Vialli Rossini

Couldnt agree more

YouTube - apb

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Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

For those of you wishing to run on the Mac:

Parallels, Virtualbox, and VMWare Fusion are all called virtualization solutions. They provide an abstraction layer between your hardware and any number of installed 'guest' OSes that allow them to run from within your current operating environment. These require fully-installed licenses to the guest operating systems you will be running (such as Windows XP/Vista/7 in this case), and tend to be very inefficient, particularly with 3D graphics.

Boot Camp is Apple's frontend solution to installing Windows natively on their hardware. It slightly modifies the partition scheme of your hard drive and firmware configuration (macs use a newer technology known as EFI, which must emulate a traditional BIOS/CMOS for Windows compatibility until more PC manufacturers decide to move away from legacy technologies) to accommodate a Windows installation. This uses native Windows drivers and is the most effective solution to running Blue Mars on a Mac, though obviously you are out the cost of a Windows license, and the space on your hard drive for an adequate-sized NTFS partition.

The final solution is that of API wrappers such as Cider/Cedega/Wine/CrossOver. These simulate a Windows environment using reverse-engineered and public Windows and (very importantly) DirectX APIs, allowing them to operate from within OS X (Or most flavors of *ix). This does come with some performance hit, but it is much less than that of emulation on the scale of Parallels, etc. Unfortunately, these engines tend to require a deal of tweaking for each individual application run within them, as the implementation of the aforementioned APIs is incomplete, particularly when it comes to newer shader technologies. Blue Mars (from my observations) cannot currently run within the CrossOver suite, though I haven't really taken the time to test it with the more 'professional' Cedega and Cider applications. One solution Avatar Reality could take to bring Blue Mars to the mac, should they want, would be to partner with TransGaming to develop a Blue Mars client that operates through Cider as CCP did when they brought the EVE Online client to the mac.

Fmeh

Currently in BM, the only way to make the left and right arrows make the avatar walk left and right is when the camera view is in first-person mode. I hope they give more options for that in the future. At least they give that option at all though.

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Fmeh

Holy crap!!!! WOW!!!

Atashi Yue

Yeah, and that's all static info too, no reason why BM can't do that. Awesome stuff.

juro

Full disclosure: I work for VMware. With that said...

VMware is aware of the limitations with 3D performance in the VM and the Fusion team is working to fix it in an upcoming release. I have not played with the beta of the new version, but I've heard good reports on the improvements with 3D graphics. We shall see. I do know that we have a huge base of gamers and Mac enthusiasts, so I would be surprised if this was an issue for much longer.

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Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

Thanks, Juro. That's really exciting news to hear!

Beezle Warburton

The lack of customizable controls is one of my beefs with SL.

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Beezle Warburton

Ah, the "September 2: New Blue Mars Player Client available" email has a link to a direct download.

Yay, I'll be checking it out soon.

Beezle Warburton

They want a phone number and address.

I have a Google Voice for a not-really-my-phone number, but the address will have to wait until i get a PO Box.

Hypatia Callisto

Personally I dont find any of that useful with a mouse or a keyboard

But you can detach the camera in Blue Mars via Lua scripting, and it can do all those things.

What would be best is to implement 3dconnexion/joystick support instead of keystroke methods. SL has them too. I better suggest it.

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Beezle Warburton

K, how do you turn off the maddening beep every time you take a step?

Lucifer Baphomet

Turn your speakers off

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Beezle Warburton

Beezle Warburton

K, here's my thoughts:

Movement is very clunky. Bleep Bleep fucking Bleep. And the nice big glowy arrow >_<
Avatar customization is very limited.
Where do I turn on anti-aliasing, hmm?
It might look nice if you're used to the Sims

I'll try again in a couple of months.

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

Are you kidding? It looks terrible compared to the sims

But it's still very early in development, and once the interface is fleshed out a bit more hopefully content devs who don't work for the mothership will rectify that.

Beezle Warburton

The Sims 2?

Anti-aliasing would help. There doesn't seem to be any sort of control panel, though. I can't even get it full-screen. It's a box in the middle of my screen o.O

Fmeh

I agree--but at least with SL, if I click the left button and hold it on my avatar, it moves like a standard First Person Shooter, and, as you have mentioned, it doesn't make a ridiculous little mini-jingle, and it doesn't put a glowing arrow in front of the avatar.

I also agree that it'd be nice if there were ANY graphical preferences that could be adjusted.

DanielRavenNest

Actually, there is one now, cause I have been writing it:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User%27s_Manual

(and as explained in the first page, you can easily open it right in the search window while logged in)

But you are correct that there is not a Linden Lab provided one. The pain of that lack is what prompted me to work on the wiki-based one.

@Fmeh - the Blue Mars client version is labeled 0.49 , and that's a fair assessment of it's state - about half done. The core CryEngine works just fine, and the developer tools are coming along (still a bit rough), but the end-user things like menus and controls are a long way from finished.

Rock

The screen size can be adjusted to full screen if you wish, but it is not recommended at the moment, as the game does not resize itself with the window, so some elements of the screen may be off the screen, and things on the screen you click do not respond as your pointer is not 'actually' over the clickable area although it appears to be. BM have said that they will issue a release where the screen size can be set from within the GUI, and will resize correctly, but I am not sure if it will be in this week's big new release.

The graphics settings can be changed quite safely though. The CryEngine2 has 4 graphics settings:

1 = Low
2 = Medium
3 = High (this is the default setting for BM)
4 = Very High

However, there are dozens of parameters that can be tweaked individually, via the config files, and there are how-tos on how to get Very High on the cheap, and there is a really carefully crafted config file in the forum that allows BM to run on old Casio calculators I was getting 15-20fps normally with my Pentium 4 rig, and was getting 50-70fps after using this config file, and the scene was not all that bad at all.

You can change the graphics setting via the config files, and details on how to do this, and change to fullscreen are here.

Rock

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Chapter & Metaverse Blog: Chapter & Metaverse
Blue Mars forum: Life On Mars - Home

DanielRavenNest

After a couple of days of messing around with 3ds Max and the Blue Mars editors I was able to make this "Proof of Concept" Build. It consists of two separate "items" (objects in SL speak), the box with a translucent window, and the door. They were built separately, the box in 3ds Max, and the door in Sketchup, and then imported into the Block Editor.

Think of the Block Editor as an offline SL Sandbox. When you have a completed build, then the whole thing gets uploaded to a City as a unit. The point of the proof of concept is that if I can successfully combine two items, in theory it can be done with any number of items, which can be supplied by different people using different programs, emailed, etc.

This model has not been exported to a city yet, cause there isn't one available to me.

The entire process I used is laid out below if anyone is interested:



Blue Mars Workflow With
3DS MAX SOURCE MODEL:
========================

Software Used: 3DS Max 2010 on Windows XP SP3
With SP1 from Autodesk - Autodesk 3ds Max Services & Support - Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 Service Pack 1
And OpenCollada 1.2.3 (25Sep09 revision) from OpenCOLLADA - Download

Notes:
=====

(1) Apparently Blue Mars tools have a problem with filenames that have spaces in them, so I had to rename one
of my diffuse texture maps so it would work.
(2) The DirectDraw (.dds) final images are 512x512, so allowing for conversion and compression, source images
larger than 1024x1024 are probably not worthwhile.


In 3ds Max:
=========

(1) Set up unit scale with Customize > Units Setup > Centimeters
(2) Build geometry with Right Command Panel > Create Tab as needed,
(3) MainToolbar > Material Editor note:
To get translucent item I used Diffuse map for texture, Opacity with shader Basic Parameters. Other combinations may work but have not tried yet
(4) Save scene as .max file for later editing if needed
(5) Top Left 3ds Icon button > Export > [filename] & COLLADA NextGen ; OK ; Exit 3ds

In Windows:
==========

(1) 3Ds created an images folder and [filename].dae file in My Documents\3dsMax\export
Move [filename].dae to C:\Program FIle\Blue Mars Developer Tools\Game\Objects\MyData\[new folder]
(2) If not already sized and converted, size images to power of 2 (256x256, 512x1024, etc), & convert to to TIF format,
then place TIF files in same folder.

Note: reading the .dae file, it seems to reference the export folder. So moving the images over may not be needed
in the latest version of openCollada, need to experiment more with this.

In Blue Mars Item Editor
====================

(1) File > Import > MyData\[new folder]\[filename].dae
(2) With popup Collada converter window > Convert button, then Load button
(3) Use right mouse to orbit & scroll to zoom, arrows to pan. Check your item to see if it looks OK
(4) Items > Create Item from Selection (saves all the bits in a zip file), then Items > Check Item in Blue Mars; Yes ; login
Inspect in the Blue Mars viewer, if it looks good, then log out, and close Item Editor.

Blue Mars Block Editor
===================

(1) To start new project: Copy existing blank .bld to new folder in folder tree MyData\NEWCO_NewCity\Block_Data\Block_3 or whatever
(2) File menu > Open BLD > My Data > [cityname] > Block_Data > Block_3 > [blockname].bld
(3) Set Bottom Toolbar > Speed ~0.05 to slow camera to reasonable level
(4) For easier postioning, Set main Toolbar > Ref Coords System to World for each of 3 edit buttons (Sel & Move, Sel & Rot, Sel & Scale)
then use bottom toolbar XYZ numbers for absolute position, angle & scale of your item
(5) Camera controls: Arrows or WASD to pan sideways and move camera fwd and back along view axis;
Right mouse + move mouse to turn camera view axis
(6) Menu View > Show RollupBar if not already visible;
(7) To place items use RollupBar > New Tab > Brush; Select item from browser tree; Drag+ left click to place in 3D view
then position, rotate & scale as needed for your scene
(8) When you have it completed File > Save BLD to save it.

Notes: There is no ground texture. Not sure if we need to import something or place a file in the correct location.

Atashi Yue

Changing the system settings for lower end video cards and machines really makes a difference in speed, but it also degrades the beauty of Blue Mars quite a bit. For reference:
Low settings = higher fps -


Default settings = lower fps but better graphics quality -

Rock

I actually prefer the first one! The colours look sharper and the shadows softer, which I prefer. the water looks better in the second one though.

Rock

juro

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sobriquet Kryakutnoy Thanks, Juro. That's really exciting news to hear!

Following up on this... today, VMware made a pre-announcement of Fusion 3 and in the blog entry is this nugget:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fusion Team Best-in-Class 3D Graphics. VMware was the first to provide virtual 3D graphics and is the first to support Windows Aero in a virtual machine on the Mac. VMware Fusion 3 is also first to support DirectX 9 Shader Model 3.0 3D graphics and now adds support for OpenGL 2.1 for Windows virtual machines to enable more Windows applications and games.

Once you get past the fluff, it looks like they've made some good advances with 3D graphics capabilities in a VM. I don't know what this will mean for running SL or BM in a VM, but one can hope.