Blue Mars Welcome Area FAQ
Published by Rock VacircaQ: How do I walk, run, turn etc in Blue Mars?
To walk just click the ground where you want to walk to. If you click the ground more than 20m away you will run there. Alternatively you can use the Up arrow key to walk. Use the left/right arrow keys to turn, and use the down arrow key to reverse direction. The WASD keys on the keyboard also work. If you find that the arrow keys are not working, it could be because the Chat box has the focus, so click on the main window title bar to get the focus back to the main window, then they should work fine. To pan and tilt your camera, just hold down the right mouse button and drag your mouse.
Q: How can I see what Frames Per Second (fps) I am getting.
Turn on your on-screen info, you will get lots of useful info, as well as your fps. How-to here.
Q: I have changed my Screen Resolution in Preferences, now I cannot click any buttons.
You can change your screen resolution using Preferences to one of the following:
- 1920 x 1080
- 1600 x 900
- 1440 x 810
- 1280 x 720 (default)
- 1024 x 576
Well, if everything was fine before you changed resolution, then all you need to do is to return to the default setting. To do this, close Blue Mars (if you cannot access the Logout button, then try the top-right 'X' standard Windows 'close window' control, and if that is not available, then press Control-Shift-Delete to get the Windows Task Manager up, and close Blue Mars from there.
Then, navigate to the game.cfg file and delete it. In Windows XP, this is located at My Documents/My Games/Blue Mars/game.cfg Don't worry about deleting it, when you restart Blue Mars it will be re-created with all the default values.
If, however, the default value of 1280 x 720 is not suitable for your PC/laptop, then try the following.
- Open the game.cfg file in Notepad (right-click the game.cfg file, choose Open With, and select Notepad, OR open Notepad then drag game.cfg into it). The two values you are looking for are:
r_Width = 1280
r_Height = 720
- Change these to the first pair of values in the above table, i.e
r_Width = 1920
r_Height = 1080
- Save the file.
- Restart Blue Mars.
Q: Can I fly, or teleport in Blue Mars?
This is determined by the City Developers, although we are pressing Avatar Reality to have a minimum set of functions in the User Interface (such as flying, teleporting etc, as these are common functions in other Virtual Worlds). Then City owners can then switch them off if they wish, but at least a common set of UI controls can be used.
At present you can fly and teleport only in Venezia (formerly known as New Venice). To activate it just press the ESC key. You will then get an on-screen display giving you the option of selecting up to 9 teleport destinations from the numbers 1-9 on your NUMERIC keyboard. If you select 1, for example, your camera will teleport there instantly, you can pan and tilt around and see if you wish to teleport there in person. If you do just press the 'q' key on your keyboard. If not, just try another number.
If you press no number, but just aim your camera upwards (by holding down the right mouse button and then dragging your mouse) then press the up arrow, your camera will detach from your avatar and fly. You can send it anywhere you like over 64 sq km of land, and if you see an interesting place you can press the 'q' key on your keyboard to teleport there instantly.
Q: Will there be any inworld creation as in Second Life here?
No. All creation is done offworld, in Sandbox mode, then uploaded into Blue Mars.
You can create objects in any of the industry standard 3D modelling applications, such as 3DSMax or Maya, or the free ones such as Blender or Sketchup. There are many others, full list is here. Clothing can be done in Photoshop, using AR-provided templates.
Objects, clothing etc are then imported into the Blue Mars Editors and from there can be uploaded into Blue Mars.
