Blue Mars Light Client for PC & Mac Coming Soon

What you're looking at here is a sneak peek of the light PC client for the 3D virtual world Blue Mars from Avatar Reality, a variation of the iOS app the company launched last February, which already comes with a "Hot or Not for avatars" leaderboard, and an augemented reality feature.

Set to come out this month, I got an early glimpse of the light client last week during a visit with my old colleagues at Avatar Reality in Honolulu. (I did some consulting for the company last year.)

This is my avatar in Blue Mars' light client, at right.

If it launches as planned, this will be Avatar Reality's bid to nurture an audience with light virtual world experiences, preparing them for the full "worldly world" version (which Blue Mars still supports.)

More details on the client from AR President Kazuyuki Hashimoto:

• As with the iOS app, you can buy user-made content with the light client, but you'll still need the full client to develop and sell content
• Light client will come with cross-platform, text-based chat
• Customizable 3D rooms for avatars should be added in later versions
• At launch, client will be about 30 megs
• No high end graphics card needed - any NVidia/ATI card or integrated Intel chip after HD3000 should run it fine
• Runs in OpenGL, which means a Mac version is coming soonish

And yes, unlike the full Blue Mars client, the light client will be available for Macs. Take a look below:

Comments

[Ezra]

I take it the cloud-rendering deal has been dropped as the multiplatform strategy since the 'light' client will leverage OpenGL? Good step forward if so.

A lot of step backwards though if the initial featureset for that client is equivalent to the iOS app.

I dig the augmented reality, social networking integration and all that stuff, but to its detriment Blue Mars has become the poster child of "what ifs" in implementing buzz words as they come.

All I want to do is create experiences and experience other's creations with my friends in a place we can meet more friends.

'Hot or Not' isn't enough. The 1,000th consecutive party in the Welcome Area with BLU prizes isn't enough. AR needs to end the fascination with the latest buzzwords, iOS and social network integration and focus more on regaining the trust and faith of its developer community and empower them to build a virtual world.

My avatar dancing on my real life table is cool and being able to tweet to the world outside is awesome as well, but uh, whens it going to be about the virtual world itself with Blue Mars?

[Rusalka Writer]

If I can't create content it's rather pointless to me. I don't want to play with dolls and I don't care if I'm hot in RL. Why would I care if my doll was hot?

[Hamlet Au]

You might not, but dress-up doll games like Zwinky are hugely popular. Arguably IMVU is in that category too, and it's much larger than Second Life. I'm biased around Blue Mars, of course, but I do think this direction is important to create a mass audience for "full" virtual world experiences (as I say in the post.)

[Ezra]

Zwinky is Zwinky, IMVU is closer to a Second Life-esque virtual world than that, given support of custom 3D content creation and all.

Blue Mars is 3D Zwinky augmented reality Twitter client, and 3-5 more additional Frankenstein pieces in the coming year if AR drifts further away from just fostering the creation of a virtual world.

At a point Avatar Reality is going to have to start working on something customers that've actually shown interest want. It makes 0 sense to build for the customers of Zwinky, TweekDeck and a company out of a William Gibson book. They weren't AR's prospective customers.

By far the biggest amount of attention Blue Mars seemed to get was from Second Life users willing to move to or take up a second platform if it was worth their while.

Now though, Linden Lab has moved forward to the point we're months away from having mesh, meanwhile AR is just now getting to addressing one of the first legit concerns from the likes of Gwyn and those echoing her in support for Mac...while seemingly losing support for most of everything else except Hot or Not.

Its hard to be positive about Blue Mars, AR squandered a lot of potential chasing buzzword technologies and platforms, and I don't think they're anywhere near done so long as someone up top thinks its a good idea despite having more Twitter followers than in-world customers.

But again, credit where credit is due. I'm going to consider getting a new cross-platform desktop client requiring low system specs forward momentum from the bad call of shifting focus to iOS.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Unless Blue Mars have a way of moving from 'dress-up' into a full virtual world (like they used to have) then IMVU and Unity based worlds are much more representative of VWs than Blue Mars is.

[rikomatic]

I like the idea of having a "light" and a "pro" client to choose from. Particularly if the light client is a quick download.

30 megs sounds quite nice compared to the 160 for the current SL viewer 2, which has both a "basic" and "advanced" modes.

And of course a Mac viewer is very welcome. Color me interested.

[Dale Innis]

What did happen to the "cloud-rendering" thing? Wasn't that the Next Big Differentiator for Blue Mars?