More Eye Candy for High End GPUs?
 

Is it possible to add extra eye candy for those with high end GPUs like the ATI Radeon 58xx and upcoming NVIDIA Fermi line (higher res, photorealistic texture)? As they are now, the fish still look only 85~90% or so realistic. Close, but... DX11 FTW!

So you want Jim to rewrite the Aquarium in DirectX 11 and make it so it only works on Windows 7?

Well, if he can't do one app for all DX versions, might he do separate versions for different platforms? Too much work? Am I talking about MA4?

I've been working on new (more realistic) fish models for some time, but have hit some major stumbling blocks. There won't be an MA4. There would be Creature Packs for MA3, then I would need to get on to the Freshwater Tank.

I am looking forward to the creature pack. A seahorse is planned isn't it? As well as a cuttlefish.

Yes.

is that definitive no, Jim? why not 4? are you moving on?

Too much other stuff to work on. The idea was originally to create a marine aquarium, a butterfly habitat, a terrarium and an aviary. Well - once the fish models have been perfected, that's the marine aquarium pretty much done.

And since he's started on a Freshwater Aquarium and got to the point where only the fish are required, that's next. And then the butterflies, lizards and birds! And then a movie, if there's time.

Is Jim going to develop the Aquarium specifically for DirectX 11? I would take Jim's comments as a definitive No for that. Spending any time developing a feature that could only be used on Windows 7 and only on $200+ graphics cards (a market of less than 500,000 people) is not something Jim has any interest in doing.

Marine Aquarium has always been designed to run on the maximum possible hardware. When everyone else was requiring Windows XP and high end graphics cards for their screen savers, Jim's ran on Windows 98 on a 16MB card. Marine Aquarium 3 will run on nearly any Mac or PC built in the last 5-6 years.

Incidentally, the purpose of Marine Aquarium was to be part of a line of 4 products that would eventually finance a Movie.

All correct.

a movie? will it be called Marine Aquarium 4 - The Clownfish Strikes Back, maybe?:D

what DX does MA3 run on?

"Avaquarium"?

"Lord of the Aquarium"?

"Lion, Witch, and the Aquarium"?

"The Love Aquarium"?

"The Chronicles of the Aquarium"?

(From the FAQ) DirectX 9.0c or later.

Except for the fact that there's occasionally water involved, the movie has nothing to do with Marine Aquarium. :)

There is an interesting thing about JohnWho's list, though. All the movies he alluded to are in the fantasy genre (Yes, including Avatar - mountains do not defy gravity). My movie will be hard-core Science-Fiction, a genre which seems almost dead these days. The only arguably Science-Fiction movie I can think of recently is District 9, and even that had some fantasy elements.

The reason this is important to me is that I think movies should not just entertain, but educate. Hardly anybody reads any more, so the cinema seems like one of the last great forums for presenting information. In making my movie, I'll be consulting some of the top minds in physics, geology, biology, etc. While some of the story elements might be highly improbable, nothing will be impossible.

Since unobtanium is supposed to be a room-temperature superconductor I'll suspend disbelief enough for floating mountains. Magnetism will do that for you (okay, just - I doubt you could get that much distance). It'll also screw your instruments.
John

Yes, yes, yes. I love science fiction. Not exactly a secret of course. And then when Jim is on Entertainment Tonight I can say "I know him" and nobody will believe me.

Well, I read (and subscribe to Analog but not Asimov's). And still prefer "hard" SF. So, a good SF movie would be a joy.

And my kids and grandkids read. And I'm encouraging my grandkids to read things as close to hard-core Science Fiction as I can find for them.

I'd be prepared to believe in floating mountains if they didn't have waterfalls cascading from them!

Weren't the mountains supposed to have Unobtainium in them which is why they "floated"?

The Unobtainium would not be in the water nor would it be in many of the objects that would fall from the mountain such as non-unobtainium based rocks, the water, tree branches, animals, etc.

My point is, where does all that water come from in the first place? Not from your standard mountain streams, that's for sure.

Ah, I guess we'd have to ask Cameron that one.

:)

It comes from Acme - the same place as the anvils come from.....

The first review I read of Avatar mentioned that the action takes place on Pandora - a planet in the Alpha Centauri Galaxy. So I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I watched the movie and found that Pandora circled the star Alpha Centauri - the closest star to our sun. At least the writers might be able to pass Grade School astronomy (though the pitiful movie reviewer wouldn't).

It would have been nice if they had mentioned which Alpha Centauri star. It's actually a trinary system with three stars - Alpha, Beta, and Proxima. They could have spent 5 seconds of dialog on this, and the audience would have gained a bit of real science knowledge.

do we have atitle and script, yet? how far along is it, Jim?

Mark, - Doesn't trying to rationalise the logic of Avatar qualify as being clinically insane? - ;);) :)

There's a very good 1080p teaser trailer that is the science documentary on Pandora.
File = avatar-fte1_h1080p.mov - it's 277,140,838 bytes.
Ah, it's here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/hd/ - select the featurette.
Also at lower resolutions.
Recommended.
John

P.S. I expect the water gets there via rain, like any other mountain...

Only if you're trying to rationalise it. I'm just agreeing with Jim! ;)

Personally, I want to know what Roger Dean things of all this.

http://www.artistsuk.co.uk/acatalog/...Roger_Dean.jpg
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-imag...an_icarus3.jpg

Only if you're trying to rationalise it. I'm just agreeing with Jim! ;)

John - I'd think that, too, if the cataracts were slightly smaller. :) "Like any other mountain"? Really? I thought it often came from mountain springs which have a much greater water catchment area than we see for some of those rocks in Avatar.

Personally, I want to know what Roger Dean things of all this.

http://www.artistsuk.co.uk/acatalog/...Roger_Dean.jpg
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-imag...an_icarus3.jpg

Arahanto - Sorry, can't go into details here.

jleslie - Thanks for the link to the featurette, it's excellent.

As that went down quite well I'll try a couple more links:

The full script (allegedly including stuff that didn't make it into the theatrical release):
http://www.foxscreenings.com/media/p...eronAVATAR.pdf

Learn the language:
"Na'vi is a constructed language spoken by the fictional indigenous race (the Na'vi) on Pandora in James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar. The language was created by Paul Frommer, a professor at USC with a doctorate in linguistics. This website exists to share this beautiful language with all who want to learn."
http://www.learnnavi.org/

John

Quotes that might apply to a new job:

"Here, tomorrow, oh eight hundred. Try to use big words."

"Don’t do anything unusually stupid."

Another quote on the mountains:

"Yeah, so what does hold them up? Grace explained it to me -- some kind of maglev effect because unobtanium is a superconductor, or something. At least somebody understands it. Just not me."