Blue Mars: Better than SL?
Alternatively titled: ‘Riko’s first foray into a virtual world not called Second Life.’
Released to a beta audience in August of last year, Blue Mars is one of the most prominent competitors to Second Life in the virtual world platform, or ‘metaverse’, genre. The company producing the platform, Avatar Reality, describe it as,
“the premium 3D virtual world platform featuring class leading fidelity, scalability, security, and connectivity.”
Fighting talk from a rookie! But intriguing. Especially given the high quality imagery posted on the Blue Mars web site, which was its main draw for me.
My avatar Aimi in ‘New Venice’
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My initial impressions…
Having originally signed up as a beta tester, after downloading the software I was tactfully informed that my reasonably average PC fell well below the system requirements for Blue Mars. More than a little disgusted, I gave up on it entirely.
Several months on (and with a higher spec machine), I decided to give Blue Mars another go. Amazingly enough, this time it worked!
Having already registered my (fully customisable) avatar name, all that was needed was to download the client. This took a lot less time than my first attempt. Loading the software provided no hitches, and once I got past the imposed avatar customisation screens I was presented with a reason for the quick download time.
Rather than logging you straight into the last area you visited, Blue Mars presents you with a choice of ‘cities’ to visit, all of which require an extra download. The initial welcome area however was bundled with the software, so I visited this area first. I then visited about six or so of the other cities and game areas.
The Blue Mars city select screen
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Why is Blue Mars better than SL?
Within my first five minutes of experiencing Blue Mars, several positive points made themselves known. The main one being the absolutely gorgeous graphics engine.
Blue Mars has realistic, moving shadows and reflections for avatars and objects, and while user-created buildings appear similar to those in Second Life, the atmospheric settings make even plain boxes look vastly superior. Water reflections ripple and distort realistically.
Sit down before reading this one: there is NO LAG. Because the cities you visit are downloaded prior to viewing, scripts, objects and textures rez almost instantaneously. Multiple avatars in a region have next to no effect on lag - I’ve heard that over 1,000 avatars can be present in the same city with no detrimental effect.
Content quality is much better. Trees and vegetation look realistic. Boats bob up and down on the waves. Walking on muddy floors throws up realistic-looking dust.
The content creation system is very secure - Blue Mars just doesn’t have the copyright theft issues that plague Second Life.
The quality of avatar design is very high; so high that it’s virtually impossible to tell a new player from someone who has been playing for months. The lighting in Blue Mars doesn’t cast unflattering shadows on your avatar either. Clothes are fully sculpted rather than textured onto the skin, and hair shines, bounces and swings over shoulders so realistically you’d believe you were watching a L’Oreal advert.
No newbie waddle - all avatars come with a built-in customisable AO with accompanying gestures, all of which are smooth and blend together nicely.
The cities are vast. My favourite of the areas I visited, New Venice, felt like a realistically-sized small town, and looked very picturesque with its background mountains and houses heading up into the hills. As far as I could tell, there are no sharp square edges to a city, like in a sim; nor are there laggy border crossings to negotiate.
I particularly liked the idea that ‘private’ spaces are available in Blue Mars. The golf game, which works more like an integrated ‘normal’ style video game, shows a lot of potential in this feature and adds a dimension to Blue Mars that Second Life just doesn’t have.
Playing golf in Blue Mars
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Why is Blue Mars NOT better than SL?
There are also many downsides to Blue Mars.
It is almost completely empty. In two hours of exploration I could count the number of fellow residents I spotted on the fingers of one hand. Though built as a social environment, there don’t appear to be anywhere near the 1,000 avatars per city that Avatar Reality claim is possible (so will this theory actually be put to the test?).
There isn’t enough guidance provided for new residents. There are no tutorials built into the game to teach movement, how to use the client and so on, and no friendly greeters, staff or volunteer, waiting to answer questions. The welcome area was pleasant and nicely designed, but almost devoid of helpful information beyond a board showing blog updates. All tutorials appear to be found on YouTube, created by residents.
While interesting, there are very few areas to visit at present. Of these, only one or two held my attention for longer than ten minutes. While the content quality is high, there isn’t enough of it to be truly immersive. Row upon row of empty shops and seemingly miles of landscape are irritating, when your avatar can only move so fast.
The controls for moving your avatar are clunky and uncomfortable. The default movement setting is ‘point-and-click’ style, allowing you to move your avatar to different locations from a third person point of view. However, this suits a 2D scrolling game better than a 3D virtual world. It wasn’t until I discovered the ability to switch on ‘camera follow’ that the movement began to resemble the fluidity of movement in Second Life. Even then, your avatar only moves based on grid points, following a blue arrow, so movement is jerky. Extremely so when climbing stairs, as the camera can dart around so fast that if I was an epileptic I’d be worried.
Avatars can’t jump. While flying is allowed in certain areas, the movement relies on the mouse to steer, and this is even more temperamental than simply walking. If you fall in the water while walking around, you’re stuck for good.
You can’t TP directly to any spot in a city; you can only use the cities menu or scripted items within an area to arrive at a destination point. Scripted items which allow automated movement, such as boats, teleport points and lifts, are extremely buggy. Most of these refused to work for me, which was disappointing. I also crashed/froze/spun out into the ether numerous times.
The user interface is very minimal. The six or so buttons allow you to bring up the cities menu, view your friends list, change clothes and make-up, change animations and choose basic options, but very little else. While this could be claimed as easy for new players to use, this also means you have little control over your viewing experience.
Customisation just isn’t high enough to match the levels of Second Life. While a server hog, the inventory system provides a much more powerful experience. In Blue Mars, clothes and hair are very difficult to find in quantities great enough to provide the ability to create an individual avatar. At the moment, there is no inbuilt way to take photos in the game.
Nebula West in GridRock City. The UI is shown at the bottom of the screen. On the left, a chat box with expandable chat history, and on the far right, the log out button. In the centre, buttons for the friends list, camera view, city select screen, help, menu expand (the menu shown in full here), clothes, make-up, animations, options.
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Overall opinions…
Blue Mars, while extremely pretty, has a long way to go before it can call itself a serious rival to Second Life. I consider myself to be more patient than most regarding exploring virtual areas for the sake of doing so, and even I was disappointed. However, there is a great deal of potential in Blue Mars. What appears possible in the future is exciting. Should the platform generate enough users and more content, and several serious problems be given enough attention, the platform could eventually become the ‘premium 3D world platform’ it claims to be. As for the present, I don’t think it can claim that title.
