Now Showing Cloud-Rendered Blue Mars Running on a Mac, Macbook Air, Old Laptop, iPad, and iPhone!

As TechCrunch is just reporting, Blue Mars (where I'm currently consulting) is now showing demos of the 3D CryEngine-based world and social game platform running on OTOY's cloud-streaming service on multiple platforms. Above is Blue Mars running on an iPhone, iPad, and a Macbook Air, from within the Mac OS environment. No Parallels or Bootcamp needed, just an extremely small (i.e. a few kilobytes) OTOY launcher that can even be embedded in a web page.

Here's a demo we shot last week in Honolulu, over 2000 miles away from OTOY's servers in California:

This is the demo I've been dying to show off since mentioning it last September: an immersive, 3D experience using the very latest graphics technology that can be quickly launched and enjoyed from pretty much any system. I'm profoundly biased, of course, but I believe this represents a very viable means of making 3D interactive experiences mass market.

For the latest updates on Blue Mars streaming, register for a free account here. And see some more videos on the Blue Mars blog here. Here's my conversation with Avatar Reality CEO Jim Sink walking us through the details:

Some key takeaways: We're rolling this out in the first quarter of 2011, and yes, you can also stream Blue Mars on a good wireless connection. More here from Avatar Reality's Jasmine Spearing.

Avatar Reality's Jasmine Spearing driving Blue Mars cloud-rendered on the Mac

Comments

[Pathfinder Lester]

Man, that's cool!

[Adeon Writer]

But, can it see why kids love the taste of in-world build tools?

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Going to note this at our next roundtable meeting.

Cross platform + wireless = win for educators

With many colleagues already building in and actively exploring worlds beyond SL, Blue Mars suddenly becomes viable for those wanting a walled-garden grid. Thank you, Avatar Reality! I suddenly need a Hawaiian shirt.

[Hanno Tietgens]

Wow, great news – things are really picking up all over the 3D world. Will discuss this at the next Campus Hamburg meetup. Finally makes sense for an old Mac-user to create a BM account ... ;)

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Congratulations to Blue Mars on transforming themselves from a sterile, lackluster virtual experience to a sterile, lackluster experience that can be endured on multiple platforms. Golf clap.

[Rob Danton]

Nice demo of cloud rendering! While I think Arcadia is maybe a bit harsh, she does have a point... It seems to me that they fixed something that isn't the main problem with the platform... Which is (I feel) a lack of community and simply nothing to do in world except run around nicely rendered environments... I can do that in unity - which is genuinely cross platform.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

For the record, Arcadia, I never understood golf. Seemed to me like (mostly) white folks ruining a good walk.

Unless it's in Scotland. And in kilts. And wild boars come after you on the fairways.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

"I can do that in unity - which is genuinely cross platform."

I use Linux. Could've fooled me about Unity being genuinely cross-platform.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Harsh?

Well, okay, maybe a little. I keep hoping they'll snap out of it and get better.

It IS a nice feature. Other virtual worlds would do well to take a good long look at it.

[Little Lost Linden]

How does this work when stretched across a tri-panel display?

Does the video stream have resolution limits, if so, what are they?

For instance, when I stretch SL across 3 screens, my resolution is 5040x1024. Can you do the same with the BM cloud client?

[Rin Tae]

I am not yet sure what to think of this considering, that 'cloud' has been a rather empty buzzword for a while now. But of course I know the idea and that it can be done and if it will be done then it might help with BMs biggest flaw. And that is its need for a high end machine only a small part of users have. There is the thing about it all looking rather cold and sterile and some other development problems, but if they can work on the accesability then they will make a big step forward.

[Ron Overdrive]

@Melissa Yeuxdoux: I believe Unity is available for Linux, but only in the Pro version as I recall seeing Unity3D linux demos.

Honestly this move to cloud rendering for non-windows platforms just seems like laziness to me. Instead of writing the code for an actual Mac version they're just plopping down a Windows machine for remote access. I can't wait to see people complain about bluescreens when the cloud box crashes.

[Corn Flakes]

So basically Blue Mars is using the IBM mainframe model of computing, renamed to "cloud based" so that it can be hyped anew by bloggers. Meh.

[ColeMarie Soleil]

It runs pretty smoothly :) I made it in