Monday, 8 February 2010

Blue Mars - New Features on the Horizon

23:11 | Posted by Rock
Today the Avatar Reality Community Director, Glenn Sanders announced the current roadmap for Blue Mars. He said:

Many of our community members have requested new features and improvements to Blue Mars.  We listen closely to your concrete suggestions.  Then we incorporate as many of your ideas as possible and feasible in our roadmap strategy. In addition to suggestions from the community, we are planning a multitude of other enhancements to Blue Mars. Here's a sneak preview of a few of the items we are planning.

UI Improvements:
  • Expanded Preferences for chat,
  • Enhanced camera movement and controls
  • Improved avatar movement
  • Avatar name will be displayed above the avatar head.
  • Right-click shows Avatar Name and UserID.
  • Move the camera control icon out to the menu tray
Communications:
  • Clickable hyperlinks in the Chat box
  • Select and copiable text in the Chat box
  • IM - instant messaging
Avatar Customization:
  • New, improved avatar meshes
  • Avatar Masks (new face shape and face skin for your avatar)
  • Avatar Physiques (new body and face shape and skin for your avatar)
  • Cloth editor: edit and upload Hair as an item for sale.
  • Avatar tongue model/setup
  • Mask and Physique editor
  • Avatar attachments and animation rigs
  • Animation workflow documentation
  • More sliders for the Face Customization UI
Development Tools:
  • Avatar Editor:
    • Import custom avatar shapes and skins
    • Test the imported mesh with standard animations and clothing
    • Create displacement morphs (compared to the original mesh shape)Create normals for your custom mesh
    • Export your mesh and skin as an item for upload and for sale.
  • Allow JPG to be used for a texture to create items (the editors automatically convert it for you)
Places Browser, Downloads:
  • Crash management for the Places Browser
  • Download Manager for the Places Browser
  • Download Manager with background download, notification, and City version checker
  • Improved download and streaming of some items.
Developer MyPage:
  • Expanded Real Estate Page
  • Expanded dev MyPage with:
    • Billing history
    • Remember login email
    • Commands to manage tenants
  • Expanded Real Estate page:
    • Check files
  • Improved dev SDK installer with AR and NEWCO becoming optional installs
  • Upload Block, shop, and items for sale.
Expanded User Mypage
  • user MyPage with:
    • BLU balance display
    • Enhanced Friends List
    • Messaging
Content, Residences:
  • New City updates with a shops where you can purchase items.
  • Residences, and residence management

Things are looking very good indeed.

Rock