Blue Mars Adds In-App Payment of User-Created Content to Its iPhone/iPad App

Avatar Reality has a new update to its free iPhone/iPad app for Blue Mars, adding the ability to buy and use user-generated content made for the virtual world with in-app payments on the iOS system. (You can buy blocks of BLU$, the official Blue Mars currency, with purchases ranging from $0.99 to $9.99.) Items are searchable by popularity and keyword in the app (see pic above right), and I think this is probably the first app where you can buy user-generated 3D content that's usable on the app itself, or the PC version of the world. For 3D content creators, this means a new market for their products.

For Blue Mars, this is the latest addition to the app, but many more are to come. While it's currently a kind of "Hot or Not for Avatars" app, the developers have plans to integrate it more directly with the virtual world. Last month during a visit to the offices of Avatar Reality in Honolulu (where I was briefly a consultant, last year), the developers showed me their roadmap for the app, which includes app-to-world avatar chat, and integration with Twitter and Facebook. While it's still early days, this could be a very smart strategic move (in my biased opinion, but also Grace McDunnough's): With the recent launch of iPad 2 and the huge success of the first iPad, we need to consider whether the future of virtual worlds and other 3D content belongs to the PC, or to the tablet.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

I tried the app but was disappointed to find the clothing selection 98% female, 2% male. So here I stand in a white t-shirt and black short-shorts.

[Rin Tae]

"..we need to consider whether the future of virtual worlds and other 3D content belongs to the PC, or to the tablet."

It is safe to assume, that mobile systems (laptops, notebooks, tablets etc.) will continue with what they are doing already. Pushing the traditional PC more and more away from the central position it had in the past. And with this, all content will have to follow and with this also virtual worlds that too will have to find their way into those new platforms.

Hopefully, this also gets the developers of those devices to increase their abilities further, because it is one thing to have nice looking avis and another to have them also walk around a nice looking world. After all I would not like to see a repetition of Google's 'Lively' to be presented as the new big thing in 3D content.

[Danielle]

At this point the iOS devices are underpowered from a graphics standpoint. So more advanced features like normal maps and metallic reflections (which I use in my Blue Mars items on the PC) are not being shown. It is also limited in how many avatars and how much of the surroundings can be shown.

These limitations will rapidly change in the next few years, so users on portable devices will definitely increase.

Re: Social integration - One thing Hamlet missed reporting is version 0.87 of the PC client already has a Twitter button added. You can tweet and auto-post a screenshot from within the program.