From what I see, Blue Mars is still slated to be a place where content creators will be able to exercise some advanced tools in creating a virtual world and socializers will be able to enjoy the works. But, it lacks the gray area in between that Second Life has. (>_<)
So, this is the house that Desmond built. (^_^)
So far he's consistent. But, that's where my critique starts. In a way, he has succeeded in making Blue Mars look like Second Life. Now, I'm not sure if this good or bad thing yet. But, to me, it seems like he's under-utilizing the potential Blue Mars has. (>_<)
* Builds are still created with boxes that use textures to simulate depth.
* Plants and trees have a 'default' like appearance that do very little to break the monotony of the area.
* Most of the area resembles a shopping mall. There are plenty of potential rental suites around with no doors, open floor plans, and limited social centers in between.
It's great to see such an ambitious effort. Desmond is taking a risk he regrets NOT taking years ago in Second Life. Still, it doesn't make me any more confident in the platform. What exists so far is a huge investment of time and money with a very fuzzy future. (^_^)
About Blue Mars, itself... I'm still miffed at the forced window size I have to run in. Navigation is a chore. The "pretty" graphics fail to really impress. FPS and performance is far better than SL, I'll give them credit for that. And, without more people, there is zero incentive to use the service since all I've been able to do so far is walk around a static showcase. (=_=)y
2 comments:
Yes Immy...I wanted in on the ground floor in the Blue Mars world and first ventured in a few months ago.
The cursor being off spot was difficult to work around...Hair isn't bad...limited clothing...All that's liveable for a bit. But the lack of places to explore,the lack of residents, and worst of all the navigation makes staying involved a tiresome project so far.
I'm hoping someday it gets liveable.
Oh...and the 40 min download lol!
@Brinda: I tried playing Blue Mars on my Linux machine(via Wine) just before Christmas, and I ran into the same problems(cursor was okay though), including a blinding glow factor caused by Wine making navigation even worse. Even without the glow I'd have to agree it's still too immature to be seriously enjoyable.
And the Blue Mars folks ought to set up mirror download sites or put up their own torrent to make the client downloading process easier on everyone.
But the funny thing I noticed is that the Blue Mars viewer itself, without any city downloads, is comparable in size to the official SL viewer. The installer bloat is due to bundling DirectX and other stuff.
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