So, you have arrived in Blue Mars, you have checked out the Welcome Area, met some people there, and now you are ready to do some serious exploring, but where to first? My favourite City in Blue Mars is New Venice, or Venezia (they made an announcement a few months ago that the name was changed from New Venice to Venezia, but I have seen no evidence of the name change elsewhere as yet). I would recommend going here first.

Places Browser
To get up the Places Browser you can either login to Blue Mars, and you will arrive there immediately, or if you are already inside Blue Mars just click the House icon on the toolbar.

Places Browser

Select New Venice, and then click the Download text in the top-right of the browser. Once it has finished downloading click Refresh to add it to the browser. To visit, just click its image, and then Go.

Arriving in New Venice
On arrival in New Venice you will be in a lovely garden. Behind you is a small gazebo, but don't go inside, as this is a teleporter to the Condo (more on that later).

Arrival Point in New Venice

From here get onto the path, and move away from the gazebo, at the far end of the garden is an archway, and this is the exit point. As you pass under the arch you will see some information terminals.

Arrival Area Gardens

Information Terminal (News and Maps)

If you click on the activation orb (and you will see these all over New Venice) the map will open for you.

Map

As you click a portion of the map, then hover your mouse over the selected portion of the map, it reveals places of interest to visit.

Circular Garden

For the time being, I just left this area, and continued out and was faced by a huge circular garden. I could hear soft music at this point. These gardens in New Venice are spectacular and lush. You may have also seen small spherical bots flying about. These have no function, as yet.

Inside the Circular Garden (bot and butterfly in foreground)

Teleporting in New Venice
One of the nice functions that the creators of New Venice (VSE) have included, is the ability to teleport anywhere inside the City. This is really useful, as at 4km x 4km, New Venice is one of the larger Cities, and 16sq Km is approximately the size of 256 SL regions, so is more like a mini-continent than a City. Another useful feature, is that it is not actually you that teleports, it is your camera, so you can have a look around a destination before deciding to teleport there in person (by pressing 'Q' on your keyboard).

To teleport ensure that the main Blue Mars window has the focus (not the chat window) by clicking on the top blue title bar. Now press F3 and the teleport menu will apppear.

Teleport Menu (Click blue Title Bar at top of window, then press F3)

The teleport menu gives you a choice of 9 destinations, by pressing any of the numbers 1-9 on your numeric keypad to the right of your keyboard (NOT the numbers 1-9 at the top of your keyboard).

Teleport Destination #1
This is the RC Boat Racing venue. Currently the racing is not activated, but it is still a great area to explore. The croquet greens are nearby.

RC Boat Racing Arena

Corresponding Place on the Map

Teleport Destination #2
This is the Bocce Ball Court destination. Again, not functional at present, but well worth the visit.

Bocce Court

Bocce Ball Court on the Map (the large grey circle on the bottom island)

Teleport Destination #3
This will take you to the Sail Boats. These do work, after a fashion :)

Don't blame me for what happens though. Taking a scuba kit with you might be advisable!

Sailboats (that broken bot needs fixing!)

As is normal in New Venice, use the activation orbs to use them

Teleport Destination #4
This destination just takes you back to the orginal landing point. Useful to get you to the Condo.

Teleport Destination #5
Now I am not sure about this destination. It is actually a little circular garden with an old knarled tree in the middle. However, there is an activation orb, and when clicked the entire garden become an elevator, and delivers you (sometimes) to a lower level, as these two pics show.

Garden Elevator (upper level)

Garden Elevator (lower level)

Be careful on this thing! The script is not perfect, and on one occasion I ended up in orbit over New Venice. Here is the proof!

Unintentional Orbit Mode

Teleport Destination #6
A regular destination this time. At this location are water taxis, a telescope (with a game inside), and stairs leading up to The Floating House.

Telescopes (each has a find objects game inside)

This destination is just above the Boat Taxi 4 location on the Map:

Boat Taxi Stop 4 (that square corner near the top-right of the island)

Clicking on the telescope brings up a menu which allows you to use the telescope in the regular way, or to search for objects for points.

Telescope Menu

Find Objects Game

Teleport Destination #7
This takes you to halfway up the staircase to The Floating House

The Midway Point up to The Floating House

There is a regular elevator ( to take you back down to the lower level only), and a staircase to take you up to The Floating House. Take these stairs!

When you get to the top of the stairs the beautiful Floating House, with its majestic waterfall is before you.

The Floating House

Entrance to The Floating House

Carry on through the archway, and straight ahea to the back of the house. There is a curious activation orb here. Click it, and stand back and wait to be amazed!

The Flying Elevator

The orb calls the amazing Flying Elevator. A gazebo-like device that flies you back down to the lower level near to the water taxi area. An incredible ride (but again, is temperamental, so you could end up anywahere!).

Teleport Destination #8
This is an odd one. Mostly it does not work, but on one occasion I was sent into orbit again, only even higher this time. Sometimes I have arived at the activation orb for the Flying Elevator.

The Chat Speaks for itself!

Teleport Destination #9
Back to earth again (or back to Mariner Firma), and this is Boat Taxi Stop 4, below Teleport Destination #6.

Flying in New Venice
You can fly in New Venice! Or at least the sensation of flying (actually it is your camera that flies). To do this, press F3 again to bring up the teleport menu, but do NOT press any number. Instead, aim your camera upwards by holding down the right mouse button and dragging the mouse to tilt the camera upwards, then press your Up Arrow.

When your camera arrives at a location you like, just press 'Q' on your keyboard and you will teleport to that destination instantly.

Condo
The sample Condo in New Venice is gorgeous! To get there you can use the Teleport Travel Gazebos in either the arrival garden (Teleport Destination #4) or the other beside The Floating House.

Condo Interior

There are TV screens inside the Condo, music, and a hidden teleporter that will take you to a bar! Walk to the circular door and it will open magically, leading the way to a patio area with spectacular views.

Condo Exterior

Other Oddities
One other strange thing I found, was if I pressed the number 1 on my numeric keypad, without having the teleport menu up. It spawned a blue sphere, that only I could see. Continued pressing spawned more, and they do not seem to do much except jump up and down at times.

Strange Blue Spheres

I was able to stack some vertically, before they fell and bounced around. These spheres are one of several mysteries in New Venice. I will leave you to find the rest.


Rock

Since the announced imminent demise of There.com there has been a substantial number of Therians who have decided to either make Blue Mars their new home, or at least to check it out, and the Blue Mars staff and volunteers have been on hand to welcome them and arrange special meetings for them. To aid those meetings I have produced this short guide, which is aimed not only for them, but for all others who are thinking of checking out Blue Mars and are wondering where they should start.

First though, a couple of caveats:

Blue Mars is still in beta/development
This is a strategy that is quite different to what many people think of as a beta. In Blue Mars the beta testers were not given a full set of functionalities to test, they were given a small subset, in order to focus the feedback on improvements to the existing functionalities and bug fixing. Once that subset had been fixed, another release of the client software was then issued, with more functionality (and improvements to the functions in the previous release), and so on.

Currently Blue Mars is still under this beta/development, and is likely to remain that way for some months yet, so visitors should not expect that it is currently the full package.

For an idea of what functions are currently being worked on, please see these articles on the current roadmap, in this order:

• New Features on the Horizon
• Roadmap: First Stop

Hardware Requirements
Blue Mars will be a little tougher on hardware requirements than There.com, and a little more demanding  for folks coming from Second Life. A full list of the hardware requirements for Blue Mars is here. You can see what Frames Per Second (fps) you are getting in Blue Mars without any third-party tools, it is built-in. To get your fps and other info up on the screen read this how-to.

In order to improve your fps there are a couple of things you can try:

• If you have Skype running at the same time as Blue Mars, shut it down (you will also see some smaller improvements if you close down anything else that uses the Internet, such as browsers.
  
• Change your Rendering Quality down from High to Low. To do this, click on the Blue Mars main window title bar (just to move the focus from the chat window to the main window), and then hit the Esc key. Alternatively, you can click the right-hand icon that looks like four points, which expands the toolbar, then click on the options (spanner) icon.

Toolbar-Collapsed

Toolbar-Expanded

Change Rendering Quality from High to Low

 OK, now that the caveats are out of the way, some good news. The Welcome area in Blue Mars is a place where you can meet up with actual Blue Mars (Avatar Reality) staffers. Look out for Glenn Goodliffe (aka Glenn Sanders, Community Director of Avatar Reality), and Summer Studio (aka Tiffany Nahinu, Community Assistant), and various volunteers, who will help you get your feet wet.

You can always provide feedback to Glenn and his team, and they are very much in listening mode, so don't be afraid to let them know (politely) what improvements you would like to see (but check the roadmap links above so you do not repeat what they have already got in hand).

Now the housekeeping is out of the way, I will start a series of articles providing a Tourist's Guide to the various Blue Mars Cities.


Look out for tomorrow's article: A Tourist's Guide to New Venice

Rock

There.com

Founded in 1998 by Will Harvey and Jeffrey Ventrella, and having suffered a major restructuring in 2004 that resulted in huge layoffs, There.com has finally succumbed and announced it is to close its doors forever on the 9th March.

There.com was always a bit too cartoony for me, but I know a lot of peoople enjoyed it, and it had over 1 million members.

In addition to customizing their avatars, members could create their own objects, such as clothing, vehicles, buildings and furniture, and sell them to others for use in the world, and was a direct competitor to Second Life.

There.com took copyright very seriously and every object created went through a rigorous submission procedure to insure its accuracy as well as compliance with international copyright laws.

The official announcement was as follows:

There.com is closing on March 9th, 2010

In 2003, There.com was launched as a 3D Immersive Virtual World for everyone.

Unlike other products, There was designed from the beginning to be a welcoming and comfortable place for everyone - not just gamers, not just people over 18, not just people with high end computers, and not just people on broadband. This principle extended far beyond just the technology: for example it led to our submissions review system, which ensured that user generated content didn't infringe on existing brands, or even other member's content. To that, we added socialization tools including 3D avatar chat, clubs, events, activity flags, card games, quests, virtual commerce, kinetic games such as paintball, buggies, and, of course, hoverboards. While many of these things sound commonplace today, in 2003 we were arguably one of the first places to "put it all together" in one package.

But all of that was just a big stack of technology and hardware. It was when we added people - our members - to There.com that it actually came to life. Through you, There has been known as a vibrant, welcoming place for people to come and meet other people, have fun, create, or just hang out. Over the years, millions of folks have passed through our doors, each of you bringing something new and different to There.com, and, hopefully, taking a little bit of the fun with you back into your "real life".

By adding developers to There, we made it possible for the world to becomes millions of time more interesting and creative than it possibly could have been otherwise. Of course, the talented artists and modelers at There created an amazing world to start with, but it was your content - clothes, vehicles, accessories, buildings, lawn furniture, gnomes, snowmen, etc, etc, etc - which really helped bring the world to life, and make There the special place it is today.

Finally, to this mix, we added brands, which had a lasting and important impact on There.com. We can't list them all here, but names like Coca-Cola, CosmoGirl, Bebe, K-SWISS, and SPIN all brought their own products and influence to the world, which in turn made it an even more interesting place for people to be.

We believe that all of this together made a world which was, well, like "real life", with just the right level of unreality thrown in. Standards for speech, interaction, avatar dress, and even the amount of "blood and gore" were pretty much what you'd expect in the real world, and we believe that it's one of the many things which made There special, accessible, and attractive to people from all over the United States and the world -- not just the privileged with high-end machines and broadband connections.

Unfortunately, this also meant that There.com's customers were hardest hit by the recession, and, so was There. While our membership numbers and the number of people in the world have continued to grow, there has been a marked decrease in revenue, which, in these economic times, is no surprise.

Throughout the last year and this quarter, we have fought the good fight by churning out new features and revisions as fast as we possibly could. Our hats have to go off to the team, which have in a very short time introduced a whole new suite of casual games, a completely new foundation for our user interface, improved internal efficiencies for the product, real estate, a whole new level of Community Involvement, etc, etc. On top of that, we've revised our first user experience several times, making the whole process for registering and getting into the world (and continued to be amused when the same features appeared in other worlds).

But, at the end of the day, we can't cure the recession, and at some point we have to stop writing checks to keep the world open. There's nothing more we would like to avoid this, but There is a business, and a business that can't support itself doesn't work. Before the recession hit, we were incredibly confident and all indicators were "directionally correct" and we had every reason to believe growth would continue. But, as many of you know personally, the downturn has been prolonged and severe, and ultimately pervasive.

We're very sorry to announce that There.com will be closing to the public at 11:59 PM on March 9th, 2010.

We'll be closing registration, billing, and member program upgrades immediately.

Developer submissions are closed effectively immediately.

Rental processing will be stopped, so no more rent will be collected for neighborhoods, lots, or There homes.

Paintgun refills will be free.

Portazone refills will either be free, or we'll "stop the clock" on Portazone minutes. We'll sort that out in the next day or so.

All purchases of Therebucks and member program updates made between midnight Pacific Standard Time February 1, 2010 and 11:00 AM Pacific Standard Time on March 2, 2010 will be refunded in full. Purchases made via PayPal or Credit Card will be refunded automatically. Purchases made via PayByCash or the Ultimate Game Card will need to follow the procedure outlined in the F.A.Q. to get your refund.

We will attempt to continue a Therebucks buyback for developers as we have been. If you are a There Developer, and have Therebucks you'd like us to buy back, please follow the procedure in the F.A.Q. to request a buyback.

It's been our privilege to play a small part in making the place that was There.com, and for that we thank you. We know that There will continue to live in our hearts and minds, and hope it does in yours, too.

Michael Wilson
CEO, There.com

A sad day indeed.

Rock

Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 1 March 2010 – Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) are proud to announce the presentation of CryENGINE®3 in stereoscopic 3D (S-3D) at this year’s GDC expo in San Francisco (11–13 March). For the very first time, developers can experience the highly topical S-3D trend built with Crytek’s latest development solution.

One of the key features of the third-generation CryENGINE® is the “LiveCreate™” feature, which will also be showcased at GDC. CryENGINE®3 LiveCreate™ allows designers to work with a single editor, but see and play the results in real-time on the PC, PlayStation® 3 and Xbox 360™. With CryENGINE®3, scalability across multiple platforms is a revolutionary development to enable the creation of truly great-looking games – regardless of the target platform.

“After the successful introduction of CryENGINE®3 at last year’s GDC, we are really excited to show the latest version of our all-in-one game development solution this year in stereoscopic 3D. Over the past few years, S-3D technology has emerged as one of the key trends both in movies and games. With CryENGINE®3, developers will have the ability to create their content in 3D on all platforms. There are basically no longer any limits to a designer’s creativity. CryENGINE®3 features many innovations to accelerate development, cut production costs and ensure teams are able to maximize their own creativity without delays,” says Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development CryENGINE.

CryENGINE®3 is the fastest and most robust high-end renderer in the world, with new features specifically designed for console platforms. Benchmark-setting graphical performance, near-photorealism rendering of indoor and wide-open outdoor environments as well as extraordinary real-time special effects are just some of the hallmarks of CryENGINE® technology. It was the underlying technology for Crytek’s critically acclaimed games Crysis® and Crysis® Warhead, and is used today not only throughout the video game industry and but also for many serious applications in fields from architecture, training and simulation to learning and development.

Crytek's Engine Business Team will be available during GDC for meetings and to discuss licensing details with prospective clients. In addition, Crytek will be hosting a series of public presentations at their booth, #1414. Crytek’s recruiters will also be at the show to answer questions about the company and accept resumes of interested applicants. Their booth is located at South Hall #2320 (Career Pavilion).

About Crytek GmbH

Crytek GmbH ("Crytek") is one of the world’s leading independent development studios for interactive entertainment. It is based in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and has 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 has 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.

Fusion Render Cloud

Rewind back to
just over a year ago AMD President and Chief Executive Officer Dirk Meyer and OTOY Chief Executive Officer Jules Urbach unveiled a plan to revolutionize the deployment, development and delivery of HD content through the “AMD Fusion Render Cloud”, a massively-parallel supercomputer. The announcement took place during AMD’s Industry Insider Series keynote at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater, where AMD was joined on stage by industry luminaries such as Lucasfilm, Dell, HP and Electronic Arts.

AMD has a long track record in the supercomputing world. Seven out of 10 of the world’s fastest machines, including the fastest two computers on the planet, are powered by AMD hardware

said Meyer.

Today, AMD is pleased to announce a new kind of supercomputer unlike any other ever built. It is being designed to break the one petaFLOPS barrier, and to process a million compute threads across more than 1,000 graphics processors. We anticipate it to be the fastest graphics supercomputer ever. And it will be powered by OTOY’s software for a singular purpose: to make HD cloud computing a reality. We plan to have this system ready by the second half of 2009.

The system is being designed to enable content providers to deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet “cloud” to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser without making the device rapidly deplete battery life or struggle to process the content. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will transform movie and gaming experiences through server-side rendering – which stores visually rich content in a compute cloud, compresses it, and streams it in real-time over a wireless or broadband connection to a variety of devices such as smart phones, set-top boxes and ultra-thin notebooks. By delivering remotely rendered content to devices that are unable to store and process HD content due to such constraints as device size, battery capacity, and processing power, HD cloud computing represents the capability to bring HD entertainment to mobile users virtually anywhere.

The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will also enable remote real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale. Gaming companies can use the AMD Fusion Render Cloud for developing and deploying next-generation game content, to serve up virtual world games with unlimited photo-realistic detail, and take advantage of new delivery channels as open and diverse as the web itself.

Hosted on AMD’s powerful new AMD Fusion Render platform, OTOY’s revolutionary software has given birth to the world’s first practical, scalable graphics supercomputer capable of true server-side HD cloud rendering. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will allow directors like Robert Rodriguez of Troublemaker Studios to break through existing CPU-only and graphics processor-only render bottlenecks which have imposed limitations on the creation of true eye-definition assets,

said Charlie Boswell, Director of Digital Media and Entertainment, AMD.

Imagine playing the most visually intensive first person shooter game at the highest image quality settings on your cell phone without ever having to download and install the software, or use up valuable storage space or battery life with compute-intensive tasks. Those are just some of the experiences that AMD and OTOY plan to make possible with HD cloud computing of visually rich entertainment content.
By fusing industry-leading CPU technology with computationally dense, massively parallel graphics processors, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud can rival the world’s most powerful industrial computing devices, but require just a fraction of the floor space, power envelope and cost associated with many of today’s leading supercomputers,” said Jules Urbach, Chief Executive Officer, OTOY. “Combined with the power of OTOY’s revolutionary and flexible software platform, the AMD Fusion Render Cloud can transform the entertainment industry and remove the technical barriers between consumers and first-rate content experiences.

The AMD Fusion Render Cloud will be powered by AMD-optimized hardware including the AMD Phenom™ II processors, AMD 790 chipsets and ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics processors, for unprecedented compute density and power efficiency. The AMD Fusion Render Cloud is an excellent example of AMD’s Fusion strategy, combining its partners’ dreams with AMD innovation, to bring powerful technologies to mainstream markets through the combined power of graphics processors and CPUs in a single platform.

So, is the Fusion Render Cloud ready for production? I took a look at the OTOY website, but there is currently only one word there at the moment ... Soon.

Just one tantalising word on the OTOY Website

Fast Forward to
this past week, when Jim Sink of Avatar Reality, the creators of the Blue Mars Virtual World platform, addressed the Virtual Edge 2010 conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Jim said

The problem people have with deploying virtual world applications, particularly in business and education environments, is that they have a choice - between capability and compatibility. Games such as Crysis or World of Warcraft, look good, but require high-end hardware, and up-to-date drivers. Or they could make something really simple that is Flash-based for example. In Blue Mars we wanted to create something that was as flexible as possible, so if you wanted it in an application or you wanted to run it in a browser, that is not the compromise that you needed to make… So we wanted to create something to lower the barrier to entry and allow people to create things that are very beautiful, graphically, beyond anything you would see on an XBox 360 or  Playstation 3, and put it on ANY device and make it really easy to use.
Blue Mars currently has two ways in which you can bring your current web-based content directly into a Virtual World. We have native renderers for flash and web content and so if it runs in a web browser it runs in Blue Mars.
Fortunately AMD and a software company called OTOY have partnered together to create something called the Fusion Cloud Server. And what this allows us to do is to take a high-end 3d application like Blue Mars, render it in the cloud, and deliver it to any device that is capable of web-based video, the quality scales with the amount of bandwidth that you have. So, just like Youtube when you click on 'Play' and it plays, that is how it works for a HD 3D environment.

Jim also mentioned that they may have a production version of the web renderer on their April 1st release.

All this is amazing news indeed. But just how good is this new Fusion Render Cloud? Maybe this Jules World customer video will give us a clue:






Many naysayers have complained that Blue Mars will only run on high-end equipment, and if they struggle to run Second Life on their rig how can they be expected to run Blue Mars?

Others have said they are Mac or Linux users, and to wake them up when Blue Mars is available on their platforms.

Well guys, get ready for a wake-up call.

Rock

Back in early November 2009 I reported on the free version of Unity that had been launched, and renamed from the Indie version to simply Unity. Today I will take a closer look at both versions and what they can do.

Before deciding whether to purchase Unity Pro you can download the free Unity which comes with a 30 day trial of Unity Pro included (after the 30 day period is up the software simply reverts to the free level of functionality). The main differences between Unity and Unity Pro are that with Unity you do not have real-time shadows, and with Unity Pro you do not have any splashscreens or watermarks. A detailed comparison of the differences between the two versions is on the Unity License page. Unity, with the 30 day trial of Unity Pro can be downloaded from the Unity download page.

Companies that have a turnover in excess of US$100,000 per annum must use Unity Pro. When using either Unity or Unity Pro no permissions are necessary to launch commercial products built with the software. However, they would take a dim view if someone took all the included asset bundles and resold them with a new name on them as if they were their own. No royalties are payable with either version.


Editor

Unity Editor

Unity features a fully integrated editor, which is tightly integrated with the game engine.At any time the game under development (and for 'game' also read 'virtual world' development) can be Played, paused or Stopped from within the Editor. Customisation is very flexible through the use of Editor-specific scripts, and layout arrangements. All assets and objects within the Editor use visual drag-and-drop, so it is a breeze to get your scenes up and running very quickly. Complex game objects can be designated as 'Prefabs' allowing them to be easily deployed throughout the game or at runtime. Any changes to the original Prefab is then propagated to all its clones.


Graphics
Unity currently uses Nvidia's PhysX for its physics engine, and this is included in Unity.

Amazing Graphics

The graphics pipeline in Unity is highly optimised, so that both DirectX and OpenGL will run blazingly fast. Rendering is sorted to minimize state changes, taking lights and shadows into account. On good hardware, Unity can render millions of polygons/sec.

Assets
Unity can import 3D models, textures, bones, and animations from almost all 3D applications, including 3dsMax, Maya, 3D Studio Max, Cheetah 3D, Cinema 4D, Blender, Carrara, Lightwave, XSI 5.x, and meshes and textures from Sketchup Pro and Wings 3D. For images, Photoshop .psd and .tiff formats are imported with layers automatically flattened. Non-layered JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TGA, IFF, PICT and many other image formats are also supported. Ogg video and audio are natively supported, but MOV, AVI, ASF, MPG, MPEG, and MP4 video files can also be used, and are recoded by Unity with a configurable bitrate. Audio formats such as AIFF, WAV and MP3 are also supported, and are stored uncompressed (great for high-quality sound effects).

Deployment
Unity supports one-click deployment to either MAC OSX or Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7. All Unity games can be played using a standard web-browser including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and most Mozilla-based browsers, after installing a Unity Web Player Plug-in. The plug-in is small at around 3 MB, and auto-installs without a browser restart.


Terrains
Unity provides great terrain tools to create all terrain types. An impressive range of foliage types can be painted directly into the scene, and with lightmaps showing the effects of all directional lights a realistic feel to a scene can be easily achieved.

Beautiful Terrains Can be easily Created

Scripting
Unity supports JavaScript, C#, and a version of Python called Boo. All three can use the underlying .NET libraries which support databases, regular expressions, XML, file access and networking, and the logic runs on the Open Source Mono platform.

Networking
Unity has full network support via it's built in Raknet-based multiplayer networking system as well as c# socket support with which Unity can talk to any back-end software you want.

The most popular being Smartfox Server and Exitgames Neutron/Photon services. Smartfox Server already has an existing Unity based API, meaning you can actually get up and running in a networked, multiplayer environment. The API is right here:

Asset Bundles and other Resources

Dressing Room

Unity has a unique Locomotion System which allows avatars to move realistically, for example, walking up stairs intelligently. Keyframed and MOCAP animations can be imported, but then Unity adjusts the bones in the legs to ensure that walking on uneven ground looks natural.
Examples projects are available to use on the Resource pages, including one nice Character Customisation project, called Dressing Room, that comes in one zip file, and includes all the source code! Have a look at the demo here to see it in action.

Unity comes complete with a tropical island demo, but other projects can be downloaded from the Resources page, including: 3rd Person Shooter, Shadow demo, Character Animation, and Networking capabilities.

What are you waiting for? Go get it!

Rock

The first thing I noticed was that after launching the new Viewer it took a full 5 minutes before anything happened! Just a black window. It did eventually load.

On logging in I found myself where I had logged out from, and I was now a cloud, and it took around 15 minutes for me to rezz as my avatar. The other scenery took around 10-15 minutes to rezz, and sculpties took another 5 minutes oin top of that. It appears it was completely redoing the cache. Pity it could not use the Viewer 1.23 cache.

BM Toolbar

Viewer 2 Side-toolbar icons

One of the first things I noticed was the similarity in the side-toolbar icons with those used in Blue Mars. Do these look similar to you?

A couple of things I did like were the new tattoo layer, separate from the skin, and the Alpha Masks, which mean no more wearing invisiprims to hide body parts (to create aliens, dragons, furries etc).

You also do not have to tpe 'Worn' in the Inventory search box to display everything you wearing, there is now a simple Current Outfit folder in your Inventory to show everything you are wearing.

The navigation bar is nice, and you can go back to where you teleported from at a click, and also get up your teleport history (not so much of an innovation this one, as MystiTool users have had this functionality for years).

I was not happy to see the new location for the World Map and the MiniMap, as these are now accessed via the top menu, World > Mini-Map or World > World Map. Which puts them a further click away, and I feel this is a mistake, given that these are two of the most commonly used functions in the UI. Similarly, File Upload is commonly used, but now is several clicks away, hidden in the Inventory menu bar.

HTML on a prim is excellent. A real competitor for the Blue Mars flash on a prim. Glad to see the competition DO watch now what each other is doing!

I found a bug with streaming audio. The sim I was on had streaming audio, and I wanted it off so i could concentrate. In the audio options I unchecked the allow Streaming Audio checkbox, but it continued to play. Only by setting the Streaming Audio volume control to minimum could I get rid of the sound.

The new ratings (previously PG, Mature and Adult) are now General, Moderate and Adult. I did chuckle at some of the suggestions from the SL Forum, where SuezanneC Baskerville suggested Mild and Spicy, while Veritable Quandrykerville suggested something akin to the Chinese Restaurant ratings, but using 1 raised eyebrow up to 5 raised eyebrows!!

All in all, I approve of Viewer 2, I like its style and modern look. As for functionality it is certainly improved, though with a few bugs, but hey, it is in beta don't forget, so LL will be looking for plenty of feedback from the user community, and set up a forum just for this topic.

Give it a spin.

Rock

Robert Scoble of Building43 released today a very interesting interview with Mark Kingdon of Second Life with a look at the new Second Life viewer.



In addition Second Life issued the following blog post detailing this new release:

Viewer 2 Beta Has Arrived
Today, we're excited to announce the launch of Viewer 2 Beta, the next generation of Second Life viewers -- combining an easy browser-like experience with shared media capabilities -- providing what we believe is the best experience yet for accessing Second Life, and a new option to choose from among Viewer 1.23 and other Third Party Viewers. We looked carefully at the experience design of other successful social media and technology platforms--such as the web browser, Facebook, the iPhone, Twitter, etc.--and the key elements that enabled them to reach mass adoption. You'll see much of that thinking baked into new Viewer 2 experience design. Our primary goal was to create a more consumer-friendly viewer--an imperative to bring in a new wave of Second Life Residents. After all, more people in Second Life means that there will be more amazing content, more customers to purchase virtual goods, a thriving economy, more friends and communities, and we can do even more to improve the experience. All very good things for all of us.

Viewer 2 Introduces a More Intuitive User Experience
Viewer 2 has all of the capabilities of Viewer 1.23 and more; it has just been reorganized into a more intuitive user experience. In fact, it's chock full of cool features. Once you learn your way around, you'll definitely appreciate:

• A browser-like navigation bar with forward and back buttons. You can even save favorites and review your teleport history.
• A sliding right-hand panel that surfaces the most frequently-used features and makes managing your profile, contacts, groups, landmarks, inventory, and appearance easy.
• Improved Search, powered by Google Search Appliance technology , makes it easier to find friends, places, and cool stuff to buy.
• A superior alternative to invisiprims for non-human avatars. In Viewer 2, a new wearable type, called Alpha Masks, allow you to "mask out" parts of your base avatar to make entire body parts disappear.
• And, you'll enjoy the new contextual help to help you acclimate to the new viewer experience.

Those are just a few highlights. There's much more! We'll be going into more depth on many of these features in future blog posts.
Viewer 2 Brings the Web Into Second Life
Yes, you heard that right. Shared Media™, a standard capability in Viewer 2, makes sharing standard Web-based media and content in Second Life easy, and enables content creators to make more compelling, interactive experiences. Content creators can now place Web pages, video, Flash content, and other web media, onto any surface in Second Life. We expect that Shared Media will inspire a creative renaissance in Second Life as Residents explore more immersive and integrated inworld experiences and business opportunities such as gaming or theaters. And, for enterprises using Second Life as a work environment, Shared Media allows everyone to more effectively collaborate and share documents. We'll be publishing a blog post tomorrow focused on Shared Media--so keep your eyes peeled for that.

It's the Little Things, TooWhile much of the focus on the new viewer will be on the design and marquee features like Shared Media and Search,  there are lots of little improvements that should be sources of delight. Customization. Favorites. Inspectors. The right-hand panel. The notifications tray. The clickable names and SLurls in notifications. Icons for Residents. Outfits. Recent conversations. The notifications well. Clickable URLs. Selecting SLurls in the navigation tool bar. Global audio controls. Quick access to your audio preferences. Improved performance on the map. And, view controls with presets for over the shoulder and "What am I wearing?"

And a Lot Under the Hood Search and the Home panel are web content. That means that we can continue to make updates to the content, design and interactions without forcing you to download a new version of the viewer. We believe that this will make a big difference for new users, because the content in that panel will help users discover the richness and depth of Second Life. Since it's web content, some of our recent acquisitions in the web space may soon be making an appearance--watch this space. We also focused on performance and stability. In fact, we believe this the most stable beta that we've ever released.

But, it's Still BetaAnd that's why we're putting it into your hands now. So, put it through its paces, stress test it, and give us your feedback in the Viewer 2 Forum.

Getting StartedViewer 2 is different enough from Viewer 1.23 and a few minutes perusing the Quickstart Guide will save you the frustration of "How do I do this?" or "Where is that?" Contextual support also available now within the viewer itself. If you're chomping at the bit to get going, then here are a few "high nails" that can help you get up-and-running quickly in Viewer 2.
A couple of features you may be looking for:

• Camera Controls: Located on the Bottom Bar, labeled "View."
  
• Voice Controls: The "Speak" button is now located right next to the nearby text chat entry field. Sound preferences can be set by clicking Me > Preferences in the menus at the top, then clicking the Sound tab.
  
• Moving Around: Located on the Bottom Bar, labeled "Move."
  
• Teleporting: You can teleport a number of ways:
  • Double-click a Landmark in the Places Panel in the Side Bar.
  • Type a Region or Landmark name in the location field in the Top Bar and hit enter.
  • Paste a SLurl into the location field and hit enter.

A few handy tasks:

• Sharing Inventory: To share Inventory, start a Conversation (IM) with the person you to share an item. Click the "Share" button in the Conversation window which pops open the Inventory side panel. Then, drag the Inventory item over to the Conversation.
• Pay L$ to Someone: There are two quick ways to do this: A) Right click on the person, then select "Pay" from the context menu. B) Click "Pay" in the Conversation window. The "Pay Resident" floater will appear. Choose the amount you wish to pay and then click "Pay."

But Where is My ?
We tried to balance the needs of existing Residents with the general consumer, and made some dfficult choices like replacing pie menus with context list menus -- a broadly used design feature in most consumer software. If some of these changes are important to you, then the good news is that you still have choice.

The Choice is YoursWe celebrate and encourage viewer choice. When it ships in its final form, Viewer 2 will become the primary viewer, included in the registration flow for all new Second Life Residents, but there are many other third-party viewers based on Snowglobe, our open source viewer, that are designed for Residents that have specialized needs and requirements. Viewer 1.23 will continue to be available for the foreseeable future and we will continue to support it as long as it makes sense.
A Word about Third-Party ViewersWe're also announcing the Viewer Directory and the Policy on Third-Party Viewers. The Viewer Directory is a list of third-party viewers for Residents with specialized interests or viewing needs, such as languages that we do not support or additional navigation and accessibility features. To apply to add a viewer to the Viewer Directory, the software developer must be a Resident in good standing, and self-certify that the viewer complies with the Policy on Third-Party Viewers, which prohibits griefing, fraud, theft of passwords, and infringement of intellectual property. It is important to note that we will not tolerate malicious viewers that violate our policies. Enough said on that topic. To learn more about our announcement, read today's blog post on the new directory and policy.

Snowglobe, our open source viewer program, will release later today. Snowglobe 2 is based on the Viewer 2 Beta code base. If you're a third-party developer interested in Snowglobe 2, visit our wiki page where you will find information and the downloads.

Resources to Help You Learn Viewer 2

• Quickstart Guide (SL Wiki)
• Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)
• Release Notes (SL Wiki)
• Video Demos (YouTube)
• SL Answers (SL Answers)

And, if something breaks or you're really stuck, then contact Support and we're happy to help.
This is Only the Beginning and We Want Your Feedback
We're excited about what you'll experience today and we're only at the beginning. There's so much more that we'll be adding to Viewer 2 in the coming months. And, one of the most exciting things for folks at Linden, is that the Viewer 2 code base will enable us to improve the product at a much faster pace than ever before. So, that's where you come in. We need to hear from you! Participate in the Viewer 2 Forum and share your experience and suggest future enhancements. And, if you find a bug, then please log it in PJIRA. Then, go tell your friends! If you Twitter, then use the #SLViewer2 hash tag.

So, go download Viewer 2 here and try it out. We hope you like it.

Rock

Introduction
Virtual Worlds with an inworld economy, and an inworld currency that can be converted in and out of real world dollars, such as Second Life,  have proved very popular with their residents, as they allow the budding entrepreneur to make a modest real life income, and in a few cases quite a substantial income, from the leasing of virtual land, and the creation and selling of virtual goods, textures, animations, and scripts, etc.  Even more opportunities are on the horizon with newer, more exciting worlds, such as Blue Mars, due to come online later in 2010.

Some people have taken the OpenSim platform and used it to create their own commercial Virtual World, such as OpenLife, Meta7, and Inworldz, etc, and are able to compete strongly on price for virtual land with Second Life. Others have taken to designing and creating regions for corporate customers within an existing Virtual World, or use OpenSim to create a ring-fenced solution.

Virtual World Contracts
In addition to the above there also exists even more lucrative opportunities. Various institutions, larger corporations, local government and national government departments and the military have started issuing RFQs and RFPs (Requests for Quotations/Proposals) for Virtual World solutions.

Here are some examples of such RFQs and RFPs, issued over the last 18 months:

NATO, HQ Supreme Allied Commander Transformation
RFP-ACT-SACT-010-09, Aug 06, 2009
Allied Command Transformation is investigating technologies that could be used to augment or replace existing technologies for education and training of NATO staff. One of the investigative streams is in virtual worlds. This statement of work seeks contractor support for building and maintaining a virtual world to carry out this investigation.

US Department of the Air Force
Office: Air Education and Training Command
FA3002-08-R-004, Sep 03, 2008
The AETC Contracting Squadron at Randolph AFB intends to award a contract for the purchase of 3D on-line environment software (including all necessary plug-ins to field Mybase) and user training as described in the Statement of Need (SON). 

Department of Agriculture
Office: Office of Procurement and Property Management
AG-3142-S-10-0012, Nov 25, 2009
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of the Chief Information Officer (USDA OCIO) plans to issue a solicitation to procure virtual world (VW) software technology. While there are Government organizations currently utilizing virtual worlds (VW) technology, significant challenges remain related to cross-agency accessibility, security, scalability, and interoperability.

For virtual worlds to be a viable option for widespread government use, the Government is seeking offerors who can demonstrate that the virtual worlds solution(s) can satisfactorily resolve these and other cross-agency issues. 

Alliance Library System
Request for Qualifications, May 6, 2009
Project Coordinator for HIV/Aids Project (Karuna)

The Alliance Library System is requesting RFQs from qualified firms or individuals with Masters of Library Science Degrees, experience with medical/consumer health information, an up-to-date awareness of consumer health resources, and experience in the virtual world of Second Life managing events and creating displays to coordinate the HIV/AIDS Grant Project (Karuna).


Many more opportunities exist, from the use of Virtual Worlds for simulators, for training and educational puposes, for virtual meeting venues for companies wishing to reduce their travel budget and their carbon footprint, and various other uses.


How do you find these opportunities? Well, Google is your friend. I use the Advanced Search option, and set the fields as follows:

All these words: Virtual
One or More of these Words: RFQ OR RFP OR quotation  OR proposal
Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more: Date - set to past week or past month, and check weekly/monthly as required

Good luck


Rock

Just barely ten days after announcing their roadmap for the future of Blue Mars, Avatar Reality have come good with several of their promised improvements and new features for the SDK, Website and Client. Here is a run-down on the latest release:

DEVELOPER UPDATES

Websites:

Updated Developer MyPage ( https://dev.bluemars.com/MyPage/ ) features (COMING MARCH 1, 2010)

• The entire site has been optimized to open and run significantly faster.
• Properties > City > Leased Cities > [Add Block] command: Instead of manually entering Block Name, uses the Current attribute in level_editor.xml as Block name to be added to database.
• Properties > City > Blocks > [Re-Upload .BLD file] command added:  Allows re-uploading of .BLD file for selected Block, as long as it is NOT leased out or being used by yourself.
• "Allow Sublease" checkbox added to the following tabs:

• City > Properties > Leased Cities: [Add Block] dialogue
• City > Properties > Blocks: [Edit Properties] dialogue
• When the box is checked, the selected Block becomes subleaseable--meaning the Block owner can lease out Shops and Residences on this Block to other developers/users.  If the box is not checked, the Block is not subleaseable, meaning the Block Owner can only build Shops and Residences on this Block for their own use (note: There is no "Use By Myself" command for leased Residences yet--that will be coming soon). This sublease permission can be set when adding Blocks to your City ("Add Block"), or it can be changed after you've created a Block ("Edit Properties") ONLY if there are no existing 3rd party tenants in your Block.  If you have tenants (other than yourself) in your Block, you would need to run the "Evict Tenant" command first before changing the "Allow Sublease" status.

• If you don't have any leased Blocks, the Properties > Block tab will not be active.
• Change in itemdata.zip file size check:  When uploading an itemdata.zip file, the current file size limit is 512KB.  EXCEPTION: When uploading Shop or Residence interior files (Category: Interior), the itemdata.zip size limit is 2MB.
• Home > Account Info now shows "Company Code" under "Name". If you bought a City, it will show your company code (the code you chose when you signed up for a city to uniquely identify yourself or company - up to 6 capital letters).
• Home > Account Info > [Edit Account Info]: "Edit Company Logo" feature added. You can now upload thumbnail images of your company logo (NOTE: Change will be reflected immediately if you upload an image file with a different filename, but if you re-upload an image file with the same filename, it may take a few minutes before the change is reflected.)
• Administer > Company Members > [Add New Member]: Address, Phone, OS, Graphic Card, and CG Tool fields have been deleted from the [Add New Member] dialogue.
• Administer > Company Members > [Add New Member]: Displays an error message if you try to register an email address that is already registered as a Blue Mars Developer.
• Administer > Billing History: Displays various financial activity information.
• [Vendor] menu no longer appears in the [Upload Content] window except for City Developers who have multiple vendor codes.

SDK Editors

 Body Editor NEW!

• Import custom shapes.
• Import custom skins.
• Test custom shapes, skin, clothing, and animations.
• No upload functionality (coming soon).

Shop Editor

• Clone instances of decorations.
• Control for camera speed.
• Enable saving of work in progress.

BLUE MARS CLIENT

Websites:

• Updated User MyPage ( https://member.bluemars.com/MyPage/ ) features:
• MESSAGE tab is now enabled: Exchange messages between your Blue Mars friends.
• FRIENDS tab update
• "SEARCH MEMBERS" button: Search for people on Blue Mars by their Avatar Names or User ID, and send them Friend requests (which will show up on their User MyPage).
• "REMOVE" command in the Friends List will remove the selected User from your Friends List.
• "Waiting List" shows pending Friend requests that you have sent to other Users.
• "Request List" shows pending Friend requests you have received from other Users.

New Cities and City Updates:

• Shade City by eFrontier now has a Shop!  Purchasable T-shirts will be available on the second floor of Shade City.
• Welcome Area 2010 has been added. (The old welcome area has been retired).
• AR_Shelter has been added.  This is a minimalist level to be used as a meeting area in case there are problems with the new welcome area.
• VSE_TERC has been added.

New Places Browser

New Features and Feature Updates:

• Avatar names are now displayed above the avatar instead of the avatar ID.
• If you change your Avatar Name display option in the User MyPage, it will now be reflected in the overhead avatar name display as well as the chat box.
• New and updated City data can now be downloaded directly from the Places Browser--no need to install City patches.
• User interface update
• New look for the Place Browser!
• Refresh button in the Places Browser allows you to enter your downloaded City (except New Venice) without having to close and reopen Blue Mars. 
• The Camera icon has now  menu tray. The clothes, face, animation and settings icons are displayed by clicking on the arrow icon.

• The ? icon now opens the Blue Mars tutorial Website.
• Right-clicking avatar profile in the Client shows the Avatar Name as well as User ID.

User Name above Head, Right-Click to get User ID

• Settings update
• New Click Sound option in the Settings menu will let you turn the pointer sound on or off (default: Off).

Walking Sound On/Off

• New Display Name option will let you hide the overhead Avatar Name display of the avatars around you (to hide your avatar's overhead name from others, use the Edit Avatar window in your User MyPage).

Avatar Names On/Off

Bug Fixes:

• Bowling matchmaking fixed
• Golf matchmaking fixed
• Non-ASCII avatar names should now be displayed correctly regardless of the locale setting.

What would you like to see in the next release?

Rock