Marine Aquarium 3 Comments & Appreciation

[Rich]

Jim, the resolution that I have it running at is 1280 x 1024,and at 115 fps
thats with every fish swimming on the screen

[kona001]

Originally posted by Jav400:

A bezel gap is already planned to be added.  

Great news Glad to hear I'm not the only one who thought of it.. Would it be able to compensate for all kinds of bezel sizes (as with a slider like I proposed) or will it be fixed to certain bezel sizes to choose from?

[rctneil]

I hope us users will be able to measure using a ruler the distance from the inside edge of one screen, over one bezel, over the gap between the screens, over the second monitor bezel and to the inside edge of the second screen and then input that width into a text input box in the settings and MA3 would figure it all out for you

OR

give the user a monitor selection box and a set of left and right arrows in the settings so you select the monitor you wish to adjust and then press the left and right arrows to move the aquarium on that screen so the fish do not stretch from oen screen to another.

Either of those should work fine in my opinion.

Thanks

Regards,
Neil

[lannp]

Originally posted by Jim Sachs:

I also can't understand what might be causing your problem. No one else has reported anything like this (yet). All of my machines work the same way: After hitting F, I can simply stretch the window to any shape I like. If I want it wide I just grab the side and stretch it across the screen. The instant I let go the Window Size numbers show the new size.  

Mea Culpa! I didn't let go of the mouse when I stretched or wait for my window to resize to see the wider screen. It works as you say. Sorry about all the commotion I created. I can't wait to see the anemones move. I have a 200 gallon reef tank in the middle of my living room and have a horrible time to maintain it in this economy. I am thinking of turning it off and hide it with two 60" LCD on both sides of my real aquarium. It's cheaper with MA.

[Jav400]

Glad its working for you, and don't worry about the commotion. We may get a bit confused sometimes trying to imagine what someone is talking about, but helping out is what we are here for.

[Jim Sachs]

The plan for the bezel gap adjuster is very simple: Normally, the LEFT-RIGHT ARROW keys scroll the whole scene on both monitors. I plan to make it so that if you hold down CTRL (or maybe ALT), while using the ARROW keys, only one monitor would scroll. That way, you can visually set whatever bezel gap you like. The program would remember this setting. There is a limit, of course, because you will run out of room and reach the far end of the tank. When this happens, the scene will be static since there is no more room to auto-scroll.

[dlorde]

Wow - I'm still registered here...

The aquarium looks just like old times - but through the rosy lens of memory... Just beautiful !

The first time I ran it, it blue-screened my old Win XP GeForce 6800 machine - ouch! Then I realised I was on ancient NVidia drivers (from an XP re-install). When I downloaded the latest drivers it was fine.

Thanks for reminding me to update my display drivers

[tyler84]

oh my god!!! finally.. i just saw the email.. thanks.. i will try it tonight with my home PC.. i bet it looks gd and runs fine..cheers..

[Decibel]

Running Driver set 178.13 (7.15.11.7813)
Vista Ultimate 64bit

Installed and displayed fine across:
1 x 22" 1650 x 1080
1 x 19" 1280 x 1024

Dual Screen mode:
cloned OK
split across both screens OK

[basser1]

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5079/hpim2621xl2.jpg

This is a pic of my 29 gallon salt water tank.

[Tiny Turtle]

Originally posted by basser1:

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5079/hpim2621xl2.jpg

This is a pic of my 29 gallon salt water tank.  

Very cool!

[feldon34]

I'm speechless. That's beautiful.

[BEParker]

Great Job, Jim!!! It's BEEYOOTEEFULLLL!

I note one thing, though. Occasionally, when I start MA3, it's very jerky with a slow frame rate. I go out of MA3 and back in and it's operating fine. I would guess it's just the computer (Dell D630 laptop) adjusting resources and priorities, but I can't figure out why it doesn't ALWAYS do it, just sometimes.

[Surferminn]

Originally posted by basser1:

http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5079/hpim2621xl2.jpg

This is a pic of my 29 gallon salt water tank.  

[Jim Sachs]

basser1 - Beautiful tank!

BEParker - Yes, your computer is adjusting resources. Sometimes more adjustment is needed, as the system clears out RAM and copies it to the Windows Temp file.

[morningjoy]

Wow! It's exciting to have the new Beta!

I have a wish list of features, although I'm not sure if these have already been discussed elsewhere. But this is what I would very much like to see:

1. A slider to adjust the blue hue, so I can make it more sky blue or pastel or slightly greenish, instead of just lighter or darker in the basic blue hue.

If you cannot do that, then I would like to be able to make the blue *much* lighter than you currently allow. For my taste, it is still too "primary." I want it to be soft, especially with all the bright colors in the tank. Right now the color contrasts between the foreground and background are too "exciting" and not relaxing enough for me.

2. An ability to turn off the bubbles, which I'm sure is planned.

3. The ability to diminish and/or reduce contrast of, and/or slow down the reflections. They bother my eyes, right now, and they make me feel "nervous" because the movement is too rapid to be relaxing. I want to see some movement of the water, but not this much.

I actually feel slightly dizzy while watching, even once I have disabled the slow pan effect. In fact, I had to close the tank, and look into the distance for a while, in order to regain my equilibrium. So, if this is not fixed in some way, it would be a deal-breaker for me.

4. I would love to see a Gobi protecting the underground home of his blind companion, which could perhaps be part of a future creature pack. A Gobi on duty has limited movement that is fairly repetitive, so maybe it could be a critter tied to one small location, with a small number of unique actions in random rotation.

5. I would love to see a pair of Clowns, hovering over their chosen "home base" and doing the things Clowns do, instead of swimming all over the tank all the time. Homeless Clowns make me sad, and a Clown should always keep'um smiling.

[Jim Sachs]

Most of that is planned. Out of your list, the lightplay is the only thing that won't be changed much. It's already running at about half the rate of real water. If you want lightplay with a slow, dreamlike quality, get Dream Aquarium.

[Inspector Dryfish]

I'm at work, running Beta 2 on two DELL 20-inch LCDs (3200x1200 in total). The video card is a PNY nVidia Quadro FX 1300 with 128MB video RAM. Pure HW VP at about 58fps. The computer is a DELL Optiplex GX280; CPU is a P4 at 3GHz; system memory 2GB. Win XP Pro SP2.

MA 3 looks lovely. I haven't seen any glitches.

After the ooooos and aaaahhhs settle down, the comments from co-workers are (in order of occurrence and frequency):

1) The fish split and stretch between screens (the bezel thing).

2) That anemone isn't moving. Shouldn't some of those corals move, too?

I know you've said that the 3D objects will be animated "soon", and that a bezel adjustment will be added at some point - I just wanted to highlight the point that the bezel thing seems be one of the first noticed flaws, according to all the people who come by my desk anyway. I doubt that I was first to suggest it, but I brought it up at least three years ago - I think you still permitted anonymous posting in those days (unless I'm thinking of DA's forums). Having people point it out as a flaw kinda goes with providing the ability to span across multiple screens. As soon as you fix it, all the critical eyes will alight on something else. Oh well.

In the next few days, I'll be trying the beta on my other PC (DELL T5400 workstation), which will use the same two monitors driven by an nVidia Quadro FX 570 with 256MB of video RAM. Win XP Pro x64. If I see any problems, I'll report 'em. Otherwise, assume it works at least as well as on the current config.

I wouldn't bother paying for a Mac version, only because my ancient laptop is... well... ancient, and doesn't have the guts - it used to break out into a sweat (and frantically high fan speed) when I ran the old MA on it.

I would happily pay for a Linux version. These days, I run Linux at least as much as Windoze. Yeah, I know. DirectX...
I haven't used Wine in years, but somebody in another thread seems to be getting at least some joy out of it (with the MA 3 beta), so maybe I'll give it a whirl.

At the very least, I'll be buying the upgrade from my 2.6 for Windows as soon as 3.0 comes out for real.

Best regards,

- Kevin

[enigma63941]

Nice job Jim! The 3d effect over the previous version is fantastic.

MY wish list:
1.Turn of the scrolling and have the option to turn on the old lighting cycle.
2. A fish hiding or going inside and out of what looks like a little cave on the bottom left of the aquarium.
3.Probably going to be corrected, just bringing it up. Not showing the frames per second every time the program launches.
4.Spruce up the interface. Not the mechanics just the graphics. Looks a little "dull"
5.Not really important...shorten the load time.

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit service pack 1, 2.8 GHZ AMD 64 X2 Dual
4.00 Gb RAM
Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT 512mb Drvier 7.15

The aquarium has worked fine at 111fps at 1440x990 with no problems so far...

[feldon34]

I'm not Jim, but...

1a. The scrolling can be turned off by pressing P. Jim is adding an undocumented feature to stop the scrolling.
1b. The old lighting cycle is impossible as the lighting in the old program was actual lights. The new lighting is largely based on shaders. I'm sure Jim is going to make some more improvements. Specifically I know he wants to provide a full range of colors beyond the current blue-to-green.

4. The interface was developed by Jim. He doesn't like spending any more time on the interface than he has to. He prefers working on the artwork. Still, I do miss what we had before (not the fish picker so much, but the overall settings panel).

5. Hmm. The load time varies a lot. On the HTPC we built for our new HDTV, the MA3 logo barely comes up before it fades into the Aquarium. Have to say MA3 looks awesome at 65".