A Question and Comment about the FAQ
 

From the faq

Quote:

3.5. But I am experiencing banding in the background and on the Powder Blue Tang. Surely 32-bit would fix this? You are experiencing a driver problem. Please make sure you have the recommended driver from www.feldoncentral.com/Sachs/help.html.

I've now been through three graphics cards, (admittedly all Geforce, GTS, Asus GF3, nVidia Reference GF3 x2) and more drivers than I can remember, including the 12.41's recommended and the latest 21.81's. Still there is banding in the background, (which is much more noticeable on a larger monitor).

Is this not a programming issue?, as in maybe it hasn't been written with enough colours originally, so regardless what colour depth it is run in it wouldn't display it as a pure colour fade without banding? I will soon be getting a Radeon 8500, If that has the same banding problem can I assume it's unlikely to be driver / hardware related issue? This is a valid question, no flames please, I would like to sort this out as the banding detracts from the projected realism.

From the faq,

Quote:

5.2. Why does the Aquarium run slowly on my GeForce 3 card when I have anti-aliasing (Quincunx) turned on? Because Quincunx is hype. Turn it off

This is a rather opinionated and wrong statement, Yes the Aquarium does run slowly with Quincunx enabled, so best to turn it off, but as for it being hype. Works fine in a lot of games really reducing the jaggies, with an acceptable performance hit. Nothing else I've used has the massive performance hit the Aquarium does with it enabled, so maybe it's something to do with the Aquarium coding as to why it runs so slow with it enabled?

Re: A Question and Comment about the FAQ
 

The background is done using a "wash". This means that the program tells the video card what color to make the top of the screen, what color to make the bottom, and the card's drivers are responsible for filling in every color in between. Every card we have tested in the past year has generated a smooth wash with no banding, as long as anti-aliasing is turned off. (I haven't tried a G-Force3 yet, but have heard it also works fine.)

To map 32-bit color values into 16-bit color space, the cards use dithering, which simply means that they alternate pixels of the two closest 16-bit colors to form the 32-bit target color. Some drivers have a setting to enable or disable hardware dithering, so make sure it's on if you've got a button for it in your Settings sheet. If anti-aliasing is used (it's only useful for low-res games) then dithering is disabled.

Re: A Question and Comment about the FAQ
 

Thanks for the reply Jim as I know you must be busy.

I've been with the screensaver since sep 2000, (can't remember the version number back then), I hoped a Dx8 / 32 bit colour update would fix this banding. I posted the question after reading there wont be a DX8 update with 32 colour support and this wouldn't solve the banding even if it were made for XP. The GTS I mentioned is a GF2 and the banding has always been present right from the beginning. I've been through many component upgrades to the PC Including the monitor, so that none of it is original now, and various O/s have been installed (98SE, Me, 2000,), Only common denominator is the Geforce range of cards.

My girlfriend can't see this banding but it annoys me. I've got alaising disabled and in that time I've had more driver revisions than I could possible remember. Does anyone one else see this in the blue/green background...look close, especially if you have a large high quality monitor and a non nvidia 3D card?.

Like I said I will be getting a Radeon 8500 later on so I'll report back with the results.

My point on the Quincunx is the games are running usually 1024x768 32 as max some 800x600 32 with Quincunx to get a high enough frame rate for me, (above 60fps), and we are talking newer detailed games run with full details, games like Nolf, Project IGI.

Now with the Aquarium at 1024x768 16 I get over 300fps sustained, but enable Quincunx and it is about 26fps at the same resolution. I'm not saying it is the Aquarium that is at fault, but there is something awry here, and statements like "Quincunx is hype" are not an acceptable answer imo.

Re: A Question and Comment about the FAQ
 

I will add this post to the FAQ. Basically, the banding cannot seem to be resolved on some systems.

The banding bug does go away with the DirectX 8 Windows XP version of the Aquarium, but alas that only has 3 fish and is based off of 99G. And Jim does not have the time and resources to maintain two versions, DX6 for for 95/98/ME and DX8 for 2000/XP.

Check out this posting about 2 pages down:

http://pub41.ezboard.com/fsachsaquar...icID=257.topic