A first look at Blue Mars Beta

It’s not like this sprang up unannounced, I have been salivating for it since I first read about it and wrote about it. Then I went about my life until BAM, it hit the email inbox. What am I talking about? Blue Mars Beta opened up and I got a lucky ticket to come in and go for a spin.

I don’t have misguided expectations about Blue Mars, but I do hear the scuttle on the street and I think some do have misguided expectations. This is not the same thing as Second Life, many parts are similar but in the guts of Blue Mars, you have a much higher placed bar at the level of content creators, but I get ahead of myself.

I’m one of those girls (cue the person..Hey that’s Torley’s wife..I know Ravi from flickr,really there is more to me but that is probably where you know me from) who is a bit of a technology nerd, not quite the elite level geek and that is something I reserve for code heads anyway. My background is in program management, regarding application compatibility on the developing Windows operating system, part of my responsibility was getting my team to acquire the latest top applications for test to scour over. I won’t go further with the boring stuff, wake up.are your eyes glazed over? ugh see? this is why you have to know your audience when breaking out the nerd-ness.

This experience immersed me with like minded people developing software and advocates of early testing, private and public beta..etc..who cares. I was a software junkie, maybe I shouldn’t write that as past tense. hahahaha

One piece of software I was really excited about was Second Life. I joined that Beta in Dec. of 2002. I love Second Life. I have done much in my time for the past almost 7 years. I have done sculpture, had shows, had stores, had galleries, been a project manager on over 20 full educational builds, found a husband, done animations, curate sims, and now I mostly poke around with  curating the best of the best on Here Island, enjoying my husband and producing machinima.

WHAT IN THE WORLD DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BLUE MARS?

Simmer down. This all sets the stage for why I say the things I say. How is our stage? looks good? ok..let’s continue.. can I get you something to drink?

If you want to go read all about what Blue Mars Online has to say and the background of their going-ons and I highly encourage this then go do so and hurry back!

Competition is good for innovation. Many times you see one company release there product only to see another company release a product that looks similar and be incrementally better, it should be better or why bother. I can see the parallels with Second Life and Blue Mars.

What do they have in common? They are both environments where the user has free choice of movement, it is not a game but may contain a game within itself and probably some more stuff but the differences are a bit more interesting.

What is different? Second Life is streaming your content live as you create it. Blue Mars will allow backend development by approved entities to host there own environment on Blue Mars. The Blue Mars environment is static, this helps with frame rate, which in turns makes your anims smooth. I love animations!

The bar for creating in Blue Mars is pretty high for the common person and that’s ok. For the user that wanted to shop and be social, I am dreaming for you many wonderful attachments and clothing layers. I didn’t really get into the in’s and out’s of adult content there. I didn’t see anything and I forgot to take off my clothes. I’ll try that next time.

ZOMG SECOND LIFE REPLACEMENT!! THE END IS NEAR!!!1111!!1!1!

Pro’s

Blue Mars is shaping up to be a very cool place and a step forward for virtual worlds.

Human Av’s look great

Ambient sound design is hot

High Frame Rates <3<3<3

Con’s

The content creation bar is really high, there won’t be a bed of imagination sandbox’ing or experimenting .

As of yet, no non human av’s

No flying, except perhaps by plane

Maybe it’s too realistic for me, I did not see one Unicorn (you could create a place on Blue Mars with one..and invite me! but there isn’t one there yet)

Many “ Virtual Worlds” to date have failed or are near end game ( example Active Worlds, Google Lively)

It’s still not even released, there have been a handful of ,”OMG we are the new Virtual world Shiznat!!” but then they peter out, lack of funding, poor management, too early to call this yet

lots of things I was hoping were functional are not yet and I anticipate them working on launch

…lots of speculation and watching.

I’ll definitely be watching, I think this is cool, one way or another.

Being so very talented in various fields, one area that I am not as strong with is writing, I hope you have muddled through my paragraphs and if you have a curiosity to see all this for yourself and are not in the beta, I made a series of video’s.

Enjoy this first video here on Zugzugz.com and then enjoy the rest of the series either on Flickr or Youtube. (all my stuff is almost always CC so please feel free to share)