's they are game and hollywood graphics artists and designers.

The June 2009 teaser trailer has about 25% scenes shot in their Venice region. I know that cause I have visited it and it matches whats in the video (you can visit it too if you want)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C89ZL6wjwM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C89ZL6wjwM

The video is a marketing overkill in other respects though, and the current platform is not ready to deliver what they promise in the video. Perhaps late this year it will.

@Lindal - Sex will be available with Blue Mars technology via the backdoor if not the front. That will happen with "private cities" that are not on their servers if they do not directly allow it. They are giving away a complete development kit to anyone that asks, including scripting and animation, so sex beds and all the other fun toys we are used to in SL are certainly possible.

What I expect to happen is clubs that are "legal" by whatever rules Avatar Reality sets will exist in regular Blue Mars cities. In those clubs you can meet people, and via the Flash interface they have added recently, you will be able to click to download the "private city" files, which may be as small as 128 or 256m in size, and have all the fun adult stuff. But instead of getting those files off the Blue Mars servers, you would get it from some other download site, possibly with adult verification and payment.

They opened themselves up to this possibility via handing out the development kit and strong integration with the rest of the internet. I don't see how they can possibly stop it, though they can require people disassociate themselves from the Blue Mars name for adult content.

Not necessarily - there is a large family-friendly, kid-friendly, and religion-friendly market. Separately and together as categories.



If they ever change their mind they should segregate the content from the beginning. (It may already work that way, since each user has a city; I don't know. Perhaps even segregate it further into pr0nny areas.)

Pr0n companies do tend to look for new ways to make money - I recall hearing stories about their looking into virtual reality or interactive computer role play, way before any regular online video games did - not that any of it really took off pardon the pun - but it doesn't mean their technology will be superior or that they will manage the social aspect as well as other companies. Their view often seems a bit limited. Tunnel vision, if you will.

According to a Blue Mars staff comment, the next developer version is due out in about a month. They did not mention a time for the next player client, but usually they come out about the same time. If they want to keep to their announced feature schedule for 2010, they need to release updated versions pretty often, and add significant new features each time.

Their developer wiki is now open for contributions, which will help with the current sorry state of documentation. It's not unusual for software thats 2/3 finished not to have good documentation ready, but its a serious roadblock to new users wanting to learn how to build for Blue Mars.

My own city-in-progress, Tharsis Estates, has now been tested in "Developer Mode". That means other people can download it and visit it while it is under construction (before it goes live on the Blue Mars servers).

I am offering free land there for builders and content creators to try things out, much like an SL sandbox. Eventually I hope some people will want longer term space for residences and business, and will charge rent when it goes live and I have to pay for server hosting, but for now its free, and some part will stay free even once its live, I want to encourage new people.

Pretty pictures at:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blue-mars-discussion/39383-blue-mars-news-items.html#post850977

Blue Mars is NO Second Life: ------> "Unlike Second Life, most of the world’s content won’t be created by users; instead, they’ll license third-party developers, with whom they’ll share revenue from virtual item sales, while also protecting the company from DMCA/content theft complaints (a recurring headache in SL.)"
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Why would anyone in SL be interested in a platform with the above? And why is it even discussed here? Do we care? I place the topic on the same level as surveys, because much of it could even be Blue Mars staff shilling for the place to create publicity.

The diversity and outpouring of creativity...from ANYONE..at anytime..is what makes SL what it is. "Registered developers?" "Pro-level content?" Give me a break. (But I'm sure a few aspiring Blue Mars "pros" in SL will see dollar signs.) A nice cookie cutter suburban trash heap with two classes of people.

Is this what the copy-bot witch-hunters really want? They complained so loudly, that many inexperienced builders now are posting SL blog threads questioning everything and everyone (by name even) they see ("A copybotter, or just simply very talented? I know someone who has built so much in just 2 weeks,,their items pieces have multiple creators listed..could it be ..stolen or copied??!!!"...blah blah blah..you get the picture...and then go on to destroy the reputation and possible SL lives of innocent people by reporting them with the blessings of many on the boards. "You should report them!!!" That's right, get them all banned and let SL sort em out! Sheesh.

If someone is so paranoid and suspicious that they must examine and suspect and report every piece of content and resident for any reason, I would ascertain that person has no SL Life..and that they get one...before SL moves to the same model.

Blue Mars will be as barren as the real planet. I can't imagine anyone (but a greedy Elitist) wanting to go to a platform where not everyone can create unless they're a "registered developer." Sounds too much like RL to me..except sex is prohibited!!

OK..I digress...and I realize my ranting, unorganized ramble will have me in alligators up to my neck. So be it. My asbestos suit is firmly in place.

As bad as the lag is in SL.. as much as many of us including me complain.. this place has changed my life. There is, and will be, nothing else like it, including Blue Mars in the forseable future.

The way LL has been talking recently, with the XStreet changes, and the "Business friendly Mainland" (tm), where there will be "approved" sellers, SL may become just that.
You may stll be able to make stuff, but unless you are a FOL, you won't be able to sell it.

And that, Brenda, may be the day the music dies..and SL along with it. And FAB writing you did on that other thread. Amazing.

I don't know where that quote comes from, but its simply wrong. There is no licensing, its user created content. It's not *anonymous* content, you do have to provide about the same level of info as when you are "payment info on file" in SL (name, address, etc). But the developer kit is free, and if you don't feel like learning a 3D program I'm giving out a prim and texture kit for free so you can build just like you do in SL:

http://sandboxcitymars.blogspot.com/2010/01/blue-mars-builders-kit-available.html


You can do better work with outside 3D software, but then I never learned to make sculpties or animations or good scripts in SL myself.
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It's a direct competitor to SL, with avatars, land, shopping, animations, scripts, and will have all the social features we are used to once the user software is done (its not yet). It has a much more modern core graphics engine, and approaches the issues of lag in a different way that avoids server overload. They have attempted to rein in content theft by not letting anonymous people upload stuff and encrypting content delivered to users.

On the other hand it has higher minimum system requirements, and right now has much much less content overall. Most of the developers over there (like myself), and some of the Blue Mars staff, are coming from Second Life background. If you dont think all of that is interesting, fine, ignore the thread, but I think a lot of people are interested, even if it only prods Linden Lab to upgrade to compete.



Have you even bothered to look at their main page? "Register as a developer for free and start building today." You fill out the form, get a confirmation email, download the developer kit, and start building, if that's what you want to do.
http://www.bluemars.com/

And if there is a demand for it, there *will* be sex, even if Avatar Reality says you cannot have sexually explicit content, since you can build and share blue mars cities privately, off of their servers. I have tested the city sharing with my city-in-devlopment, and it works just fine. So not only do they not have any control over my content, it doesn't even have to cost anything. The recent addition of Adobe Flash to the Blue Mars toolkit also blows a huge content hole into Blue Mars. You can point those links to *anything*. That even includes paying for Blue Mars items with L$ or paypal, and avoiding their 25% cut of BLU$ sales. If I could figure that out, I'm sure other business people will also, and the incentive to save that much on your sales overhead is pretty strong.

What you're providing are a fixed set of shapes you can resize. You can't do cuts, hollows, twists, tapers, turns, or skews.

It's a direct competitor to There.com, and ActiveWorlds, all of which have avatars, land, shopping, animations, scripts, and externally created content.

But you can't take any of the content you bought in BM onto the servers. It'll be like if, in SL, you had to go into an OpenSIM and leave behind your sexgen bed and the rest of the hot content you bought in SL and making out as Ken and Ruth.

Not if you can't transfer that content without paying BLU$.

Great work Daniel!

I Love that kit. Reminds me of the Prim Finder Rezzer, which I always use in SL for building, it just saves so much time not having to do all that twisting, cutting, skewing etc, and you are free to just to be able to choose the prim shape you want and get on with building.

I see that this release is 0.5. Does that mean there will be further releases with more and more shapes being added? The prim finder has hundreds of shapes to choose from, so I guess you will have your work cut-out

http://crystalgadgets.com/gadgets/prim-finder/

Of course, you will be able to add shapes that are simply not possible with the SL tools, and no silly size limits either.

As everyone that I have met in Blue Mars has come from SL they will feel right at home with this kit.

At least the naysayers will not be able to beat that old drum any more that building inside Blue Mars is not possible.

Keep up the good work.

Rock

And in SL you can't officially make prims larger than 10m, have reflections, have one face move independant of the rest, control shadows and view distance per item, overlay a second texture on a single face with independant settings, or use proper bumpmaps. In Blue Mars you can do all that. Every system has limitations, they are just different limitations.

All the prim torturing you listed can be done with most 3D software. I know you are pretty smart, Argent, so I am sure you would have no trouble picking that up. I think what you don't like is having separate software for the user client, arranging the 3D space, and individual object editing. Separating them makes the user interface simpler for people who just want to have fun, and lets me as a creator pick which 3D software I like best, rather than having to use only what is built into the SL edit tools. It also loses the instant feedback of rezzing a prim and seeing how it will look in place. So there are pluses and minuses, and each person will feel differently about whats more important.

I don't claim my kit will do everything for everyone. All I am doing is providing a starter kit to extend what Blue Mars gives in the developer package. It's intended to help people who have not learned a 3D program, or dont have the right graphics program to convert textures, so they have something to build with right away.

@Rock - I have not done sphere, torus, or pyramid based shapes yet, and I would like to add more textures to the 300 or so I have now. Even simple shapes can have a huge number of variations if you try to do every possible combination of X, Y and Z sizes, so I will not try to do that, just get enough basic combinations to get people started, then point them at tutorials for 3D & graphics programs when they want to take the next step and make their own custom shapes and textures.

The other use for these shapes besides basic building is physics proxies. Setting those up in a 3D program is fairly complicated, so an alternate way is to import an item with collision turned off, then take one of these simple shapes, place it where you need the avatar to bump into or stand on it, then set it invisible.

I'm not talking about Blue Mars limitations, I'm talking about your prim set not actually providing the capability you say it has. Your primset does not let you build in world in a way comparable to how you can build in world in SL. It doesn't. It doesn't come anything near it. Not only will it not "do everything for everyone" it's effectively useless as "something to build with right away".

I never claimed it would let you build with all the features you have for prims in SL. It allows you to build simple projects without using a 3D or graphics program. The Blue Mars editors can only create one basic shape, boxes, natively, and they can only have one overall texture when made that way. My set has a variety of other shapes, and they are set up to do one texture per side. When I need to make a wall, or a fireplace log, a box or a cylinder is often good enough, and its convenient if its already there in your inventory list. That's all I claim it can do.

Perhaps I was unclear when I said "build just like you do in SL". What I meant by that is drag an item out of inventory into the 3D environment, position it, and apply textures and some settings like transparency and glow to the various sides. To that extent the steps are the same. When you get into stuff like flexies and sculpties, or the multiple texture maps that Blue Mars can apply, then they diverge.

REALLY simple projects.

Nowhere even NEAR that. It doesn't take much in SL before you start adjusting the parameters in the object tab, and when you do that you're already moving beyond what you can do with any prepackaged shapes. What you have is more primitive than even the "old prims", let alone what you can do with a torus or ring.

Speaking of textures, can you even adjust the texture size and scaling on the face of one of these objects independently of another?

If I was feeling cynical I'd call your "prim set" a deliberate propaganda attack on parametric primitives.

Argent, Daniel, why don't you guys discuss this in-world, preferrably on a parcel that is damage enabled, and has room for an audience and a tip jar... we could donate the money to AR, they will need it.

Of course you can. An object has a "model" that defines the 3D shape, and a "material" that defines how to display that shape. This photo and the next two give all the material settings available for one sub-material slot:

http://picasaweb.google.com/danielravennest/BlueMarsTechnical#5427800370803821874


The middle of the first one has Texture Maps > Diffuse, which matches what SL people think of as the texture, and diffuse color is the same as the color tint you find on the SL edit texture tab. The second photo has the tiling modifiers. U and V are the horizontal and vertical scaling. W is the third dimension, so if your texture is mapped on a curved surface that changes how it is projected across the shape.

You can have up to 32 sub-materials per object, though keeping it to 10 or less is recommended for graphics engine performance. Depending how you set up the 3D model, the sub-material slots can be applied to one or more faces or mapped over a group of them. For my simple shapes I made it one slot per face, but for a ferret you might make one slot per ear, torso, tail etc so the texture would be mapped over a number of polygons.

Note the very first item listed is the "shader" which is the code used by the graphics card to render the material. There is a section called shader params, which vary by shader. Leaves, clouds, metal, and glass are all rendered differently, and have custom settings you can use.

And no, I am not attacking parametric prims, in fact I would like Blue Mars to have them. I know there is an Lua script function to spawn objects, but I am not a good enough scripter to know if you can use that to spawn arbitrary shapes and then adjust material settings via a HUD or popup window. It would be cool if you can do that.

My small contribution is to take their editor, which only makes boxes with a single material slot per object, and adds a selection of other shapes with one slot per side. If you say that's useless because you cannot adjust the dimensions, then you are also saying SL megaprims are useless. You can't adjust their dimensions either.