The fish haven't changed yet. They appear slightly smaller, because the camera is farther away, and there's no lighting in the scene, so they look "smoother" than they should.

Beta testing / x64 testing
 

Glad to hear that development is going well. I haven't seen any posts on how to sign up for beta testing. I'm a tester by nature and by profession. I'd love to give the beta a few turns on WinXP x64. 2.6 works pretty good.

I'll keep watching for the forums. Let me know if there is any testing I can help out with.

And of course, Keep up the great work!

Thanks,

Chimmy

We already have a set group of testers that have been working with us for a long time. I doubt that any new ones will be added, but thanks for the interest.

Chimmy - We'll let you know. I think we may already have some 64-bit XP users out there. What we could probably use is a 64-bit Vista user with patience and communication skills. So far, most of those who have written to us seem to have serious mental problems. (This isn't meant to be a statement about Vista64 users in general, just the ones who have written to us :) )

As a throw-back to an earlier part of the discussion... Jim have you every played with ZBrush and exporting normals from there? I ask as I just, purely coincidentally, ran across someone talking about that today. I have no idea if it'd be relevant to you (they were using a tool called zmapper with zbrush), but it is designed to export stuff for games, presumably meaning direct-x?
John

No, I haven't heard of it, but I'll take a look.

I have an extra HD I can pop in and get a Vista x64 w/SLI install going. I'm in the software development field so I fully understand the time it takes investigating issues and clearly communicating them.

Even if you don't have anything specific I'm sure I can come up with a few good ideas that might break it :D

Thanks,

Chimmy

Still no idea if any use, but:

http://www.highend3d.com/news/software/56.html - zmapper

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/plugins/NormalMaps.zip - lightwave plugins

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/sho...5&page=3&pp=15

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/normalmaps.html

http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/ZMapper

http://www.ca3d-engine.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15

http://www.evasion3d.com/mw_lw_intro.html

I have a new quad Vista x64 machine :) geforce 8800 gtx

I'll be off the grid for a week starting Monday. Going down to Belize...to do research for new programs. Yeah, that's it, research.

I was going to say, where can you find a Vista user anywhere on the planet that still has any patience left? I know four guys who have tried Vista and only one of them is too stubborn to go back to XP.

Fortunately the experience has not effected their communications skills and they are recovering nicely. They are now able to receive short visits from friends and family. :lol:

Hey now, wait a minute... I am using Vista here at home and at work, i am a network admin.. i love Vista, there are a few querky things about it but I think it is a great operating system... really.

No worries, Bugsy. It wouldn't matter if Vista was twice as good and cost half - it would still be considered the definition of evil to Blommers.

I bought an HP laptop in October, wiped it, and put XP. It's heaven.

I have Vista and I also don't like it. For testing purposes, I am keeping it as Vista but I turned off all the annoying supposedly automatic protection to make it simpler on me.
I also turned off all the graphic bells and whistles that slows down my computing experience. It still have some annoying features left that are difficult to control and I can't turn off.
Nothing is simple with Vista in my experience so far.

Edgar thats sounds pretty much like every report I hear about Vista. For every one that says they think its ok, there are 100 that feel the same way you do. Personally I haven't actually sat down and tried it yet, but with all those comments I'm not in a hurry to either.

edgar....if your looking at turning off the junk in vista that slows things down you might want to check out this website...iv used his info on xp for several years now and its a big help on speeding things up.

http://www.blackviper.com/

Tiny Turtle, you wound me! Vista could be 10x better and cost 1/10 and I'd still define it as evil :D

However the chorus of posts here suggests that the Vista we have is pretty much a disappointment. Just ask a Vista user to indicate JUST ONE compelling benefit of Vista and they will be stumped. After a minute they will parrot back some marketing talking point (no doubt "security") and then retract it hastily.

The great crime here is that Vista puts developers at risk. Develop for Vista or for XP? I hate to think that Jim Sachs wastes valuable resources developing for Vista if he could put out MA 4.0 a year sooner. Given the serious application compatibility problems with Vista, this is a big issue.

This goes way beyond johnblommers hating Microsoft. Vista is hurting people and giving computing a bad name. And that's a problem.

Hey Bugsy , thanks for your positive post. So, seriously, what is it about Vista that works for you? What are the #1, #2, #3 and #4 great things that should compel a Windows XP user to upgrade to Vista?

For Mac OS X Leopard it's really easy:
#1 is Time Machine.
#2 is Spaces.
#3 is QuickLook
#4 is compatibility (no radical user interface changes, speed is the same as Tiger, and general application compatibility)

JB: would that be compelling reasons for an XP/W2K user to upgrade to Leopard? 'Cos all I heard was babble, babble, babble... :D
(Sorry JB, couldn't resist, this is the response I get from my first ex girlfriend whenever I talk IT in any way, shape or form!)
(Oh, and Tiny - in this case there are *other* reasons why she is Ex. Still friends, though!) :D:D

:asleep: ....... No, not you Mark! ;)

OK I'll byte ;) Please refer back to my post as I've added links for the first three most compelling reasons for you, your ex girl friend, or any WindowsXP/Vista user to get a Mac and run Leopard.

BTW I think it's important for anybody who critiques a product to have actually used it, otherwise there is an issue with credibility. I used Vista for a week and reverted that particular box to Mandriva 2007 Linux. And like many reading this, I've been using Windows XP since it came out. And I still prefer Windows 2000 Professional by a long margin. Windows 2000 Professional was the high point. It's been slip sliding away since then.

Well I haven't found (in my opinion) any reason not to like it however I would never ever try and convince any one to anything unless they tried it themselves and made their own opinion. For me, Vista works great.. I have also had many months of testing and tweeking it for work so I may have more hands on and experience than most. I have also noticed that with most of our users that are novice types it does frustrate them, but I have seen this is mostly caused by lack of experience, pre-concieved notions from people who hate it and also from people who don't like change.

like I said vista works great for me, it may not for you, and I would never try and twist anyones arms to push them toward using it.. use what make you feel comfotable :)

Sometimes I feel I'm the only Mac OS X user on the planet who doesn't feel the (desperate) need to preach the gospel of switching to anyone not yet on a Mac. :rolleyes: No wait, my brother doesn't do that either. (We're both on Tiger, Blommers - and I don't see an upgrade happening anytime soon for either of us.)

Yeah but I live about 20 miles from the Microsoft main campus. The stench of the dark side permeates this place. It can change a man.

Truth be told my brother is not a Mac evangelist either, nor is my sister, though they both are Mac users. So we know the effect is not hereditary :D

JB - Windows 3D developers don't develop for XP or Vista or Win98, etc - they develop for DirectX. It's entirely up to Microsoft to keep DirectX working properly on new operating systems. So far, even my old DirectX 6 program works fine on Vista. MA3 is DirectX 8/9.

You're the 3D developer of record here - thanks for the clarification. It's good to know that your work on MA3 is not going to be negatively impacted by Vista! :D

One has to wonder why there is so much discussion about Vista breaking programs that worked fine under XP. Is it the amplifier effect of the Internet? I do know from my own testing that Video LAN Client (VLC) had some major issues with Vista. Yet iTunes worked fine.

Oh, stop it, Blommers. There's only so much propaganda you can fit into every post before it become's nauseating! iTunes for Windows isn't an especially well-written program just like most of Apples efforts on the Windows platform.

And while you're at it - Could you clarify for us the wisdom on Apple's part in not discovering the bug which corrupted lots of harddrives when upgarding to Leopard because there was some issue with Boot Camp?
Still a perfect OS?

/Tiny Again and Again and Again

I just see nothing new in Vista that XP doesn't have -- feature wise. It's all heavy duty architectures that look pretty or might do something cool one day.

To me, the choice if I want a next generation OS is 2000/XP or Mac OS X.

I'll have to take your word for it, TinyTurtle, that Apple has poorly-written Windows applications, as I don't know anybody on the iTunes developer team.

Nobody on this forum likes to read stories about data loss. Still Boot Camp for Tiger was a Beta that expired before Leopard came out. Beta code is imperfect code indeed! Repartitioning hard drives is not for n00bs, beta testing system level software is not for n00bs, and those who use system level beta software and don't have backups - are indeed n00bs. :TD:

Now I am struggling with how to return this tread to its intended topic, namely MA3. A little help TinyTurtle?

Before I ask you guys to take it outside, I'll just say a few words.
Sure, the Mac is a fine machine with many innovative features, most of which they stole from the Amiga. And, like the Amiga, it's a niche market that will never take over the world. As an Amiga developer, I've been down that road, and won't be doing it again. I knew Jay Miner and all the Amiga team, and thought that the world could not possibly ignore this wave of the furure. I invested all my money in Commodore stock and created the interfaces and startup graphics and music for their CDTV and CD32 machines. Well, they were wiped out by the tidal wave of Microsoft, and I went down with the ship. So, I learned to swim in their ocean and never looked back. Yes, I have a Mac product on the market, but it only accounts for a tiny fraction of the Aquarium sales.

As long as Jim O'Connor is willing to put in Herculean efforts to do Mac conversions, I'll continue to have a Mac version on the market. Here's something you may not know: We had to create a special "Mac-look" box for the Apple stores. The normal product has both the Mac and PC versions on the CD, but the one for the Mac box had only the Mac version. Yet, it was the same price as regular version. Mac people do not even want those PC bytes on their disk. Now THAT's fanatacism.

Jim thanks so much for sharing some of your history with the Amiga. I'm kind of glad that Tiny Turtle and I got into it a little bit now :D

As you know, I'm a fan of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium - Mac Version - and I would not be here on these forums if it were not for the Mac version. It is the first screen saver I ever actually paid for and it is worth it.

Let me say that I have enjoyed every exchange with the people on this forum. Everybody here is first class! Sure there have been times when points of view did not align, but I find that I learn more that way. Frankly I enjoy a bit of banter once in a while. I just hope that nobody thinks that TinyTurtle and I actually hate each other. Not a chance! I enjoy our back and forth pokes but it's never with malice.

So let me hoist the traditional glass of Andorian Ale to you Jim Sachs, and to the excellent Jim O'Connor as well!

K'plagh!

PS, the tale about the Apple packaging for MA rings true to Steve Jobs form. But I think that if there is a single Mac/PC CDROM that is value add for the customer. For example you may be familiar with X-Plane. The main developer is Austin Meyer, and he develops on the Mac and leverages OpenGL for the 3D graphics. However, X-Plane comes in Mac, PC, and Linux on the same DVD. Damn but that is too cool!

PPS, Have you ever considered licensing the Unreal engine for your aquariums?

John, - Why always the long unnecessary 'quotes'? :erm:
..... It makes a long boring exchange, even longer and more boring! :lol: ..... :asleep:

P.S. iTunes was broken on Vista for some time (up to 7.2 I think), fixed now.

http://www.news.com/2100-1027_3-6164830.html

John,
Nevermind, that's clearly Microsoft's fault as well... :rolleyes:

Good point, thanks for the coaching, although in this case the long quote was from Jim - and a good one. :TU:

..... but not a million miles away! ;);)

Not quite fixed yet, x64 Vista has issues with Itunes now in 7.4 and 7.5. Itunes now lacks the 64 bit cd burn drivers it had in 7.3.2 and still has several install errors occuring. Luckily there is a quick, non-supported solution.

Also, I have a x64 Vista system running with dual monitors should you need beta systems on this unique breed.

Exellent movement on the 3.0. I remember the days of .99 some time ago!

ITunes is extremely slow on all our machines. It takes forever to even recognize an iPod when I plug it in. We've never been able to figure out the Books/Spoken word system at all. Chapters show up in one order in iTunes, and a different order on the iPod. Playlists disappear. The whole system needs an overhaul.

When someone reports a problem it's helpful to try to reproduce it. To see what is going on, I booted up my little Microtel box with its 1GB RAM, 10GB HD, Radeon 9200 PCI, and 800 Mhz VIA CPU. It recognized my iPhone within 8 seconds, and I expect it would be faster except that things get in the way:

- Windows XP insists on telling me, every time, it would be faster to use a USB 2.0 port even though it knows that there are none to be had.

- Windows thinks I just connected a camera called iPhone and wants to know what to do with it. Every time.

- iTunes 7.5 wants me to flash the iPhone to firmware 1.1.2 which I cannot do without bricking it, given the hacked firmware on it and all. I can check a box to disable that test.

Windows detects the USB device within a second (from the beebop sound). So I'm sorry but I cannot verify the poor response time you're seeing, Jim, so I can shed no light. The other issues you're having are doubtless iTunes-on-Windows issues, as I can assure you that the Mac version of iTunes 7.5 is a rock.

BTW I found a menu on the Windows vesrion of iTunes not found on Macintosh, you may wish to try it out:

iTunes --> Help --> Run Diagnostics