Marine Aquarium 3 Rumors and Speculation

[Derrek]

Will we be able to see some screen shots once it goes to the beta members or will we still have to wait till final?

[Jav400]

Thats up to Jim, but generally I think he waits almost until release time in case there is anything that needs to be changed for any reason.

[Jim Sachs]

Haven't decided yet.

[fred@]

I understand that you probably don't need another Beta testing, but I am running x64 Vista with an ATI 2900 Card. This card has been giving trouble in the past to your screensaver so I'd be willing to test it out for you.

[Jav400]

Right now we have about 40 test machines ready and waiting to go covering all OS's back to 98SE and a good supply of video cards. I doubt we will need any others at this point, but we will keep it in mind.

Currently Jim is working on finishing some more of the 3D objects to be able to use a screenshot for the box cover art when it gets released, after that we will see where things go. Collision avoidence remains a concern and will probably need to be tweaked and adjusted after release as refinements are made. But Jim reports making overall progress and we are getting closer.

[Derrek]

What is range in hardware specs between the beta computers and also whats the lowest spec computer you are shooting for to run MA3?

[Jav400]

We have everything from old P3 and AMD chips all the way up to the latest and greatest quad cores and 8800's. With several laptops thrown in for good measure.

[Jim Sachs]

As for the second part of your question, my own computers would probably be near the lowest end of acceptable hardware. Both my HP machines are several years old with 3 GHZ Pentium4 processors, WinXP, DX8, and weak Intel graphics chips. They run the current Alpha version of MA3 at about 40 FPS, using about 25% of the CPU time. Pixel shaders should not be necessary, though I will probably be adding effects for those who have them.

[Hot]

Sounds like a week or 2 left can't wait. I think i'll get that new wide screen for Christmas! Oh Jim how wide is the tank going to be ?

[Jav400]

I think Elvis has left the building for now, but in answer to your question its about 2 1/3 screens wide. Using the Alpha I have here, I can manually scroll it from side to side and that should be about right.

[Hot]

hi is that 2 1/3 screens wide 16/9 wide screens ?

[ESHIREY]

I can add the one with the voodoo5 5500.

[johnblommers]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

...They run the current Alpha version of MA3 at about 40 FPS, using about 25% of the CPU time. Pixel shaders should not be necessary, though I will probably be adding effects for those who have them.  

So the performance bottleneck in your case is not the CPU but somewhere in the I/O bandwidth, RAM, and video card areas. Or possibly wait states?

Is MA3 multi-threaded to take advantage of modern CPU architectures?

[johnblommers]

Originally posted by ESHIREY:

I can add the one with the voodoo5 5500.  

Oh yeah? Well I can test with an Orchid Righteous 3D card with a 3DFX chip on it. Got the card. Got the special little passthrough cable. Got the two CDs with the VooDoo drivers. Right here

[Jim Sachs]

The CPU has not been the bottleneck since Pentium 1 days, and then only when calcnormals (an option to recalculate the suface normal of the fish every frame) was used.

The bottleneck is simply the graphics card's ability to blast all those bytes onto the screen. A screen resolution of 1920x1200x32 means that 9,216,000 bytes have to be moved to the screen just to refresh the pixels once. But each pixel may need to be modified several times as nearer objects overwrite farther objects, translucent pixels modify those beneath them, stencils and reflections get applied, etc. The z-buffer (another 2 bytes per pixel) also has to cleared to all zeros, then each pixel updated to the depth of that pixel in the scene. This is a very simplistic description, which barely scratches the surface of all the things that have to happen 60 times per second.

The Aquarium is multithreaded, at least as far as a sequential time-critical program can be. The code does not change, it's simply a compiler switch. One of my biggest problems has always been operating smoothly in a multitasking environment. Even setting the Priority to the highest possible setting, when you let go of the CPU, you really have no idea when you'll get it back. All those network programs, internet servers, wireless transmitters, worms and viruses that people insist on installing on their computers are always sucking up clock cycles and causing my movie to stutter.

Speaking of VooDoo cards, it's possible that MA3 will not work with them. Traditionally, 3Dfx cards had a limit of 256x256 on their textures, and the new Aquarium is mostly 512x512 textures. This is ironic, as my first 3D programs would ONLY work on 3Dfx machines. Their 3D language, Glide, was light-years ahead of everything else.

[johnblommers]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

The Aquarium is multithreaded, at least as far as a sequential time-critical program can be. The code does not change, it's simply a compiler switch.  

After I got it the PS3 it was interesting to learn why so many cores is supposed to be a good thing. For gaming, I learned that 3D games do a lot of different things in real time, and a separate core for each of these tasks helps things happen concurrently:

• artificial intelligence
• collision detection
• physics engine
• VoIP
• Networking
• User I/O
• Audio
• Graphics

So I got the distinct impression that each of these different tasks could be specifically written as a separate thread of execution, threads that certainly have to come together to synchronize and keep the game running lock step, and when done successfully, such games really benefit from multiple cores. I also read that this is easier said than done.

Of course on a console game, the game developer has total control over the hardware, and there are no other programs competing for resources, as opposed to aquarium developers who write for general purpose operating systems with lots of extra stuff running in the background.

[Jim Sachs]

Out of that list, collision detection is the only thing that might conceivably affect my program.

Artificial intelligence is a simple loop that allows the fish to make a decision which way to turn based on a random number generator. In other words, it does whatever it "wants" except when collision detection takes over.

Physics engine - none. The fish simply look like they are affected by physics, based on the way I animate them - there are no calcuations involved. This will be greatly improved as MA3 develops, but still no calculations (frankly, having been ruined by "New Math" in the sixties, I just don't have the math skills).

VoIP - N.A.

Networking - N.A.

User I/O - very little, handled within the main loop.

Audio - This is already a separate thread.

Graphics - Almost the whole program, everything else is an afterthought.

[Marian Nichols]

I agree, Jim, on the new math, I can no longer aid Lauren in her Math home work.

But it sounds as if you have conquered the math problem with creative thinking and executions. This is getting exciting!

[feldon34]

Originally posted by Hot:

hi is that 2 1/3 screens wide 16/9 wide screens ?  

The Marine Aquarium 3 ratio right now is 3.3:1. So it's good for 2 1/2 screens (4:3). It's a bit narrower than two 16:9 screens, so I am not sure how that will work.

[Jim Sachs]

Since the camera "trucks" or "dollies" from side to side, and does not really pan (rotate), we have to redefine what we mean by "How wide is the screen?" As the camera moves from right to left, the gravel at the front of the tank moves rapidly, while objects in the distance move more slowly. If the scene were deep enough, things in the far distance wouldn't move at all.

Watching the gravel at the front as I scroll the scene on my widescreen monitor, I get over two widescreens of material going by. The large Elkhorn coral near the center of the scene is mostly onscreen on the left when I am at the right scroll limit, and almost completely off screen to the right when at the left scroll limit.

There are some tricks that I can apply to increase the apparent amount of real estate in the tank. Let's say that someone has dual monitors set up next to each other and wants the Aquarium to appear properly as if they were real "underwater windows". This means a gap between the two scenes to account for the thickness of the monitor bezels. By zooming the scene in or out slightly, I can probably open up enough extra width to do this. When zoomed in, there would be a little less water showing at the top of the screen, and a little more water when zoomed out.