DaliWorld ??
 

Has anyone heard of, or tried DaliWorld ?

Some kind of screen saver where fish swim from your computer over the net to other peoples computers. I downloaded it today, but have not tried it yet. Thought I'd run it by here first.

Thanks

Update....

Ok....Tried it. Uninstalled it. Works ok, just boring, poor graphics, camera mode waves back and forth like you were watching a ping pong game. :(

RE: Daliworld
 

I have used Daliworld before I got the Serene Screen..Beleive me it does not compare to this one. The fish become transparent and the camera roams too much and gets itself locked on a fish and sometimes it is hard to stop the tracking mode. I really didn't care for it...good luck

The idea of a networked virtual ocean is kind of cool, though. Although, I would take the concept a lot further, to make it into a full-fledged game in a "Sims" sort of way. Players could build their own little slices of ocean from a set of "raw materials," similar to the way you build a house from scratch in the Sims, but in this case the raw materials would be coral species, sponges, rock shelfs, caves, kelp for growing underwater forests, sunken wrecks, sand bars, mangrove plants for saltwater marshlands, basically all of the things needed to build an underwater environment.

Depending on the type of environment you build -- kelp forest, coral reef, backwater marsh, open-water pelagic, tide pool, and so on, the program would give you a selection of logical "locations" in which to place your slice of the sea into the online virtual ocean. For instance, if you developed a tropical coral reef, you could place it somewhere in the Caribbean. If you developed a kelp forest, perhaps Monterey or Catalina. You get the idea.

Animals would be restricted to swimming to machines that have environments that will support their particular needs -- so a tropical triggerfish wouldn't be able to swim to an arctic environment, for instance.

BUT -- the player wouldn't be limited to just sitting around in his own little environment and waiting for other people's fish to swim into it. The player would be free to explore the virtual ocean and check out the total ocean environment that people around the world have created. You'd be able to check out anyone else's "slice of the sea," and anyone else would be able to check out yours and perhaps co-participate in its development.

Creatures from one user's environment could freely interact with creatures from another user's -- if they're of the same species, they could breed. Predator/prey relationships would also exist -- your fish could eat or be eaten by someone else's. (Although certain rules would have to be established so that a rogue player couldn't create an environment consisting completely of sharks and barracudas that eat everything else around them).

Each player's "slice of the sea" would connect seamlessly with its adjacent ones. Eventually, given enough players, the virtual ocean could become huge. Frequent updates or commercial add-ons to the program would add new species and/or environments to use.

I know I won't see anything like that anytime soon. But it's fun to dream....

I didn't know about that program, and I'm gonna try it. It sounds interesting.

Now, if Jim's fishes could migrate to other computers too ... :)

I tried DaliWorld for a short time when it first came out, but I was frustrated with all the bugs. For example, I would leave it running for a few hours only to come back and find that my computer had frozen because so many fish had migrated onto my screen that my computer couldn't handle it. I went to their message boards and commented several times that this was a problem, which they acknowledged. However, as far as I can tell they never have released an update fixing any of the many bugs. I ended up deleting the software out of frustration -- it had too much of a negative impact on my system.

Still, the concept is undeniably intriguing. A global aquarium, with fish swimming freely from one computer to another... Personally, I'd like to see the fish migrate in terms of proximity, i.e. from my computer to the next nearest one currently available geographically (random direction). From there, they could dynamically 'swim' from one computer to another until over time ending up on the other side of the world, perhaps. This seems somehow more rewarding than the current essentially random ability to leap from Florida to, say, Hong Kong in an instant. However, the DaliWorld folks don't seem to be making much of an effort to update their software.

hpman77,

I believe that suggestion is buried somewhere in the wishlist.

Ok, program installed and tried.
The idea is great. But everything else is... hmmm... buggy.
The fact that the fishes just go random everywhere isn't what I would call migrate, but teleport. One fish just dissapears, and others appears suddenly.
The camera moves can make anybody dizzy.
Also it has a great way to decide which fish go here and there.
With my computer running badly even 10 fishes and not at maximum detail, in 30 minutes I had over 80 fishes making everything going like a slideshow.
all textures looks like mosaics when the fishes comes near the camera, and you can clearly see holes on the fishes when they move. The fins are "stoned" and they swim very artificially.

So, IMHO, it's a nice idea, but poorly done. The project seems to be abandoned as there're no new posts or news or anything since many months ago.


I know the migrating over the net for Jim's piece of art is on the wishlist, but I know it's deep buried and I tried to make it surface a bit :)

please anybody who has a DALi ID pm me i will add you to my neighbour list