Today saw a new release of both the Blue Mars server and client (version 0.0.5664.4). The first surprising thing about this new client release was the size. At 1.3Gb it is not any bigger than previous versions, despite including two extra cities, GridRock City and Soswaewon Garden. I will attempt to find out how this was achieved and report in an edit to this blog piece.

As part of the server updates one important change is that the registration of new player accounts is now automatic (rather than by the previous manual email notification system) so now when new applicants register, they will get access immediately.

So, what did this new client release include?

Well, there are two new Cities: Gridrock City and Soswaewon Garden. The Blue Mars Tweet said that there would be three, the missing one being Small Islands (maybe disappeared due to global warming?). More on the two new cities later.

As far as the UI is concerned, a number of changes have been made:

Avatar Names over the heads of avatars. It appears that it is the ID that that appears here (take user name, remove spaces, convert to lowercase). If you right click an avatar you get their ID followed by their User name. It would have been more preferable to have the User name over the avatar's head. One Blue Martian was complaining that his Password was over his head!

A Preference option, which allows you to choose the Screen Resolution and Rendering (graphics) Quality.

Several Blue Martians had problems following trying out the Screen Resolution settings. Once they had selected a resolution, and if it was not the right one, they could no longer click on any of the on-screen buttons, not even the Preferences button to change the Resolution back again. This neccessitated edits to the game.cfg file to get things back again, but as they had no idea what the settings for screen height and width  were prior to their experiment with the Preferences, they had to try several trial and error settings.

The Bubble Chat window has had the automatic scrolling and last line visibility problems fixed

Avatar head customization is now available in-world in the Welcome Area. where you can choose the style, shape, ethnicity and hair of your avatar. Unfortunately it is confusingly called Face Customization, when there is also a Face icon that does something completely different (it is more of a cosmetics editor. One of these two functions needs to be renamed, and I would suggest changing Face Customization to Avatar Customization.

The destination jewel that appears when you click the ground is now dark blue instead of light blue (why?)

The two new cities posed something of a problem for me:

In the Soswaewon Garden I found that moving outside of a very small area was just about impossible. Clicking the ground ahead had no effect outside of this area, and steep slopes hemmed you in on several sides, as did undergrowth. I must try harder.


In Gridrock City  I was lagged out completely. My fps fell from 18fps in the Welcome Area, and 15fps in Venezia, to 1.5fps or less in Gridrock City in several areas. Others did not have similar problems, so I guess it is down to my PC specs.




The last noticeable thing about the UI is the Log-Off screen, which now has a Twitter link and recent Twitter posts. Unfortunately you cannot click on the 'Yes' button to confirm your log-out until the Twitter has completed its retrieval, which meant I had to wait a further minute before I could confirm my log-out. It would be much better for the Yes/No buttons to be immeditaely available, and not have to wait until the Twitter posts are retrieved.

I thought I would share a little about what I am doing in Blue Mars.

My City is based on the Valles Marineris, that huge gash across the face of Mars.















Following the terraforming of Mars the Valles Marineris would be completely submerged, being a massive depression. Close up images of the VM from orbiting probes show that the terrain is very similar to a natural feature we have on earth, the Grand Canyon.















It was quite easy to get the heightfield data for the Grand Canyon from the US Geological Survey, and import that into the Blue Mars Sandbox to form my terrain. I then set the sea height so that the highest part of the plateaus surrounding the canyons were about 15m beneath the sea level, so there are some shallows, but also some gorges which are 150m below sea-level.

Into the cliff faces of the canyons and gorges are being built Volexes, these are caves, tunnels, caverns etc that can be built directly into the terrain. Some of the caves have a way in and a way out, some go for miles then result in a dead-end, and in some of the caves there is some company!

The idea behind this City is that it will be an attraction for those who like adventure both on the surface of the sea, and beneath it.

The build will consist of four blocks, each a mini-city, rising from the sea-bed on huge towers that will have marinas at sea-level, underwater viewing galleries, and glass-domed elevators riding in the flutes of the tower's column. Residencies will be at various heights up the column, each served by its own private elevator, and the main part of the city will be at the top level, where stores and entertainment venues will be present. The elevators also go all the way down to the ocean floor, opening into domed airlocks, where a resident can enter his submersible, open the external locks to flood the dome, then ride out to explore the canyons of the Valles Marineris.

The marinas will have all manner of craft, from tall sailing ships, to schooners, yachts, power boats, and jet-skis, some old-world, some futuristic. We are also looking into programming the sea, to give various wave heights, including storm and typhoon systems (that really will sink your boat if you get in the way of them).

The Valles Marineris is almost entirely Ocean, with just a few scattered islands. The names of the mini-cities give the clue to their actual location within the VM, i.e. Tithonium, Melas, Ophir and Eos, and we do plan in a later release to include maps.

Here is some work-in-progress on the first city, Eos:

















There is an underwater viewing gallery to enjoy the incredible sea-life, and below that the domed airlocks where the submersibles will be moored, while at the surface is the beginnings of the marina. Elevators take you up the central tower to the apartment levels, while at the top will be the main city, with its stores and entertainment venues.

The entire structure is about 200m in height, and the total navigable sea area is 64sq kms.

Anyone interested in leasing one of the other 3 blocks to develop an oceanic city, just let me know.

Rock

All-in-one multiplatform development solution now available for licensees

Frankfurt a. M. (Germany), October 14th 2009 - Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) is excited to announce that their latest all-in-one development solution CryENGINE 3 is now available for all developers. CryENGINE 3 is the first game development platform for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, MMO, DX9/DX10 that also is truly Next-Gen-Ready - with scalable computation and graphics for all major upcoming platforms. It provides the complete game engine to create AAA quality next generation games, and includes the redesigned CryENGINE 3 Sandbox™ level editor, a production-proven, 3rd generation “What you see is what you play” (WYSIWYP) - tool designed by and for professional developers.

CryENGINE 3 also introduces CryENGINE 3 Live Create™. It allows developers to work with a single editor, but see and play the results in real-time on PC, PS3 and Xbox360, hooked up to a single dev PC.  The engine takes care of the conversion and optimization of assets in real-time; enables instant, cross-platform changes to any part of game creation and as a result materially increases the speed, quality and significantly reduces the risk of multiplatform development.

“With CryENGINE 3 we are releasing the best development solution available today and tomorrow. With its scalable graphics and computation it is next-gen ready and with new features like CryENGINE 3 Live Create the best choice for game developers and companies developing serious games applications alike. It is the only game engine solution that enables real-time development and can ensure teams are able to maximise their own creativity, save budget and create greater gaming experiences.” said  Cevat Yerli, CEO & President of Crytek.

“We’re delighted to launch CryENGINE 3 and we look forward to seeing what developers achieve with our all-new technology. CryENGINE 3 isn’t just about providing our trademark highest-quality graphics and our out of the box AI and physics for the first time on consoles – it also delivers real benefits to all disciplines in games development.  Programmers will create awesome new effects and gameplay; art, design and audio teams can play as they create with the fastest, entirely real-time WYSIWYP pipeline ever, materially reducing development time and risk – even producers, project managers and suits will love CryENGINE 3!  Of course, our international team of more than 20 dedicated support staff are available right now to help our licensees make the most of CryENGINE 3; at their studio or at one of our support centres around the world.” added Carl Jones, Director of Business Development CryENGINE.

CryENGINE® is the underlying technology for Crytek’s critically acclaimed games Far Cry, Crysis, Crysis Warhead and NC Soft’s recently released MMORPG blockbuster AION. It has already been licensed to a number of major game companies around the globe, including several recent serious games training and simulation projects.  CryENGINE®3 is the underlying technology for the highly anticipated Crysis®2.


About Crytek GmbH
Crytek GmbH ("Crytek") is one of the world’s leading independent development studios for interactive entertainment with its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and additional studios in Kiev (Ukraine), Budapest (Hungary), Sofia (Bulgaria), Seoul (South Korea) and Nottingham (UK).Crytek is dedicated to creating exceptionally high quality video games for the PC and next-generation consoles, powered by their proprietary cutting edge 3D-Game-Technology CryENGINE®. Since its foundation in 1999, Crytek created the multi-award winning PC titles Far Cry®, Crysis®, awarded best PC Game of E3 2007 and Best Technology at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards and Crysis Warhead®, awarded Best Graphics Technology at IGN Best of 2008 Awards.

Crytek, Crysis, Crysis Warhead and CryENGINE are registered trademarks or trademarks of Crytek GmbH in the USA, Germany and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Second Life
A defining moment for me while I was a resident of Second Life, came with my first public event, after acquiring my first Class 5 sim. The sim was a rental sim, named Hoini, themed on the 1001 Arabian Nights, and one of my  tenants had asked if she could have a marrriage ceremony/party in the sim. I agreed, and she and her partner made their plans, and drew up their guest list.

On the arranged day, at the arranged time, the guests started to arrive. When we got to around 10 avatars in the sim, I started to notice some lag creeping into avatar movements. This got progressively worse as more guests arrived, and when we arrived at 20 avatars in the sim it was like wading in mud. At 30 avatars, movement was impossible, and we never got to 40, as the sim crashed. Of course, this ruined the day for the happy couple and their guests.

I must admit, I had been a little naive. The Second Life website had said (and it still says today), that a full private island region had a concurrent avatar limit of 100. I thought the guest list of 50 would be handled without any problem.

OpenSim
I also saw in today's Opensim-dev mailing list all the excitement caused by a test in which over 50 avatars managed to get into a single region:

In case you are missing all the excitement, this morning we were able to pile 52 people-driven avies in OSGrid's Wright Plaza under 600M of RAM, and after that sim had been up for 10 hours, with a previous peak presence of 36. This sim is running on average hardware, nothing fancy. It eventually crashed, likely due to an overly conservative lock still present somewhere. But I think we just turned an important corner on the way to 1.0

They did not report if avatar movements were laggy as a result of this load test, but nonetheless, it is an important milestone. If they can fix the cause of the crash, all the better.


Blue Mars
What first really caught my eye (apart from the amazing graphics) of Blue Mars, was the claim from Avatar Reality that a single city could support thousands of avatars. This claim was backed up by Richard Childers of VSE who witnessed load tests there, who said:

We did load tests inside Blue Mars in the Avatar Reality labs, and getting 10,000 avatars into a single city was just awesome. It was impressive stuff.

Concurrency has always been a hot topic in Virtual Worlds, so how does Blue Mars succeed where others have failed? The answer is in the way that data is presented to the client (the viewer). In Second Life and OpenSim all the data concerning the current scene (and beyond), i.e. the terrain, the objects, the avatars, and all their textures, etc. are held on central servers and is streamed to the client.

In Blue Mars almost all the scene data is stored on the hard-drive of the user, and so does not need to be streamed. Only dynamic data (vehicle movements, new objects being introduced, and things like avatar movements) need to be streamed. This allows their servers to deliver streamed data for several thousand avatars, concurrently, in one City.

In fact, Glenn Sanders, Community Director for Avatar Reality, enthused that due to some re-engineering work by one of their intrepid developers, the actual number of avatars that they thought could be streamed had been seriously underestimated!

Implications
Of course, the greatest implication is for City and Block developers in Blue Mars who wish to develop venues such as crowded nightclubs, concert halls, sports stadiums, convention and conference centres, and all manner of attractions that could attract a large spectator base.

And Next
Blue Mars have instigated a whole series of Meet and Greet gatherings (I reported on the 1st of these previously), on a weekly basis, to continue these get-to-know-you sessions, and double as load tests (using real avatars rather than the ai test bots during lab testing) to thoroughly test the concurrency figures.

I shall report the results as they come in.

Rock

Back in mid-September one of the Blue Mars beta testers, Marlii, creator of the excellent The Martian Mouthpiece website, had this idea:

Since there's a growing number of us around consistently, why don't we have a weekly meet and greet in-world? I'm thinking that we meet in different cities (like the seats in Shade City, different spots in Venezia, the hotel pool in Beach City, etc.) and someone could set up a streaming "playlist" (maybe an IMEEM playlist or something) that we can all listen to. It would be a cool way to meet the other colonists, explore the cities, and chit chat about stuff we talk about on the boards. How about it?

The suggestion was met with great enthusiasm by the rest of the beta testers, and would also serve as a real load-test on a single City. In a subsequent post in the Blue Mars forum, the date, time and location for the first Meet & Greet was fixed:

Date: October 4th, 2009
Time: 8pm GMT
Location: Shade City World Center

The Meet & Greet was a great success, and I managed to meet many people I had only see post in the forums. At one point, in the seafront lounge area we had 42 avatars within my draw-range (of 20m currently in Blue Mars). We even had a member of the Avatar Reality Team, Tiffany, aka Summer Studio, show up, doing a sterling job of welcoming everyone and keeping the conversations going.

I managed to either friend or chat with:

• Briarmelle Quintessa
• GoSpeed Racer
• Doc Holiday
• Phantium Longwell
• Ubik Rayna
• Chris Remspecher
• Dawny Cinquetti
• peruka
• Dazz Anvil
• Zetsumei Ieyashi
• Taarna Welles Taarna Welles
• Summer Studio
• Cadae Jewell
• Insomnia Sleepless
• Esprite Xavier
• Trayben Allegro
• Veron Helstein
• Reginald Beck
• Azure Sweetwater
• Hendrick Schroeder
• Atashi Yue
  

Two names there, peruka and Taarna Welles Taarna Welles, show that you can have just one name in Blue Mars, or even four!

My fps dipped down to 3fps at peak, which is not bad considering I have an aged Pentium 4, others were quoting 50fps! But come Christmas.... :)

I hope Avatar Reality can now check their logs and give us the peak concurrency figure. It should be interesting.

Tiffany Nahinu is the latest recruit to the Avatar Reality Community team.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, and if you are not from Hawaii, can you say how you ended up there.

TN: I was born and raised on Oahu and was pulled in to the concepts of virtual online world creation earlier this year. I just find working for Avatar Reality to be an amazing opportunity! ... And in the next beta update I’ll probably change the way my avatar looks so I’ll keep ya posted on that.

Q: As one of the latest recruits to the Blue Mars team, can you tell me how all that came about?

TN: One name. Glenn Sanders. He stood at the welcome portal greeting everyone… but I was engaged in another conversation with a few other avatars about computer specs. We had been chit-chatting about how we first heard about Blue Mars and I mentioned my involvement with a summer school class at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. The summer school class is a long story, but cutting to the chase, I had mentioned a few names and I guess Glenn followed up on that lead. A couple of days later I get an email from him asking if I’d like to work for Avatar Reality!

Q: What is your job title, and what responsibilities have you been given?

TN: (lol) yeah, they had to make something up for me . . . Community Development Associate. My responsibilities are to assist Glenn in monitoring the Blue Mars Client Forum, Facebook page, Blue Mars Blog and do in-world Q&A. It’s a part time gig that I’m really stoked about! Glenn is pretty much GLUED to answering questions, taking phone calls (sometimes skyping 3 people at once), relaying information to and from everyone within the company . . . my presence within AR makes it a little easier for Glenn to focus on the top priority issues (and it’s a growing list!)

Q: What did you know about Blue Mars before joining them?

TN: Jim Sink came to the School of Architecture at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in early February this year to talk about Blue Mars and Avatar Reality. That was where I was first learned about them . . . So up until that fateful day in February, I hadn’t heard of them at all.

Q: What is the working environment like at Avatar Reality? (mad/businesslike; relaxed/frenetic; smooth/chaotic; needs more women, the sandwiches could be better, etc)

TN: I’ve got to be honest with you - the office is very casual and I’m only there one day a week. I’d like to think there’s chaos but I’ve only been working for them about two weeks. The office is conscientious about their energy consumption and runs some pretty cool task lights . . .


Q: What strengths do you think you will bring to your position?

TN: Mediation hopefully! Because of my involvement with that summer school class mentioned earlier, I can definitely relate to the developers who are creating content. You’re probably going to be reading about this later in a press release . . . but I was auditing the summer school class whose main project was to replicate the Soswaewon Garden in South Korea. I worked with the instructor Kris Palagi and the students to import their models and specific data to the Blue Mars version of the Sandbox 2 Editor. So I have firsthand experience with working with all the tools and necessary plug-ins. . . my weapon of choice happens to be 3d Studio Max 9 and 2010 when it comes to modeling.

Q: Do you go in world much? (and if so, when, and what do you do?)

TN: I try to be in-world at least an hour a day to meet and greet people, answer basic questions, answer not so basic questions. Some days it’s really packed and on others it’s slow.

Q: Have you been a resident of any other Virtual Worlds before coming to Blue Mars?

TN: If you count the 34 minutes and some odd seconds I was in Second Life . . . yes.

Q: You have probably seen a lot of wish lists presented in the Blue Mars forums. If you could wave a magic wand, which are the top three wishes would you grant?

TN: The top three wishes huh? . . .

1. Chat bubbles organized NUMERO UNO!!
2. Pet bots or companion bots
3. Free health-care! … wait … wrong world, ummm, I would give people the option to continuously run around or jump extremely far. (Mass transit systems have to be made by City Developers)

Q: Do you go with the comments in the forum that Blue (boy) Mars (war) and the Blue Mars symbol (male) are way too masculine, and might put off some females from joining?

TN: No, and I think it’s hilarious.

Q: When Glenn is out to lunch, go to his desk, third drawer down on the right, that Memo concerning the next client release date: what does it say?

TN: I would but Glenn doesn’t have any filing cabinets! He’s a digital dude. LOL!

Q: Are there any plans to merge the developer and player forums?

TN: No, because they need to remain separate so members don’t have to wade through technical posts, and dev’s don’t have to wade thru posts about how masculine the Blue Mars logo is …

Q: What is the largest number of concurrent avatars that have been seen in any one City in Blue mars so far in the beta?

TN: I’m not privy to that information.

Q: Tell me three things about Blue Mars I probably don't know?

TN:

1. If you have a dedicated number pad on your keyboard and you tap the 1 key near water in the New Venice world, these random blue balls emerge out of nowhere and bounce all over the place. No one else can see them (except you) and the blue balls go away when you exit from New Venice. Fun right?
2. REALLY good mentors (volunteers) will be able to live in a GORGEOUS 4 story house in beach city (after it’s all been set up of course)
3. . . . . that’s all I can divulge for the moment Rock

Thanks Tiffany

Rock

A native of Montreal, Canada, Corey Evans is foremost a father and husband. His passion for 3d games and virtual worlds began to take shape in Second Life where he had his own business. He is expanding his 3d content and hosting services into Blue Mars in the form of 'GridRock City' a virtual environment for creative people to collaborate on virtual world / casual gaming experiences.

Q: How long have you been involved in virtual worlds, Corey?
CE: Well I started out in Second Life where I had a business selling sculpted prims. While I was in Second Life I met some amazing, creative people, and one of those, Gypsy Paz teamed up with me to explore a concept we had for the emerging Opensim. We ran our own Opensim, which we called Gridrock (derived partly from my name reversed, yeroc > yroc > Gridrock). However, problems with the lack of currency support in Opensim, and concerns over the Hypergrid, led us to look for alternatives. At one point we looked at the Exit Reality VRML plug-in, which you could say was phase 2 of Gridrock.

Another amazing person I came across was Romsey Homewood, and we collaborated together on a sci-fi project called Nebula West, which was exhibited in the Second Life 6th Anniversary celebrations.




All along I had been evaluating other virtual world platforms, such as Vast Parks, until finally, around April 2009, I heard about Blue Mars via a Google search for virtual worlds, and reading more about it in an SLU forum post. I signed up for the City Developer program, downloaded the City Editor and loaded up Taki. That was the defining moment for me. I had always been a fan of Crysis, but Taki demonstrated that the leap from gaming engine to virtual world engine was indeed possible, and the CryEngine2 was probably the best gaming engine out there.

Gypsy was heading in another direction at this time, so along with Romsey I teamed up with Luna Bliss, another SL resident who has a garden business there, and who mentored me in my early days in SL, and we started to plan Gridrock City on the Blue Mars platform. Luna now takes care of the business side of Gridrock City and is also our City designer.

We also have a fourth member of our team, Iain, who you may know from his alphaklata-marsdev Blue Mars blog, who concentrates on the architectural aspects of Gridrock City.

Q: So what kind of City will Gridrock City be?
CE: Well at first I toyed with the idea of being normal, corporate, but someone introduced me to the story of Nikola Tesla. This hidden genius, this truly great man, standing behind the curtains while others such as Marconi and Edison stole the limelight. This story gave me inspiration for the theme for Gridrock City.

The City will have four Blocks, which will be divided into Guilds. Each Guild will be dedicated to a particular craft, and the Tailors' Guild will be the first, headed by a Guild Steward, and Romsey will fill that first role. Other Guilds are yet to be finalised, but an Authors' Guild is likely. Each Guild Steward will have shared ownership of the Block, and will champion that particular Guild skill.

Q: What is the future Schedule for Gridrock City?
CE: Well I hope to get Gridrock City included in the next major build of the Blue Mars client, and I hope to have Block developers included in that build.

Good luck, and thanks very much Corey.
CE: You're welcome.

Further information on Gridrock City, and a teaser trailer, is available on the official website.

Rock

The folks over at Opensim have been developing their code for more than two years now (it will be in its third year in January 2010), and it is still very much in the alpha software phase.

One of the reasons for this lengthy alpha phase is due in no small part to all the extra work in creating cross-platform code (Opensim is available in Windows and Linux versions, and can be run on Macs using the Mono package for OS X)

Unfortunately, further delays are likely due to ongoing problems with Mono. One of the core developers at Opensim, Melanie, made this post in the Opensim Developers Mailing List:

after discovering a bug in the 2.0.1 version of mono, which causes frequent crashing of regions, we have taken the step to bump the minimum required mono version to 2.4.2+.

This has become necessary because the bug is rather difficult to isolate and therefore impossible to work around reliably.

We do understand that this may cause difficulties for some people, who have been relying on packaged binary versions of Mono. Version 2.4.2 is recent enough to have no binary packages, so it will be necessary to build Mono from source. However, we feel it is unavoidable at this time, as we can't recommend or endorse a Mono version that we know to contain a showstopper bug.

On the upside, 2.4.2 has much better performance and stability, compared to 2.0.1.

However, Nebadon Izumi, who operates the OSGrid, the largest Opensim grid, had this to say in response:

I hate to say this, but there is absolutly no safe or stable version of mono from my perspective, it doesnt matter what version of mono OSgrid is running, our plazas are crashing all day long, we are lucky to get 30 minutes in a region that has people in it.. for well over a month now our Speedbuilds and Primwords games on Sunday and our Tuesday Meetings have been absolutely terrible. I honestly dont think it matters what version of mono your running, they are all quite terrible in terms of providing any kind of stability or performance. So i have to -1 this bump theory, I dont think its valid honestly. Can you be more specfic about the bug and why you dont think its present in later versions of mono? and maybe you can explain why our Windows based regions can run for weeks at a time, while our Mono plazas cant even seem to run a full hour?

So for now it appears that the Linux version of Opensim has gone off the MonoRails, let's hope it gets back on track before too long.

Rock

Full thread here (Mono Minimum Version Bump, 28th Sept 2009)

A new patch has been issued for Blue Mars, 4910.5, which adds a floor and trees for the welcome area, and fixes a bug so new clothes are now displayed in the female avatar inventory, plus other bug fixes. There are also butterflies flying around now too, which gave me an idea for a bit of mischief, as the caption picture shows :)

A new Blue Mars platform and developer tools are being finalised right now, and Blue Martians are being advised to watch the Blue Mars Online website and keep an eye on the Blue Mars Twitter for the release date, which could be this week!

We also had some further clarifications this week from Glenn Sanders, on the BM Vision:

Cities will be places where the City dev set the overall design, then they lease space to a Block dev.

Block devs will lease space from City devs. Then the Block devs will lease space to shops, residences for members, gateways to game devs, buildings to clubs, gardens, museums, theatres for screening movies (making sure they have the rights to share the movie content), auditoriums for live or recorded music concerts, etc. Game levels will be a separate ‘instance’ from the City level. But a city could provide a portal to a game.

Here are some projects underway or being planned, based on discussions with developers in-world and via email, forums, chat, etc:

• Numerous themed cities, ranging from historic regions hundreds of years old, to cities set 1000 years in the future.
• Several types of racing games.
• Exhibits based on real life tombs, museums, historic cities.
• Interactive art exhibits.
• Various types of vehicles.
• Clothing of all sorts.
• Avatar skins.
• Avatar hair.
• Avatar shapes.
• A.I. bots for shops, tour guides, FAQs, and more.
• Houses, apartments, condominiums, hotels.
• Themed environments designed to provide a unique experience or mood.
• A building set on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars.
• A building made from clouds.
• An underwater building with a sea life attraction.
• Numerous avatar animations and interactions.
• Various local and international school projects.
• Simulations and lessons that will bring together students from several nations.

Are you starting to get the picture?

This, this is what we want to create… a platform and tool set that the developer and member communities want. One that will enable amazing projects that just aren’t possible today.

And to do so securely, with scalability and great visual fidelity, now and into the future.

I hope to get an interview with one these City Devs in the next few days.

Rock

I thought I would put a little collection of snippets from conversations and forum posts from Avatar Reality staff members together to get an idea of the planned features that are currently in the works.

Welcome Area
The welcome area/staging area/destination island (no fixed name as yet) needs to be improved, and Glenn Sanders has indicated that some improvements are in the pipeline, with a floor (instead of walking on the surface of a sea) and trees. Glenn also mentioned that some devs were building candidates for the welcome area. I can say a little more about this, as I am one of the devs involved.

We are currently building an Acclimatisation Facility comprising a huge tower, with corridors leading off of three levels to hubs. Each hub is in a different language, and the information presented on video screens will start with the basics of movement, camera use, making friends, chatting and IMs, then moving on to more advanced topics such as building, creating clothing and hair, scripting etc. The Facility is being built on a replica of Phobos, the first moon of Mars, with the ability to let visitors leave the Facility in moon buggies and explore the surface of Phobos, driving in and out of the craters, including the famous Stickney Crater. The sky will show Mars going through various phases of terraforming, from 0% to 100% over the course of a day.

Platform-related
Glenn Sanders wrote (22 Sep 2009):

Based on what you and the rest of the community has been asking for, we are prioritizing:

• Display of many kinds of media, including streaming
• Voice
• Access control
• We have heard from many people that they want cameras restricted for privacy and business.
• Instant messaging
• Avatar names
• Friends list
• Improved UI. There likely will be a consistent UI throughout Blue Mars, unless a City dev wants to override it for a game, or specific design reason

I hope any camera restrictions will not be platform wide. It would be much more preferable to let the City developers have control over any camera restrictions, as I can think of many city developments (especially non-residential cities, where privacy is not an issue) where unrestricted cameras would be a huge benefit, such as in exhibition cities, where the ability to fly your camera quickly over all the exhibition areas for a quick check-out before deciding which areas are of the most interest.

I do hope they test avatar names over the head first. I am concerned that in crowded venues such as concerts, the mass of avatar names would look awful and really detract from the atmosphere.

If it does look awful under test when they put several hundred avatars in close proximity, then I would suggest having the avatar name over a head appear only briefly (say 10 seconds) when someone appears in a scene for the first time, and their name can be found again by either a mouse roll-over of the avatar, or on right-click.

Concurrency
Glenn Sanders wrote (22 Sep 2009):

The concurrency is definitely there. We are doing tests that exceed what we originally claimed for concurrency/ 98% of rendering and data handling is done locally. Our server just streams a minimal set of data about the position of avatars and moveable objects. The rest is done on your pc. So we can handle many concurrent users without lag.

I would still like to know the current peak concurrency that has been seen within any city since the open beta began, under 'real' conditions (i.e. real accounts rather than bot tests).

Currency
Tiffany Nahinu wrote (22 Sep 2009):

The exchange rate between the Blue Mars Currency (during the closed beta this currency was called the BLU) and US dollars is still a work in progress.

Chat Bubbles
Tiffany Nahinu wrote (22 Sep 2009):

Chat bubbles, yes, being worked on definitely.

I hope they are not just tinkering with the colours or transparency. Chat bubbles need to be confined to the annals of Blue Mars folklore.

Rock

If you need to check your current Frames per Second, or which version of DirectX your card is using, or your current location, etc you need to enable your Statistics.

Go to your Blue Mars, Game, Config folder, on most machines this will be at C:\Program Files\Blue Mars\Game\Config, and in there create a blank text file. Inside the text file type the single command:

r_displayinfo = 1

Then rename the text file to system.cfg

Restart your Blue Mars client, and your statistics will be available to you. To inhibit the statistics just rename your system.cfg file to system.cfg.off you can always rename it back easily then whenever you need the info again.

So what information is provided?

First Line
CamPos: The current camera position in terms of X, Y and Z (height). If you want the current avatar position then use the camera control to get you into 1st person view first.
Angl=: Gives the orientation in X, Y, Z, of the camera.
ZN: Near Depth of Field Distance.
ZF: Far Depth of Field Distance.

Second Line
This line starts off with the current version of DirectX your graphics card is using, and whether you are operating in 32 bit or 64 bit mode.
HDR: High Dynamic Range lighting is enabled.
FSAA: Full Screen Anti-Aliasing is enabled.
Build: The current build of the Client.
Level: The name of the Level, or City that you are in.

Third Line
Tris: The number of triangles currently being rendered.
DP: The DrawPoints being processed, should be <= 3000.

Fourth Line
FPS: The average Frames per Second (higher the better). The figures in the parentheses after the FPS value is the Min and Max values.

Fifth Line
Mem: Amount of RAM the Blue Mars client is using.
LuaMem: Amount of RAM that running scripts are using.
Dlights: Number of Dynamic Lights currently rendered.

Rock

Kevin Alderman, aka Stroker Serpentine in Second Life, maker of the popular Sexgen Beds, and Shannon Grei, an individual who creates and sells clothing under the name Munchflower Zaius and the business name "Nomine" in Second Life, have begun a Class Action against Linden Research Inc., the owners of Second Life, for permitting the infringement of the Plaintiff's intellectual property rights, trademarks and copyrights, by providing to its residents the tools necessary for copying their products.

However, proving that LL are liable may not be so easy, given the Safe-Harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which protects the providers of on-line services from litigation providing they remove offending content once they have been notified of it. The recent Veoh decision is a case in point. However the DMCA does not afford protection against claims of trademark infringement.

This will be a very interesting case to follow.

The full court papers are on the SecondLifeHerald website.

Rock

Blue Mars has in-built Artifical Intelligence (AI, for creating a range of bots), and the demo AI system currently employed in Beach City is called the AI Chatbot.

Details on the Chatbot, who Blue Mars have termed their exclusive resident 'Suzette', can be found on the Blue Mars wiki.

Upon entering Beach City yesterday I was subjected to the attentions of 12 of these Chatbots, who called themselves the 'Suzettes', and announced that I was a Rock Star and that they were going to cheer me for the next five minutes. During that time I was 'treated' to cries of 'Oh, isn't he handsome', 'I 3> you', 'Wow', 'Woo-hoo', 'Oh my', 'Oh look', and with the bots variously sitting on my table, jumping up and down and clapping in delight.



This behaviour has already incurred the displeasure of one Blue Mars beta tester, Ryan Schultz, who started a thread on the subject in the Blue Mars Beta forums, entitled 'Sexist Stereotypes in Blue Mars'.

So, apart from 'portraying women as simpering, primping bimbos', what can bots be usefully employed for? According to the wiki:-

1. entertainment - engaging in conversation with a user
2. assistance – providing useful information to a user
3. education – teaching material to a user
4. propaganda – delivering advertising to a user
5. sales – virtual sales assistance to a user

The Chatbox technology is one of the most advanced systems available today. It can parse user input and/or perform keyword matching against it. This input is matched against relevant topic scripts to decide how to respond. The response can intermix text speech output with control over the avatar body's actions.

The chatbot not only carries on a current conversation with you, but it stores information about you across chats, so it can sustain a relationship lasting from first encounter through to the current interaction. This same ability allows the chatbot to act as your replacement when you are off-line.

The Chatbot can carry on conversations across several hundred topics. A topic for the chatbot is a script written in CHAT-L that lets the chatbot react to questions or statements in a subject area, as well as allowing it to volunteer information on its own. Topics are independent and allow you to organize your information and responses in whatever way seems natural and convenient to you. The script of a topic can be created using a simple text editor.

Beta testers can currently test the Chatbot system by having a Chat with a bot on one of two servers, at http://66.192.217.122/chat/ and http://66.150.245.139/chat/

Developers who wish to customise a bot for their own server are provided with a how-to, but the debugging section is still to be completed.

Rock

In a recent interview with Tateru Nino on the Massively website, Jim Sink, CEO of Avatar Reality, the company behind Blue Mars, had this to say on the subject of Adult content:

We don't allow securities markets, banking services, content that depicts minors or apparent minors engaged in sexual activity, or content that depicts torture.

Regarding Mature and Adult content, it certainly is a hot-button issue. As such, we're moving very carefully. Before we conclude how to proceed with mature content, we need to see how our community develops and to think carefully about how we balance the issues at hand. For now, we don't allow "mature and adult" content.

Blue Mars have only explicity excluded ageplay and torture, and we can expect those exclusions to be in the TOS.

However, on the general subject of adult or mature content, Blue Mars needs to assess the demand for this kind of content. This is what Second Life had to say about the amount of Adult content on their platform:

Based on our research, we estimate that around 2-4% of content on the mainland would be considered Adult according to our current thinking on defining that. For all of Second Life, our content research shows it is around 5%. In other words, 95% of Second Life either mature or PG.

So, should Blue Mars dispense with Adult content and keep BM family-friendly, and let those that want it hang out in SL?

There is also the problem of screening. How do you prevent a teen or pre-teen from visiting Blue Mars cities that have adult content. Should the screening be done by Avatar Reality or by the City developer? Screening has been an ongoing problem in Second Life, and is still far from foolproof.

Then Blue Mars has to think about the effect of Adult content on their major educational and scientific players. How would the Smithsonian and National Geographic and the the various schools projects feel about sharing space with the BDSM community? Can Blue Mars afford the kind of bad publicity that dogged Second Life?

And what about Mature content? Should residents of Blue Mars be banned from engaging in sexual activity within their own virtual homes? Should Blue Mars allow activity that is legal in real life and only ban that sort of activity that is illegal in real life? That sounds like a nice compromise, but then the subject of jurisdiction crops up. Illegal 'where' exactly? What is legal in one State in the US may be illegal in another (brothels in Nevada versus brothels in Salt lake City, for example), there are different ages of consent in different States too. And to what extent should Avatar Reality take into account the various laws in countries around the world where they expect many of their residents to come from?

This is a huge minefield, and I am not surprised that they are taking the cautious approach.

Rock

Richard Childers, Virtual Space Entertainment founding Chief Executive, and now Executive Vice President, and Chief Creative Officer was cornered in Blue Mars earlier today, and agreed to an interview.

Inspired by Neal Stephenson's third novel, Snowcrash, and following a meeting with Henk Rogers, Richard and Henk decided that the future of Virtual Worlds was predicated on the new breed of high-definition engines, such as the CryEngine, which they had seen at the Game Developer's Conference in 2006, demonstrated by CryTek of Germany. The rest, as they say, is history, with Henk going on to form Avatar Reality and Richard forming Virtual Space Entertainment (VSE).

Originally VSE looked at forming an alliance with Sony, but eventually decided (lucky for us) to go with Avatar Reality and CryTek's CryEngine.

What was it about the CryEngine that really clinched it for you?
RC: It was the huge leap in High-Definition graphics that the CryEngine brought. Nothing had been seen remotely like it. We did load tests inside Blue Mars in the Avatar Reality labs, and getting 10,000 avatars into a single city was just awesome. It was impressive stuff.

Tell me about New Venice, VSE built that, right?
RC: Right, our own Blue Mars City is New Venice, an 8km x 8km virtual space which is already available to explore. We have also created the Tri-Tower, designed by Syd Mead; a Space Port, which is a space station connected to the surface of New Venice via a space elevator; and a huge underwater city where you can explore in a variety of submarines. All of this is already built, and will be released into New Venice when a regular Blue Mars population is established.

What other plans do you have for New Venice?
RC: We will add a Stadium just outside of New Venice where 100ft tall robotic dogs will race, and on October 19 we hope to launch, for National Geographic, a faithful reconstruction of the Tomb of the First Emperor of China, with its Terracotta Warriors.

So you do work for others too?
RC: Oh yes. We will be doing projects such as the Oceans Project in association with National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institute, due for launch in March of 2010, and an exhibit on human origins exploring early hominids and bio-mechanics.

We will also be creating and launching a Science Center for TERC, a non-profit educational R&D organization based in Cambridge, MA, who themselves are working with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), the National Digital Science Library (NSDL) Resource Center, and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), to create a science learning community.

Other projects include work with Aramco and the Government of Saudi Arabia on virtual science labs.

So, about this wonderful condo in New Venice, I want it!
RC: Ha-ha. You will have to wait a couple of weeks, then we hope to be start renting out our condos. By then we hope Avatar Reality will have its Paypal-based economy in place and working.

When do you expect Avatar Reality to have Blue Mars ready for launch?
RC: Well I think by the 1st of 2010 is a realistic goal to shoot for.

Many thanks Richard
RC: you are welcome.


Rock

Having spent a lot of hours now chatting with the newcomers to Blue Mars since the open-beta started, it became quickly clear that most new players had no idea what beta-testing involved.

Most of the players I met wanted to do just that, play, and were complaining about this feature or that feature not yet being available. Some wanted to set up shop immediately and start making money!

The purpose of beta-testing is to iron out the bugs and provide feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Blue Mars are taking the piecemeal approach, by adding functionality in small, controlled, chunks. The role of the beta testers is to test those new features, and report back any bugs, or make suggestions for further improvement. The BM developers will then iron out the bugs, get the platform stable, then issue an new release, with more functions to be tested, and so on until the end of beta and all planned functionality is present for launch.

For developers, bugs are reported on the Mantis bug tracking system. For players, problems can be reported in the In Game Bugs section, and general feedback in the Feedback section of the Blue Mars Online Beta Forum, and suggestions made in the Suggestions part of the forum.

It would save a lot of reporting and repeated suggestions if the Avatar Reality team published a roadmap of features that they are currently working on, and those they are going to try to implement in the future, so they are not repeatedly asked about avatar movement, camera controls, chat functionality, etc.

Rock

The latest Blue Mars client, released for the launch of the open beta phase, includes several new features for the beta testers to get to grips with.

Chat History
In response to beta tester feedback a new chat history window is provided, with avatar names. It appears from the screenshot that maybe bubble chat can be switched off (thank goodness if that is the case), so I cannot wait to take it for a spin when the doors reopen later today (midnight CET).

Menu Tray
A nifty looking menu tray is now provided, with animated icons, and the camera icon can be moved about. There are 4 cam zoom settings: 3rd person, half body view, head and shouders, and 1st person.

Friends List
You can now offer friendship and a new Friends List shows you which friends are currently online. This is just an interim design, and will be improved upon in a later release.


Other features include a Logout button, a Home * button to take you back to the staging area, and bikinis for the girls! What about the guys??

* Intriguingly, the Blue Mars blog states that the staging area now has 5 boards to choose from! Hope that's not a typo. I wonder what the new City is?

Edit: It is Shader City!! There is also a new apartment to take a look at, and something called a 'fur shader'.

At the Games Developer Conference (GDC) 2009 held in Cologne, Germany, 17th - 19th August, Cevat Yerli, CEO and founder of Crytek, gave a keynote speech, on "The Future of Gaming Graphics'.

The main points of his speech were that he did not expect graphics to get any better than they are right now, until 2012, as advances were geared to Console lifecycles. He did, however, give us a taste of what is coming between now and then, by unveiling the CryEngine 3. Yerli admitted that he had used Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as Crytek's benchmark for the CryEngine 3.

The new engine will form the bedrock of the company's games until 2012. During a demo of a special version of Crysis, built on CryEngine 3, Yerli demonstrated a 7km view distance, 3D volumetric clouds, parallax occlusion mapping and soft particles.

See the Crysis 2 teaser trailer here.

However, not everything was looking rosy for Crytek. Germany's proposed ban on violent Action games prompted Yerli to announce that if the ban was passed by the German Bundestag (Parliament) then he would consider moving his operations to another state.

Rock

The Blue Mars Closed Beta will come to an end at 10:00am HST on the 31st August, and the servers will be shut down in preparation for the Open Beta, which will launch at 12:00pm HST on the 2nd September.

All current Player Accounts will be reset, so current players will need to re-register, via a web registration page (details when I get them). All currency (BLUs) will be reset, and all items purchased will also be reset.

Existing Developer Accounts will not be affected.

A new client release will be available for the launch, including several new goodies, including a whole new UI, avatar names, and maybe even a Friends List.

The countdown has begun....

Rock

Yesterday I had a chance to speak to Jim Sink of Avatar Reality, concerning the planned Public Beta on the 31st August, and other issues.

1. New Venice has recently been added to the cities available during beta. How many cities do you think will be available at the start of the open public beta?

JS: On the first days of the open beta, we’ll probably just have the ones that are available now. We should have a few more available in September. The big new release is the totally revised interface and some additional developer tools.

2. It would be impractical to continue Destination Island with its destination boards, especially when the number of cities starts to rise. What plans does AR have for replacing Destination island?

JS: You’re absolutely right; the destination island won’t scale. The destination island is going to be replaced by a places browser that will allow users to download different cities and eventually monitor events and new content. We’ll be rolling that in over the next few weeks. It works a bit like Steam.

3. How long does AR expect the public beta to last for?

JS: It’s hard to say. It will depend on how fast we can squash bugs and how fast they come up.

4. Is a new client envisaged for the public beta?

JS: Yes. Loads of updates are in works for the client.

5. As many people who will be joining the public beta will be coming simply for a looksee, and bearing in mind the importance of first impressions (as I am sure they will write about their experience in forums and blogs), and as a great many SL residents prize their avatar look above all else, are there any plans to introduce more avatar shapes/hair/clothes to choose from during the public beta, and maybe even some non-human avatars, (demons, dragons, furries, etc, just to show that they are possible)?

JS: We know how important character customization is to many people. The Blue Mars community is already working on some fantastic new fashions using our free Cloth Editor. Later this year, we’ll be introducing a Physique and Mask system to allow developers to create new body shapes and faces for their avatars. We won’t be changing the underlying skeleton at this time to preserve animation compatibility. Speaking of animation, we’ll also be introducing an animation editor later this year for developers who want to create new animations for their avatars.

6. Will commerce be tested during the public beta?

JS: Yes. We’ll be giving away Blue Mars Dollars as a test for people to use to purchase content and rent residences. When we officially launch the currency after we are satisfied with the test, we will reset the currency accounts and launch the online purchase process.

7. Mac users are crying. However, BM can be used on a Mac machine if it ran an emulator such as Bootcamp. Does AR plan to actively support a bridge (such as Bootcamp)?

JS: Blue Mars already works through Boot Camp. Technically, you can even run Blue Mars through an emulator like Parallels but the performance is very slow. We’re anxious to support a OSX client but Crytek hasn’t offered a Cryengine license for the Mac. Until there is a decent install base of Macs with dedicated 3D hardware, it’s unlikely that they will make the investment to port the engine.

8. Can cities be zoned or parcelled so different rules can exist depending on which zone/parcel an avatar is in?

JS: Cities can be zoned into Blocks and you can create access rules for events and residences. Content rules are citywide.

9. SL have now released a roadmap which includes the introduction of several features that are inherent in BM, such as mesh imports, created with 'Industry Standard Tools' (reference) and Flash-based applications (reference). Does this surprise you?

JS: It’s hard to say exactly what they’re up to based on the links you sent me but I’m not at all surprised that they are working to support more common 3D assets and to improve their multimedia capabilities.

10. Are there any other items of news/developments you wish to share Jim?

JS: Not at this time but we’ll have plenty announcements soon. I’ll keep you posted.


Rock

At last, the trailer for James Cameron's new blockbuster, due for release in December, is out. Watch it here:

AVATAR - The Trailer

Rock

Sorry for a prolonged absence. First was the annual summer vacation, then that was quickly followed by a spell in hospital having something removed that should ensure that I don't rattle as much as I walk along anymore :)

So, down to the news:

Blue Mars
The beta testing is going well, and the BM team are proving very responsive in sorting out the bugs the devs are uncovering. The open Public Beta is planned to launch on the 31st August.

A fourth demo city has recently been added, New Venice, created by Virtual Space Entertainment (VSE). It is still work-in-progress, but the work so far definitely has the wow-factor.

Some further screenshots are here:

Blue Mars have also confirmed that they have now added Google's Sketchup to the list of 3D packages they officially support.


Myst Online
Back in December 2008 Myst Online (URU Live) announced that they intended to release their sourcecode as Open-Source. However, progress has been slow in following through with this announcement. Apparently the problem lies in the 3rd party plug-ins that Myst Online uses, and the need to remove these and replace them with in-house code. They are currently looking for volunteer coders to help with the work.

Rock

Director James Cameron treated film industry workers at the Cinema Expo in Amsterdam to over 20 minutes of footage from his highly anticipated new 3D film Avatar, about a battle on a distant planet.

A media ban was in force at the event, but leaks soon spread throughout Twitter and elsewhere, where the comments were "jaw-dropping", "stunning", and the rest of the "Holy f**k" variety. Avatar hits cinemas in the UK and US on 18 December.

There are no clips or stills from the movie, as it is shrouded in secrecy, but there are a couple of Concept Art images to be found on the web.

Image Sources:

http://origin.aintitcool.com/images2009/avatarwaterfall.jpg

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2007/11/26/avatar-creature.jpg

Looks tempting!

Rock

Blue Mars currently has no inworld creation tools, but uses the Sandbox approach to content creation. This has been taken as a disincentive to some SL residents, while ignoring the fact that most content creation for SL is not done inworld either.

SL provides no in-world creation tools for sounds, animations, textures, etc., all of which have to be created out of world (and they charge for uploading those assets), and SL provides no out-of-world tools for the creation of these essential elements of content either. In fact, all they provide is the creation of prims and basic vegetation, and an editor for writing scripts (but which has no syntax checking, or diagnostics built in).

Blue Mars, by comparison, has a Sandbox (which will be provided free to all residents), that leaves SL way behind in terms of content creation. Here is a side-by-side comparison:

SL
Inworld creation tools:
Prim creation
Basic tree and grass creation
Basic scripting editor
Terrain modify tools

Out of world tools:
Nil

Blue Mars
Inworld creation tools:
Nil

Out of world (Sandbox) tools:
Animation Editor
Artificial Intelligence Debugger
Asset Editor
Character Editor
Dialog Editor
Equipment Pack Editor (for games)
Facial Expression Editor
Flow Graph Editor (a visual scripting editor)
Material (texture) Editor
Mission Scripts (for games)
Music Tools
Physics Editor
Script Compiler
Smart Objects Editor
Sound Generator and Editor (lots included)
Terrain Creation Editor
Terrain Lighting Editor
Terrain Modify Tools
Terrain Texture Editor (down to pixel level)
Time of Day Editor
Vegetation Generator and Editor (huge variety to choose from)
Vehicle Editor
Volex Tools (caves and tunnels within the terrain)
Weather Editor (sun, clouds, fog, rain, snow, hail, sleet, thunderstorms, tornadoes, earthquakes)

The Blue Mars Sandbox Editor comes complete with sample cities (and you can create your own too), so you can see exactly what your creations will look like, and how they will behave, before uploading them into BM.

Another big plus for out of world creation is security. The big crash this weekend (20/21 June) of SL saw many people lose irrevocably content they had been working on for hours, and the loss of objects that had been paid for. See this thread. This cannot happen with the BM Sandbox approach, as content is created and stored on your own PC, before it is uploaded. You always have the original as backup.

Many SL content creators are already using Opensim as a Sandbox, as they prefer peace and quiet when creating. The only people who may not like the BM approach are those who prefer an audience when creating in SL, but my guess is that those creators are very few in number, and anyway, the BM tools make it a no brainer for serious content creators anyway.

Rock

Free Realms Out of Beta
On Monday, 27th April, Free Realms came out of beta, all beta accounts were deleted, and on Tuesday, 28th April, Free Realms went live.

Free Realms is the PC-based version of Sony's Home (only available to Playstation owners).

Beta testers reported that for a VW that was targeted at teens, the content of Free Realms was actually quite complex. LogaBauer at SL Universe described it as being similar to "Magic:The Gathering".

So, is Free Realms a social virtual world (ala Second Life), or is it a game? Well it is mostly a game, but with some social aspects. The graphics are 'cutsie', not on a par with Second Life, and definitely not with Blue Mars, and looks quite cartoony.

However, the teens will love it (as do quite a few grown ups, if the posts on the SL Universe site are anything to go by).

Details of the game, and the sign up info, are here.


Blue Mars not into Beta just yet
Blue Mars have been slowly releasing their preview viewer and developer SDKs. Problems with the software have delayed full deployment, which is not to be unexpected given the complexity of converting a huge game engine such as the CryEngine 2 to support a Virtual World.

I received both the preview viewer and the SDK (a modified version of CryTek's Sandbox 2), both of which were a full 1.4Gb download. This was surprising for the viewer, and it appears that this is the full download with certain functionality disabled. It is hoped that a much slimmer previewer will be released.

There is an NDA currently in force, so I am limited in what I can report, but I can confirm that the graphics are the most amazing I have ever seen in any virtual world to date. To get a taste of what some of the landscapes are like that can be created in Blue Mars, look at this collection from Sandbox 2 users.

Blue Mars now also has its own, independent, enthusiast's forum, but only developers are hanging out there at present, until Blue Mars goes beta in June 2009.

Rock

Jim Sink of Avatar-Reality has kindly clarified a few more questions:

1. Who will be able to upload content into Blue Mars?
a) The City developer?
b) The tenant of the city developer, who has a store and wants to stock it?
c) The tenant of the city developer, who has rented a home in Blue Mars and wants to upload a few pieces of furniture that they have made?

JS: A. Yes. B. Yes. C. Yes, eventually (we're still working on this part.)


2. Will non-human avatars be supported?

JS: Not natively by Avatar Reality. However, City Developers can create any type of avatar they choose. For now, the universal avatar that can move from city to city needs to be based on the default rig and model.


3. I have had a few enquiries from people who are already running various flavours of Crysis, and have the SandBox 2, and the CryMod SDK, and are comfortable creating with those tools. What benefit, if any, would there be to those people to apply for and download the Blue Mars SDK?

JS: The Sandbox is a great start. We've added new features to the sandbox including camera control and multiplayer functionality for games. Also, the SDK environment includes import tools for Max and Maya along with additional documentation.


4. Does the decision on whether to allow teleporting or flying rest finally with the city developer?

JS: Our default control scheme doesn't support flying at this time. For now, that functionality will need to be managed by the city developer. We haven't settled on a specific transportation policy. I can say that we are commited to working with developers on policies that meet their needs.

Thanks very much Jim.

JS: My pleasure.

Rock

FreeRealms
FreeRealms is a new family-friendly Virtual World, being developed by Sony. It will be free to download and play, and is currently in beta test.

FreeRealms offer exploration, combat, building, housing, pet-raising, mini-games and social interaction to appeal to as wide a variety of users as possible.

How FreeRealms and Sony's Home on the PS3 are related, if at all, is still unclear.

Demo video here.

Sparkle IM
You can now use your iPhone or iPod Touch to stay in touch with either Second Life or any of the OpenSim grids.

Genkii have launched Sparkle IM, an application for the iPhone/iPod that allows you to send and receive IMs, online or offline, chat, send tp requests, and accept Friends requests. Further details and a video on the Genkii website.

Rock

I've just got back from the GadgetShow Live! at the NEC, Birmingham, 17th-19th April.

The show was something of a disappointment for me, particularly with the absence of so many gaming and Virtual World companies from the Games Hall.

Electronic Arts did attend, and their booth was well attended. They had a nice little attraction whereby a short 1 min video of attendees (smiling, walking and jumping) could be used within games to make the central character in those games appear to be the attendee. Kids loved that!

There were a number of companies promoting software to rival Microsoft's Surface 2. I really liked the offering from HP, and LG were showing next-generation phones that will incorporate this multi-touch software - Apple, take note!

Rock

Jim Sink, is Vice President of Business Development at Avatar-Reality, the company behind the forthcoming virtual world, Blue Mars. Avatar-Reality is based in Honolulu, Hawaii, and currently employs a staff of 24, and growing.

Jim Sink began his career in the interactive entertainment industry at Foundation9 designing games for Sega, Hudson, Nokia, and Eidos. Following his work as a game designer, Jim managed business development and partner acquisition at Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. Jim joined Avatar Reality in 2008 to lead their business development efforts.

1. How will Blue Mars work? Will there be user-created content, user-created terrain, in-world economy?

JS: Absolutely. There will be two types of account: end-user accounts, and developer-accounts. For end-users the client will be free, and there will be no fees for entering Blue Mars, however, some cities or areas may be subscription-only areas.

For developers, the Software Development Kit (SDK) will be free, and content will be generated outside of Blue Mars, then uploaded into it, rather than creating within Blue Mars.

2. Who do you see as your main competition? Second Life? Entropia?

JS: We feel that Blue Mars, with its unique qualities, will be catering to a unique market, and so we don’t see ourselves competing directly with any of the other Virtual Worlds. There will be some, of course, but as we see the population of Virtual Worlds rising dramatically over the next ten years, there is enough growth there for all the main players.

3. What will be the hardware requirements for Blue Mars?

JS: We recently put together a US$400 home PC the other day, and Blue Mars ran fine on it. I would say that the most important requirement is that the PC should have a dedicated graphics card, as opposed to an integrated graphics chip. Most cards on the market today over 100$ are fine. Blue Mars will run on Vista or XP, and will use DirectX. Of course, the better the graphics card and the more memory you have, the better the experience will be. There are no plans right now to launch either a Mac or Linux version.

4. One of the key benefits of OpenSimulator is that it can be operated in standalone mode, which may appeal to a variety of companies and organisations that want a Second Life-like environment, but not connected physically, or by association, to Second Life. Second Life has responded by announcing a firewalled standalone version to be launched later this year. Does Avatar-Reality have any plans for a standalone version of Blue Mars?

JS: We have no plans at present to launch a standalone version of Blue Mars.

5. Avatar-Reality promised on their original website a cutting edge avatar rendering engine. Has this been finalised yet?

JS: Yes. Although Blue Mars is based on the CryEngine2, we have made a lot of extensions to it, which includ the avatar rendering, facial features, hair, etc.

6. In SL the unit of land is the Region, 256x256m. Will Blue have a ‘unit of land’, and if so, what will it be?

JS: No. Land masses can be 2Km by 2Km or more. There will be a minimum size, but that has not been finalised yet. However, land size is not what will drive the pricing structure. We will use the concept of ‘capacity’. For example, if you want sufficient capacity for 1,600 concurrent users, the price will be X. The more capacity you buy the cheaper will be the ‘per concurrent user’ price. Unlike other Virtual Worlds, such as Second Life, you really will be able to host a concert in Blue Mars attended by several thousand avatars!

7. Will it be possible to upload all media into Blue Mars, textures, sound, animations, video?

JS: Yes. Video will be handled using Scaleform, a flash compatible middleware package that we use for all our UI.

8. Blue Mars is based on CryTek’s CryEngine2. Now that CryTek have announced CryEngine3, will that effect Blue Mars? Does Avatar-Reality plan to keep pace with CryTek’s development?

JS: The CryEngine3 is more of a compatibility release for consoles than a major upgrade in features or performance. We work closely with CryTek, and if they bring out enhancements to their engines that we feel is of benefit, then of course we will implement them.

9. What methods of communication will be available in Blue Mars?

JS: Initially there will be chat, public and private. Voice will be optional, and interfaces to social networks, such as Twitter are in the pipeline.

10. What is the current schedule for the testing and roll-out of Blue Mars?

JS: We plan to go beta with the Client in June 2009. The development kit is available now for developers, and in the next day or two we plan to release a preview editor tool, which can be downloaded directly from the website, which will give users and developers a feel for how their content will look in Blue Mars. Both the development kit and the preview editor are WYSIWYG.

11. Tell me some things about Blue Mars I don’t know.

JS: We’ve worked hard to create an ecosystem where content developers can thrive. From robust content management tools, a centralized item registration database that helps prevent unauthorized copying, and a secure integrated transaction system, the Blue Mars platform lets content developers focus on creation rather than security and billing overhead.

We will appeal to those seeking social interaction, commercial opportunities, gaming, and educators.

Many thanks Jim.

JS: You are most welcome.

Second Life behind the Firewall
Mark Kingdon, the CEO of Linden Lab, dropped a hint last October that LL were working on a stand-alone, behind the firewall version of Second Life.

Recently, LL confirmed via their blog that the standalone version of Second Life is currently in the alpha phase, and they plan to take it into a limited closed beta phase this summer with general availability later in the year.

This has got to impact the efforts of the OpenSimulator community, as one of the key benefits that OpenSimulator was going to provide was the ability for corporations and educational establishments to have their own SL-like region/grid, but not connected to the SL grid, (SL being tarnished as it has been by salacious stories in the tabloid media), and have a sanitized, independent region/grid that was fully under their own control.

Of course, OpenSimulator will still have the benefit of being free, but when server costs and maintenance costs are taken into account it will be interesting to see just how big or narrow the gap is when LL finally announce their standalone fees.


OnLive
OnLive was announced in March at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Heading up OnLive as CEO is Steve Perlman, whose inventions include QuickTime and WebTV.

So, what is OnLive?

OnLive aims to provide, via a cloud gaming service, game data in fractions of a second, so even high-end games can be played on low-end computers.

I was never more astounded in avatar generation when I saw Emily, in the Image Metrics Tech Demo, but now see this example of Perlman's genius brought to life by Geni4 (pronounced Jennifer) on the Mova website (look for the Geni4 videos).

Using the latest techniques in video compression, OnLive works by hosting the high-end games, then compressing and streaming them to the home PC with almost no latency or losses.

OnLive have already teamed with major games providers, such as Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and Warner Bros.

Full story here.

Rock