Far north? You guys really want to throw that gauntlet? :)

/Tiny 59

It's not exactly tropical here! - But there's an outside chance of the fish surviving.
... As for Scotland, (or Sweden! ;) ), you might as well stick 'em all in the freezer! :D

I'm happy to say that the Sea Fan is more or less under control now. It was very difficult eliminating the "buzz", or moire patterns in something with thousands of tiny holes in it. You would think that high-res textures would be the answer to everything, but not at all. Sometime the very blurriness of a low-res texture hides a multitude of sins.

Just to settle some curiosity. What you see now in the aquarium is pretty much the right side of the new tank. There are some changes and additions, but its probably 80% the same. The large pc. on the left in the current tank is even larger with a cave in it, and some other extras added in. Farther on to the left is a deeper area with more ground/shell in the front for movement, and several lines of smaller corals in the back. It looks very well balanced and should give more room for swimming, and much more additional room for the creatures that will be added later. There are more greens and colors, and it has more clams etc. that should show movement.

One question I have Jim is will the clams actually be able to move? ( I mean change position/placement in the tank, not only open and close ). I had some scallops in my old home tank and they moved by clacking their shells together and squirting water out of the back. It was kind of a squirt/jerk/jump/ float back down movement, but they did move. I eventually got rid of them because the down side to this was that when this happened they stirred up dust/shell from the bottom of the tank and it looked like a london fog in that area until it settled again.

Can you give some indication of how display on dual monitors will be implemented? - Will we see approx 2/3 of the new, nearly two widescreens wide background, displayed across our two 5x4 monitors? - Or will we still have only a clone on the second monitor, - as in the present MA?
I'm not referring to horizontally spanning an image across two monitors. I'm referring more to the way that Dream Aquarium is intended to cope with two screens. .... But I don't see how that can be achieved from one 32:9 image. It seems to me that it will have to be viewed in horizontal span mode. - And that will be a great pity, as that would mean having to have everything in span mode, (which would not be good!). Or the alternative, which would be to switch to span as and when required, - and that would be even worse!

I would imagine that there will no "cloning" and that both spanned and independent display devices will be able to take advantage of showing the background. Otherwise what's the point? :)

Dream Aquarium flip-flops the background on the second monitor.

Marine Aquarium 3 actually has a continuous background which is nearly 3 times as wide as a normal monitor, of which just part of it will be seen on 1 or even 2 monitors. Conceivably on 3 monitors, if you have a powerful enough video card, you would see the entire background and get black bars at the left of monitor #1 and the right of monitor #3.

I can't believe all this talk about the new aquarium, what do you guys think this place is, a fan site? :rolleyes:

This is so cool. :D

Yes, we should remember now shouldn't we, that this is now a gaming forum! ;)

and evidentally a photography forum for some. ;) :D

...... but sadly, a very poor second! :(

Regarding what you would see on two monitors -- I'm not sure what more I can do about it. The scene is roughly two widescreens wide, so if you were using two widescreen monitors side-by-side, there would be very little overlap in the middle. I can't say there would be NO overlap, because of the way 3D works. Items in the foreground wouldn't overlap at all, but some items in the distance would be visible on the right edge of the left monitor and the left edge of the right monitor. It's not feasible to add any more width; each additional screen would take about 1.5 years.

For single-monitor users (the vast majority), the scene can either scroll slowly from side to side or the arrow keys can be used to scroll manually to any desired view.

My understanding, from Alan's descriptions of his future intentions, and of what is 'doable'. Is that in the next DA dual monitor setup, the second monitor's background will be a continuation of the first, (with an adjustable allowance capable of being made for the screens' surround's widths). This to me sounds amazing! - If this is so, then I assume that fish moving from one half to the other, will first 'disappear' behind the monitor's surrounds! - before reappearing on the other screen! .... Amazing!!! - Single-monitor set-ups will be able to have either half as their single-monitor background.

I was hoping that something vaguely like this might be possible with the new MA 3.0. However, at fist I thought that horizontal-span mode would be the only way to achieve a spread across two monitors, and to allow the fish to move from one to the other. But from Jim's comments, it appears that an alternative way to use two monitors could be to display a left of centre portion on the left screen, and scroll to a right of centre portion on the right screen. (Assuming that the whole could be cloned on the second monitor, ala MA2.6). - Unfortunately this would not allow fish to be seen passing from one to the other. - But it could work for the background, and give the impression of a very large tank! (... And without the need to change to horizontal-span. - Which requires a re-boot! - And other re-adjustments!)

..... Will this be possible?

I would not like to be a beta tester. With due respect to Jim, hosing my system as a tester for someone, is something I would not care to do again.

I have a question though. Is Jim going to add any elements that make the water effect look more real? That's the biggest complaint I have between real aquariums and virtual ones. The fish never quite look like they're moving through water.

None of Jim's or other Prolific betas have ever hosed my system. They don't make system changes. The betas may occasionally crash or look funny or whatever, but I don't recall any system hosing.

Cliff - This is the way I see it happening (I haven't actually programmed any of this yet): There exists in 3D a very wide tank with fish and other critters playing in every part of it. If there are two monitors, each is fed by its own "camera" into this environment. The two cameras are totally independant, and there would be some way of telling the arrow keys which one to move (maybe shift-arrow would scroll the right screen). When you get it set up so that your two monitors look like one big tank with a bezel dividing them, save it that way.

Steve - If you mean the lightplay, then yes, it is one of the things I'm changing. I can't go into too much detail, because it's an area that MA has always enjoyed a clear advantage, but one difference is that each 3D object has its own lightplay. Before, there was a 2D background and "pretend" 3D shapes hanging in front of it, just for the lightplay. Getting these lined up perectly with the objects in the picture was nearly impossible.

But if you are talking about haze or junk floating in the water, then no I won't be including anything like that. The goal of any aquarium keeper is well-filtered, crystal-clear water.

Thanks, Jim. - That sounds good! - I'm looking forward to trying it. Good luck with the programming!

While I respect what you are saying, you should know that the very first "beta" test version of Jim's Aquarium back in 2000, was more stable than most of Microsoft's final release software. As a beta, alpha, heck, "bleeding edge preview" tester for Jim's Aquarium, I have tried over 100 different versions of the software. Not one "hosed" my computer.

Beta testing
 

I know this is my first post, but I'll throw my hat in for any beta testing work. I am a software tester by profession for over 7 years. I run beta or even alpha software all the time. I have no problem with crashes, hangs, etc. I'm on WinXP x64 with a 1920x1200 screen. Feel free to shoot me a mail or PM if you have any questions :)

Thanks,

Jim

The same with me.