** Welcome to the Mac Aquarium Forum!** - Page 2

07-11-2002, 08:03 PM

Originally posted by feldon23

The coral background for the Aquarium is a 1024x768 bitmap. I know on the PC, you get the best results running the Aquarium at exactly this resolution. I don't know enough about the Mac version to know if anti-aliasing kicks in or just how the background looks stretched to another size.

On my widescreen Ti, the background looks fine, although when I switch to 1024x768 I can see that the background is the same image unstretched. The quality looks exactly the same I think. At least the fish don't get stretched. I do notice that when you switch from regular to widescreen windows (not fullscreen) you get the eighth fish, and the two corals on the sides move apart and reveal more of the white coral bank in the center, so there is no extreme stretching of the background.

mrtew@comcast.net

07-17-2002, 10:41 AM

PEIXES

feldon34 · 07-17-2002, 11:51 AM

It's funny that I should get involved in the Aquarium since I am a Peixes.

____________
Google.com is your friend.

patscarr · 07-17-2002, 04:24 PM

Morgan, do you get a kickback everytime someone here uses Google, or buys a TiVo?

feldon34 · 07-17-2002, 04:52 PM

If I did, I'd still be flat-broke, at least in the TiVo department.

People seem to like watching commercials and rushing to get things done and scheduling their life around TV or trying to set a VCR.

Jim has a TiVo, but I can't take credit for selling him on the idea, that was Prolific's doing.

07-18-2002, 11:52 PM

Hello,

I have not posted till now as I wanted to be sure of the stuff that needed to be reported.
System I am running is a iMac/400dvse (256MB RAM/8MB VRAM/13GB HD/MacOS X 10.1.5/all standard updates installed). I am a Macintosh Technician.

Troubles to report:
1). Sound
Bubbles sound discontinues after about 5-7 seconds. Can be restarted by toggling "S" twice. Still times out. Is this because program is unregistered<grin>?

2). Finder
Finder cobbles up in the display of windows, specifically the Aquarium Window (and others, while Aquarium is running). Mainly the activity hilight of the menubar of the window gets dimmed, brightens if you click&hold on the menubar of windw, but it dims again as soon as you unclick. Finder is restored to normal by terminating Aquarium and opening any Finder Window. This is intermittant, doesn't always occur.

Suggestions:
1). Automatic Lighting mode is a waste of time. I don't need or use it. Would much rather have a clock based lighting system as has been suggested by others, and would not be difficult to program. Or nothing at all. Can't see the fish? Quit the program!

2). System performance
There is a menubar utility that monitors CPU activity in percent, called Cee-Pee-You. Flat out, with standard window Aquarium can do 70fps at 100% CPU activity, at full screen this falls to 24fps. Faster processors and video interfaces can do better. Point is, these specs are irrelevant. Frames/sec option should be removed and program needs to produce the maximum number of FPS at not more than 30% CPU activity for the Aquarium task. That will provide a safe margin of CPU resources for other tasks. After all, the Aquarium should be an accessory while doing other things, more useless waste of CPU provides one with a $1500 video display and nothing else useful<grin>. Common sense should prevail!

The previous being said, I plan to delete the Demo of Aquarium until this thing is better thought out, and bugs squashed.

-Paul B. Pollock <pbell3@mindspring.com>

07-19-2002, 12:33 AM

Saw Demo,Paid Money for OS X beta. Great Great Product...viewing on Apple Cinema Display with g4 cube/500Mb ram...so REAL it is UNREAL! THANK YOU. Audio is not consistent...but hey it's a beta...worth the $$ anyday...

ciao

07-19-2002, 12:41 AM

OS X beta is SUPER. MacThank You.

Saw Tivo mentioned a bit in the threads...there is a new Mac Tivo-like device...about $200 from El Gato...mpeg-1...not the Quicktime 6 mpeg, but mpeg 1 is better than nothing.

Thanks again

feldon34 · 07-19-2002, 12:58 AM

Paul Pollock said:

Automatic Lighting mode is a waste of time. I don't need or use it. Would much rather have a clock based lighting system as has been suggested by others, and would not be difficult to program. Or nothing at all. Can't see the fish? Quit the program!

If we had a poll about it, I'm sure we'd see that a very high percentage like the optional automatic lights which dim every 3-5 minutes instead of lights that stay on for 4 or 8 hours straight. Now what would be cool is independant locking lights. I would lock the back light to dark blue.

In the 18 months that I've been tracking the Aquarium, I have seen maybe a dozen requests for lights that operate on a schedule. Honestly, I'd want the Aquarium to kick out and switch to a black screen after I go to sleep, rather than run the CPU and video card (Even at reduced speeds, see below) for 10 hours.

Paul Pollock said:

Frames/sec option should be removed

Are you talking about the "Limit frames per second to 60" or the optional Frames/sec display?

If you're talking about Limit frames per second to 60, well, this is a feature that's been requested by many people, moreso in the Windows world. In some system configurations, having it switched on stabilizes the animation.

It is by no means perfect, but I see no reason to remove a feature outright.

and program needs to produce the maximum number of FPS at not more than 30% CPU activity for the Aquarium task. That will provide a safe margin of CPU resources for other tasks. After all, the Aquarium should be an accessory while doing other things, more useless waste of CPU provides one with a $1500 video display and nothing else useful<grin>. Common sense should prevail!

You will find that on the Windows and Mac versions of the Aquarium, the CPU is unnecessarily pegged at 100%, but that tasks that request CPU time are granted it. The Aquarium should not be stealing significant cycles from other programs.

I am hopeful that a future version of the Aquarium will only use the CPU power necessary to generate the number of frames per second being displayed. I'm not sure I agree on the 30% flat rate. Second generation iMacs shouldn't be artificially limited to less frames than they're capable of.

I just want the CPU and video card usage to be what is necessary, no more no less. And I would use the 60 frames per second feature to keep my video card from running 100% all the time too.

Maybe the Macintosh team can tackle this first and beat Windows users to the punch. I know for a fact that it does not require 500MHz of a Mac CPU or 1400 MHz of an AMD CPU to calculate 60~75 frames per second of animation of the Aquarium.

It's unfortunate to hear that you've deleted it.

feldon34 · 07-19-2002, 12:59 AM

MPEG-1 is 17 year old technology. PLEASE let it die.

TiVo can store 20 hours of High quality video on a 40 GB hard drive with MPEG-2.

With MPEG-1, you're talking maybe 4-6 hours on the same hard drive.

Paphitis · 07-21-2002, 02:13 AM

I didn't hesitate for a minute to purchase the program after downloading the demo. I was happy as a clam, until I upgraded to QT6 and lost my bubble machine pacifier. I searched the SereneScreen website and am glad to have found this forum. I hope the "fix" will be out soon otherwise I might just have to reinstall QT5

G4 400 PCI Graphics
OSX 10.1.5
768mb RAM

JimO'Connor · 07-21-2002, 12:57 PM

Paphitis,

You won't have to wait too long. Don't bother re-installing QT5.

Jim O'Connor

JimO'Connor · 07-24-2002, 11:02 PM

Go get it. Keep QT6 and bubble sound. V1.1.0 is out.

feldon34 · 07-24-2002, 11:07 PM

Speedy Beta cycle you guys have.

Ok, I've sent out 150 e-mails to all the people who signed up for news on the Mac version.

ohairy1 · 07-26-2002, 12:59 AM

The thing that amazed me is the 50% increase in frame rate I'm getting in the "Max" mode. I was getting a nominal 54-56 fps on my iBook 700/128 MB RAM/OS X 10.1.5/QT6. That's screen-saver mode. Now, with bubbles on I get ~74 fps and ~76 with bubbles off.

What I'd like to see are some intermediate constant frame rate settings, between 30 and 60. Personally, I'd like to run at 45 fps.

I did find the "shimmer" wording misleading and didn't know what it meant until I read the comments in another thread on this forum.
++++++++++
This thing is really beautiful.

I hope they expanded the wording on the "other site" where I made the purchase as to WHY one should download the demo and try it first. It wasn't clear to me: the fact that it might not run on a particular Mac.

Bob P.

09-25-2002, 09:48 AM

Let me just echo the sentiment of so many others when I say 'thanks' for bringing this program to the Mac platform. I know Mac users are a minority, and it doesn't always make good financial sense to invest in porting software to the Mac, but we certainly appreciate it.

Special thanks to the developers who ported the software. I can't imagine how much time and energy went into developing this , but I'm so glad to see that none of it was lost on the Mac version.

As Mac users we are accustomed to not having everything that the PC world offers, but with a program like this available I think we can safely say we have the best of what the PC world has.

Jim Sachs · 09-25-2002, 12:06 PM

If you look no farther then the number of Macs outh there compared with the number of PCs, then a software developer would naturally conclude that it wouldn't be worth it to develop for the Mac. But raw numbers don't always tell the whole story.

Thanks to the extremely faithful port by Jim O'Connor and his team, the Aquarium has been very well-received by the Mac community, and sales are running at about 50% of the PC version.

The very fact that Mac users are vastly outnumbered may contribute to the success of Mac products. Mac users seem to understand that the only way to keep companies developing for the Mac is to BUY the software.

Another thing I've noticed is that, for the most part, our Mac customers are far more polite and understanding when it comes to customer support. Almost like, "Very sorry to bother you with this, but your program seems to cause my Mac to burst into flames. It's still the best program I've ever bought."

09-26-2002, 04:29 PM

I am also a mac user and a new registered user of SereneScreen and would like to also thank the efforts of does who made it possible.

And if you really want more mac faithful support I would suggest that the next update be available simultaneously for Mac and PC. I gives us a warm fuzzy feeling and tells us you really care :-)

Roy

Jim Sachs · 09-26-2002, 11:12 PM

Well, that may be asking a bit too much -- holding up the PC version for several weeks while the conversion gets done.

10-14-2002, 06:47 AM

Originally posted by drfish
First post!

edit:
Well, second I guess, this isn't Slashdot...

Anyway, cool, I don't have a Mac but my girlfriend wants one of the new iMacs, if she gets her way, the Aquarium will be the first thing I put on it.

07-17-2002, 11:51 AM	#23
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,939	It's funny that I should get involved in the Aquarium since I am a Peixes. ____________ Google.com is your friend. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

07-17-2002, 04:24 PM	#24
patscarr Pet Shark Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Back in Buffalo Posts: 5,455	Morgan, do you get a kickback everytime someone here uses Google, or buys a TiVo? Patrick

07-17-2002, 04:52 PM	#25
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,939	If I did, I'd still be flat-broke, at least in the TiVo department. People seem to like watching commercials and rushing to get things done and scheduling their life around TV or trying to set a VCR. Jim has a TiVo, but I can't take credit for selling him on the idea, that was Prolific's doing. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman Last edited by feldon34; 07-21-2002 at 01:25 PM.

07-18-2002, 11:52 PM	#26
Unregistered-Paul Pollock Guest Posts: n/a	Trouble Report Hello, I have not posted till now as I wanted to be sure of the stuff that needed to be reported. System I am running is a iMac/400dvse (256MB RAM/8MB VRAM/13GB HD/MacOS X 10.1.5/all standard updates installed). I am a Macintosh Technician. Troubles to report: 1). Sound Bubbles sound discontinues after about 5-7 seconds. Can be restarted by toggling "S" twice. Still times out. Is this because program is unregistered<grin>? 2). Finder Finder cobbles up in the display of windows, specifically the Aquarium Window (and others, while Aquarium is running). Mainly the activity hilight of the menubar of the window gets dimmed, brightens if you click&hold on the menubar of windw, but it dims again as soon as you unclick. Finder is restored to normal by terminating Aquarium and opening any Finder Window. This is intermittant, doesn't always occur. Suggestions: 1). Automatic Lighting mode is a waste of time. I don't need or use it. Would much rather have a clock based lighting system as has been suggested by others, and would not be difficult to program. Or nothing at all. Can't see the fish? Quit the program! 2). System performance There is a menubar utility that monitors CPU activity in percent, called Cee-Pee-You. Flat out, with standard window Aquarium can do 70fps at 100% CPU activity, at full screen this falls to 24fps. Faster processors and video interfaces can do better. Point is, these specs are irrelevant. Frames/sec option should be removed and program needs to produce the maximum number of FPS at not more than 30% CPU activity for the Aquarium task. That will provide a safe margin of CPU resources for other tasks. After all, the Aquarium should be an accessory while doing other things, more useless waste of CPU provides one with a $1500 video display and nothing else useful<grin>. Common sense should prevail! The previous being said, I plan to delete the Demo of Aquarium until this thing is better thought out, and bugs squashed. -Paul B. Pollock <pbell3@mindspring.com>

07-19-2002, 12:58 AM	#29
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,939	Paul Pollock said: Automatic Lighting mode is a waste of time. I don't need or use it. Would much rather have a clock based lighting system as has been suggested by others, and would not be difficult to program. Or nothing at all. Can't see the fish? Quit the program! If we had a poll about it, I'm sure we'd see that a very high percentage like the optional automatic lights which dim every 3-5 minutes instead of lights that stay on for 4 or 8 hours straight. Now what would be cool is independant locking lights. I would lock the back light to dark blue. In the 18 months that I've been tracking the Aquarium, I have seen maybe a dozen requests for lights that operate on a schedule. Honestly, I'd want the Aquarium to kick out and switch to a black screen after I go to sleep, rather than run the CPU and video card (Even at reduced speeds, see below) for 10 hours. Paul Pollock said: Frames/sec option should be removed Are you talking about the "Limit frames per second to 60" or the optional Frames/sec display? If you're talking about Limit frames per second to 60, well, this is a feature that's been requested by many people, moreso in the Windows world. In some system configurations, having it switched on stabilizes the animation. It is by no means perfect, but I see no reason to remove a feature outright. and program needs to produce the maximum number of FPS at not more than 30% CPU activity for the Aquarium task. That will provide a safe margin of CPU resources for other tasks. After all, the Aquarium should be an accessory while doing other things, more useless waste of CPU provides one with a $1500 video display and nothing else useful<grin>. Common sense should prevail! You will find that on the Windows and Mac versions of the Aquarium, the CPU is unnecessarily pegged at 100%, *but* that tasks that request CPU time are granted it. The Aquarium should not be stealing significant cycles from other programs. I am hopeful that a future version of the Aquarium will only use the CPU power necessary to generate the number of frames per second being displayed. I'm not sure I agree on the 30% flat rate. Second generation iMacs shouldn't be artificially limited to less frames than they're capable of. I just want the CPU and video card usage to be what is necessary, no more no less. And I would use the 60 frames per second feature to keep my video card from running 100% all the time too. Maybe the Macintosh team can tackle this first and beat Windows users to the punch. I know for a fact that it does not require 500MHz of a Mac CPU or 1400 MHz of an AMD CPU to calculate 60~75 frames per second of animation of the Aquarium. It's unfortunate to hear that you've deleted it. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman Last edited by feldon34; 07-19-2002 at 01:01 AM.

07-11-2002, 08:03 PM	#21
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	Originally posted by feldon23 The coral background for the Aquarium is a 1024x768 bitmap. I know on the PC, you get the best results running the Aquarium at exactly this resolution. I don't know enough about the Mac version to know if anti-aliasing kicks in or just how the background looks stretched to another size. On my widescreen Ti, the background looks fine, although when I switch to 1024x768 I can see that the background is the same image unstretched. The quality looks exactly the same I think. At least the fish don't get stretched. I do notice that when you switch from regular to widescreen windows (not fullscreen) you get the eighth fish, and the two corals on the sides move apart and reveal more of the white coral bank in the center, so there is no extreme stretching of the background. mrtew@comcast.net

07-17-2002, 10:41 AM	#22
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	PEIXES

07-19-2002, 12:33 AM	#27
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	Saw Demo,Paid Money for OS X beta. Great Great Product...viewing on Apple Cinema Display with g4 cube/500Mb ram...so REAL it is UNREAL! THANK YOU. Audio is not consistent...but hey it's a beta...worth the $$ anyday... ciao

07-19-2002, 12:41 AM	#28
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	OS X beta is SUPER. MacThank You. Saw Tivo mentioned a bit in the threads...there is a new Mac Tivo-like device...about $200 from El Gato...mpeg-1...not the Quicktime 6 mpeg, but mpeg 1 is better than nothing. Thanks again

07-19-2002, 12:59 AM	#30
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,939	MPEG-1 is 17 year old technology. PLEASE let it die. TiVo can store 20 hours of High quality video on a 40 GB hard drive with MPEG-2. With MPEG-1, you're talking maybe 4-6 hours on the same hard drive. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

07-21-2002, 02:13 AM	#31
Paphitis Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 7	New to the Forum I didn't hesitate for a minute to purchase the program after downloading the demo. I was happy as a clam, until I upgraded to QT6 and lost my bubble machine pacifier. I searched the SereneScreen website and am glad to have found this forum. I hope the "fix" will be out soon otherwise I might just have to reinstall QT5 G4 400 PCI Graphics OSX 10.1.5 768mb RAM

07-21-2002, 12:57 PM	#32
JimO'Connor Mac Development Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Kenai, Alaska Posts: 678	Paphitis, You won't have to wait too long. Don't bother re-installing QT5. Jim O'Connor Jim O'Connor Order N Development

07-24-2002, 11:02 PM	#33
JimO'Connor Mac Development Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Kenai, Alaska Posts: 678	Go get it. Keep QT6 and bubble sound. V1.1.0 is out. Jim O'Connor Order N Development

07-24-2002, 11:07 PM	#34
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,939	Speedy Beta cycle you guys have. Ok, I've sent out 150 e-mails to all the people who signed up for news on the Mac version. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman Last edited by feldon34; 07-25-2002 at 12:06 AM.

07-26-2002, 12:59 AM	#35
ohairy1 Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: S.E. Florida Posts: 3	v1.1 is neat! Nice work, Jim! The thing that amazed me is the 50% increase in frame rate I'm getting in the "Max" mode. I was getting a nominal 54-56 fps on my iBook 700/128 MB RAM/OS X 10.1.5/QT6. That's screen-saver mode. Now, with bubbles on I get ~74 fps and ~76 with bubbles off. What I'd like to see are some intermediate constant frame rate settings, between 30 and 60. Personally, I'd like to run at 45 fps. I did find the "shimmer" wording misleading and didn't know what it meant until I read the comments in another thread on this forum. ++++++++++ This thing is really beautiful. I hope they expanded the wording on the "other site" where I made the purchase as to WHY one should download the demo and try it first. It wasn't clear to me: the fact that it might not run on a particular Mac. Bob P.

09-25-2002, 09:48 AM	#36
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	Let me just echo the sentiment of so many others when I say 'thanks' for bringing this program to the Mac platform. I know Mac users are a minority, and it doesn't always make good financial sense to invest in porting software to the Mac, but we certainly appreciate it. Special thanks to the developers who ported the software. I can't imagine how much time and energy went into developing this , but I'm so glad to see that none of it was lost on the Mac version. As Mac users we are accustomed to not having everything that the PC world offers, but with a program like this available I think we can safely say we have the best of what the PC world has.

09-25-2002, 12:06 PM	#37
Jim Sachs Developer Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 9,791	If you look no farther then the number of Macs outh there compared with the number of PCs, then a software developer would naturally conclude that it wouldn't be worth it to develop for the Mac. But raw numbers don't always tell the whole story. Thanks to the extremely faithful port by Jim O'Connor and his team, the Aquarium has been very well-received by the Mac community, and sales are running at about 50% of the PC version. The very fact that Mac users are vastly outnumbered may contribute to the success of Mac products. Mac users seem to understand that the only way to keep companies developing for the Mac is to BUY the software. Another thing I've noticed is that, for the most part, our Mac customers are far more polite and understanding when it comes to customer support. Almost like, "Very sorry to bother you with this, but your program seems to cause my Mac to burst into flames. It's still the best program I've ever bought." Jim Sachs Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium

09-26-2002, 04:29 PM	#38
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	I am also a mac user and a new registered user of SereneScreen and would like to also thank the efforts of does who made it possible. And if you really want more mac faithful support I would suggest that the next update be available simultaneously for Mac and PC. I gives us a warm fuzzy feeling and tells us you really care :-) Roy

09-26-2002, 11:12 PM	#39
Jim Sachs Developer Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 9,791	Well, that may be asking a bit too much -- holding up the PC version for several weeks while the conversion gets done. Jim Sachs Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium

10-14-2002, 06:47 AM	#40
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	Originally posted by drfish First post! edit: Well, second I guess, this isn't Slashdot... Anyway, cool, I don't have a Mac but my girlfriend wants one of the new iMacs, if she gets her way, the Aquarium will be the first thing I put on it.