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Olivier Group: Super Admins Posts: 1868 Joined: Nov. 1999 Posted: Nov. 10 2002, 19:36 Music VR has been updated to version 1.1f, and The Smart World, the children's community, has been added to mikeoldfield.com. On Nov 23, Music VR has been updated to version 1.1g (thanks, Tim Unwin). Back to top

James Unregistered Posted: Nov. 10 2002, 21:03 In a world where sex and other sicko smut are used to sell and promote things its great to see Mike continuing to give goodness through his works.The childrens page is a nice touch.The whole Tres Lunas thing being the music and the interactive parts as Ive said before really deserve to reach an even wider audience than Mikes Fans.The world needs positive things in the mode of goodness like this particularly at this moment.                   Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Nov. 10 2002, 22:59 I wonder what Nestlé will think about the alphabet game being centred around smarties... ...perhaps it's part of a sponsorship deal (what was that fans said about Mike becoming too commercial?) Back to top

timshen Group: Members Posts: 684 Joined: Mar. 2001 Posted: Nov. 11 2002, 07:02 I just downloaded and installed the Smartworld demo. It's great fun even for an adult like me (but my 5 year old boy enjoyed it more I think). It is MVR with only the good world music (in the demo anyway) but a few other great scenes and a cool avatar of a swimming smartie with flippers, snorkel, arms and legs!! You start off in space with a floating desk woth Mr.Smartie sitting at it with his laptop (displaying MVR logo). He doesn't do anything as far as I can see but is cool to float around. Then there's alphabet planet with a saturn-like ring that has the letters of the alphabet around it. When you go to the planet you are taken to the forest (as in Tres Lunas minus the gateways, cross etc..) which has an easel with the letter 'A' on it and a picture of an ant. Going 'into' the easel will take you to a landscape with the letter 'A' in 3D and a red ant (as in the Ant Cave in MVR). You shoot 'A's here - shooting the 3D 'A' will take you to a game where you must take the Dice (with 'A' on it) through an arch (the same one as in MVR) - then you'll be taken back to the forest. This time there's an additional easel (others still remain) with the letter 'B' on it and a picture of a boat. Going into this takes you to a really cool underwater, sunken boat scene. Each letter plays in a similar way - the demo only has A,B and C - I could imagine with all 26 letter and the forest full of letter easels to choose from, it will be an awesome experience. There will probably not be much more music but ot's fun just to have more MVR landscapes to fly around :-) There's not much triggering of objects etc.. as in Tres Lunas but it's fun for kids, educational and for adults is another excuse to fly around cool landscapes. Well, now you know what it is! Tim -------------- Expect Great Things. Attempt Great Things. Back to top

Down Under Unregistered Posted: Nov. 11 2002, 17:24 I can't find the link to Music VR 1.1f on Mike's site?  Can anybody tell me where it is? Back to top

TOBY Group: Members Posts: 1562 Joined: May 2002 Posted: Nov. 11 2002, 17:29 Is it worth downloading? ps I'm allergic to the food colouring in smarties (BOOOOO) No seriously I am. Back to top

Down Under Unregistered Posted: Nov. 11 2002, 18:52 Mike's site used to have downloads of small update "patches".  I hope we don't have to download the whole 58 megs now just to do the update!  What does anybody know? Back to top

timshen Group: Members Posts: 684 Joined: Mar. 2001 Posted: Nov. 11 2002, 22:25 Down Under - You need to go to: http://www.mikeoldfield.com/update/ Here you can download the small sized patch for version 1.1f. Toby - I'd ay it was worth downloading just for the experience (no brightly coloured smarties here!!!! - especially if you have Toddlers. But even if you don't have small kids it's worth it just to see more MVR mandscapes (then you can uninstall it). It is a about 13Megs though so you must have a fast connection to make it worthwhile! -------------- Expect Great Things. Attempt Great Things. Back to top

Down Under Unregistered Posted: Nov. 12 2002, 02:08 Thanks timshen.  The homepage at http://www.mikeoldfield.com/ doesn't seem to contain a link to the update page, and I'd forgotten the correct address for it. Back to top

timshen Group: Members Posts: 684 Joined: Mar. 2001 Posted: Nov. 12 2002, 10:26 Now that the MVR download is 58Megs does it contain any new stuff? I downloaded the original one and have been downloading the patches as they have been released. Is it worth downloading the whole 58Megs again? -------------- Expect Great Things. Attempt Great Things. Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Nov. 12 2002, 18:03 I installed the update and found some cool rainclouds in the horses-TAIH scene, and some lightning strokes I don't think I've seen before. Were these also in the original version? -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Nov. 12 2002, 19:12 Some trivia about the Smart World demo which I've forgotten to mention before: 1. The smartie at the beginning is using a Windows keyboard and a Windows mouse. [Apart from the fact that MVR doesn't run on Macs, anyone who's (even just a little) familiar with Mac keyboards and mouses will instantly notice the differences. ] 2. The mouse is on the smartie's left and it's got three buttons and no middle wheel. A left-handed smartie with an old-fashioned mouse? 3. The smartie's fairly hi-tech LCD monitor is a FORM'A. Does this allude to anything? 4. In the A scene, there is a railroad (interrupted by barriers) and what seems a landing mark for an helicopter. Maybe these are the settings for future 'H for Helicopter' and 'T for Train' scenes. 5. The B scene setting looks like it is a lot wider than it appears. Yet there seems to be nothing in it but the giant B, a few fish and the sunken boat. 6. C scene: ditto for the setting, only the well-known (to MVR players...) underwater castle in it and the giant C. The swimming smartie avatar has got flippers, a snorkel but no mask... I wonder why! Is the water clear enough to see through it without a mask? (Lake water? No salt?) Or was a mask over his eyes too complicated for the MVR graphic engineers to draw? -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

timshen Group: Members Posts: 684 Joined: Mar. 2001 Posted: Nov. 12 2002, 22:21 Ugo - when you say you installed the 'update' do you mean the small patch (version 1.1f) or the whoel 58Megs installation? There's always been an overshadowing raincloud and lightning bolts in the TAIH scene - are you seeing something more perfected? Tim -------------- Expect Great Things. Attempt Great Things. Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Nov. 13 2002, 14:35 --->Tim: 1) I downloaded the small 1.1f patch. Everything worked just perfectly even before I installed it, and now it's perfect as well.   2) I noticed a very big and very well-painted cloud (just like in a Monet painting...) some seconds before it starts raining. I think it was less defined in previous versions, but I may be wrong.   -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

Mark 1 Group: Members Posts: 65 Joined: June 2001 Posted: Nov. 13 2002, 18:35 SmartWorld looks really nice and has a wonderful athmosphere. However, it's easy to get lost when you lose sight of your objective and while this is a good thing in Music VR as you're exploring and wandering anyway, it may lead to frustration with children. It would be great if there could be some arrow acting like a compass towards your goal or perhaps the nearest point of interest. What's very cool - if maybe not intented - is keeping the space bar pressed and seeing beams of letters strung together slowly drifting through the air... nice effect! What's also intriguing - if you float down towards the keyboard of the smartie behind the pc - the keyboard has real keys and they have what I think is Swedish on them. When you're on the keyboard - turn around to face the smartie... You're suddenly faced with a 30 foot smartie! Back to top

Ugo Group: Members Posts: 5495 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Nov. 13 2002, 19:33 ---> Mark 1... in response to your points... 1) I don't think that children, even small ones, can 'get lost' in the Smart World's environments. As I played some more, and floated around, I realized that the main target (the huge 3D letter) is clearly identifiable from many (if not from all) points of the environment it's in. And, in addition to this, I think that the fact that the 3D letters are the main targets of the game is made clear from the very beginning, by the kid's voice saying 'Press the space bar' as soon as the huge A appears... kids press the space bar, and they realize that the effect of pressing it is shooting small versions of the huge thing... and they are directed towards it, so it must be some kind of target.  How do I know all this? Well, I went through an apprenticeship course for school teachers, a while ago... I interacted a lot with kids & computers... and I realized that  kids are very fast [maybe even faster than us!!] in understanding the cause-and-effect relationship when they see it in a game setting. So, I repeat, I don't think that children get lost in here because they are free to float around, yes, but in the end they know what their main aim is, and they never lose it. Of course all of this is my own personal opinion, and you may have a totally different one. 2) This 'trailing' effect was already in MVR (see for example the rings in the dolphins scene), but of course only Mike and the programmers know if it was intentional or not. 3) The keyboard is in Spanish (there is a Ñ and a ¿ on it), and of course the keys are real because, as I said, it's supposed to represent a Windows PC keyboard. [AFAIK the Alt Gr key is not on Macs. ]. And of course the smartie gets huge when you are on the keyboard ... the proportions between the objects always remain the same... as you get nearer the keyboard, it gets bigger, its keys fill up the screen... and the smartie grows proportionally!!! The same thing happens with the shell in MVR. -------------- Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian Back to top

raven4x4x Group: Members Posts: 1535 Joined: Jan. 2002 Posted: Nov. 14 2002, 05:05 I think it is a really interesting and worthy idea! I haven't downloaded it yet (still getting there...) but the whole premise is a really worthwhile idea. As the other three 'bits' to the site become active we should see them being really good too. When you think about it, the Music VR environment is suited to kids. Having played the demo, I can see that the average adult 'shoot, shoot, bang, bang' gamer will not see MVR as an awesome game. Adapting it to a childrens world is a really good use of the game, and I congratulate Mike for it. -------------- Thank-you for helping us help you help us all. Back to top

timshen Group: Members Posts: 684 Joined: Mar. 2001 Posted: Nov. 14 2002, 08:54 Children really do love it - the main MVR game that is and (of course) Smart World. I have two kids, my girl (8) and boy (5) love it and often fight me to gain the controls! For them it's the whole experience of 'flying' and triggering different scenes and music. If we train them to enjoy such wholesome fun now maybe future generations will not enjoy the shoot & kill stuff so much :-) -------------- Expect Great Things. Attempt Great Things. Back to top

Mark 1 Group: Members Posts: 65 Joined: June 2001 Posted: Nov. 14 2002, 17:45 UGO, I like the smartworld demo and idea too, but I get the feeling I have not been sufficiently clear enough: 1. It IS easy to get lost in some areas. Not in WHAT you need to do, but rather WHERE. Take the start. You have the blue screen and some letters moving past. Now, if you move the cursor it's very easy to start spinning becasue there is no orientation point. Only later do you see the night sky and form afar (spinning and all I got several times away from the main point) you can see your goals. Some of the times the distance is fogged and this does also makes navigation less easy (although it does make the scene more athmospheric and I like the effect) since you do not see your target anymore. I admit this was because I started exploring, not immediately 'solving' the letter puzzle. For this kind of thing, there were puffs of white smoke rising from some objects of interest in the MVR demo but I would still prefer an arrow. This is just my observation - but I just thought it relevant because the alphabet training is more an object-oriented experience than the freeform adventure that MVR is. 2. I know the trailing was already in the MVR demo - but it just looks so darn nice I thought I'd mention it again... 3. What I meant by the keys are real was, that mostly in such cases a keyboard is modelled as a flat pane with a texture map on it on which the keys are represented. Here, each key is a real 3d object. Most realtime 3d stuff I know wouldn't go that far because this means that the 3d engine has to draw lots of triangles that are mostly not even seen but do slow down the drawing of the scene. I love it, though, that both the engine works so fast that it is able to draw such detail and that the designers put so much detail in it that you can go up close to a keyboard and inspect the key. And of course I understand that getting closer to the objects they grow larger - but there is a difference in perception since a. I believe the field of view from the MVR perspective is different to what the human eye sees and b. you can go from a giant's perspective to and ant's perspective in just a few seconds. While you're right that this is rationally a simple thing, it's a very surprising and interesting experience nonetheless. Back to top

James Unregistered Posted: Nov. 14 2002, 19:12 Excellent post Tinshen I really agree with your sentiment. Back to top

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