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#1421 |
Registered
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Redlands, CA
Posts: 51
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Magnifier
Yes, this would require doubling or tripling the resolution. Which would not be practical and would slow everything down. There are utilities that will magnify your monitor resolution (for both Mac and PC) and this might help get you something like that.
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#1422 |
The Architect
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle
Posts: 756
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Mipmapping anybody?
![]() The only problem with a magnified view is that someone (me) would have to put in all that detail.
![]() On the other hand even on my lowly QuickSilver Mac MA2.6 runs at a very respectable 66fps at 1920x1200 and thousands of colors. You do know how to code for performance! Rock on! - John
Reasons people don't watch Star Trek:
60% - It’s for nerds. 39% - The show’s stupid. 01% - My parents were killed by Klingons and it's still too painful. |
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#1423 |
Forum Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 10,939
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Don't count on it.
The goal is for Jim to recreate the Aquarium with 3D objects and high-resolution textures so that the background scales to any resolution without jaggies. For some reason, on many systems, the background does not antialias.
"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 |
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#1424 |
The Architect
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle
Posts: 756
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Better Yet
![]() Don't count on it.
The goal is for Jim to recreate the Aquarium with 3D objects and high-resolution textures so that the background scales to any resolution without jaggies. For some reason, on many systems, the background does not antialias. ![]() Leave MA2.6 be, it's not broken. Perhaps someobody could educate me as to why 3D modelers are devoted to texture mapping polygons. Why not use procedurally generated textures that are resolution independent? I may be blowing smoke here ![]()
Reasons people don't watch Star Trek:
60% - It’s for nerds. 39% - The show’s stupid. 01% - My parents were killed by Klingons and it's still too painful. |
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#1425 |
Forum Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 10,939
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![]() Perhaps someobody could educate me as to why 3D modelers are devoted to texture mapping polygons. Why not use procedurally generated textures that are resolution independent? I may be blowing smoke here
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"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 |
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#1426 |
Developer
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,785
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JB - Yes, I've been working on 3.0 for some time now. All the textures will have at least four times the area of the originals. All the fish have to be redone also, though it may not be quite so apparent as the background objects.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium |
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#1427 |
Careful, I bite :)
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Springfield,OH
Posts: 16
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It's good to know that your work is ongoing, Jim. I've never found a better aquarium screen saver than your's.
I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing & I admit to less.
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#1428 |
The Architect
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle
Posts: 756
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the real thing
![]() JB - Yes, I've been working on 3.0 for some time now. All the textures will have at least four times the area of the originals. All the fish have to be redone also, though it may not be quite so apparent as the background objects.
![]() - john
Reasons people don't watch Star Trek:
60% - It’s for nerds. 39% - The show’s stupid. 01% - My parents were killed by Klingons and it's still too painful. |
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#1429 |
Developer
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 72
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![]() Perhaps someobody could educate me as to why 3D modelers are devoted to texture mapping polygons. Why not use procedurally generated textures that are resolution independent? I may be blowing smoke here
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Developer of Dream Aquarium
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#1430 |
Forum Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 10,939
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Procedurally generated textures almost always look it.
And memory is so cheap that there's no reason not to just go photograph something and stick it on there. Some exceptions are trees and water, and libraries have been written to draw large numbers of trees and realistic water without the programmer having to reinvent the wheel.
"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 |
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#1431 |
The Architect
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle
Posts: 756
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It's not just the memory
![]() ...And memory is so cheap that there's no reason not to just go photograph something and stick it on there....
![]() MA is so cool because it will run well at 1024x768xthousands of colors on an 8-meg VRAM system - my trusty and aged Pismo Powerbook. Its RAM cannot be upgraded or retrofitted to make room for textures. But procedurally generated textures at that resolution might look nice and won't take up more VRAM. I think. Here I'm not clear.
Reasons people don't watch Star Trek:
60% - It’s for nerds. 39% - The show’s stupid. 01% - My parents were killed by Klingons and it's still too painful. |
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#1432 |
is pleased
Join Date: Mar 2001
![]() Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Posts: 7,365
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There has to be some middle ground in there. Even of latest-and-greatest half-a-gig vid cards isn't exactly standard, a Pismo is still a bit old. Developing something now with the aim of it looking good enough to sell to people buying computers today won't be helped by having to factor in the performance of a portable computer released in early 2000...
Sorry if I come across as grumpy. /Tiny Reflective Scales Thanks to Morgan, Tiny Snapshots is up and running again with "Tiny Järvafält" as the latest addition – Go have a look and tell me what you think.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." /Robert Oppenheimer on witnessing the first thermonuclear detonation in history. |
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#1433 |
The Architect
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Seattle
Posts: 756
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Actually you are being kind
![]() ....a Pismo is still a bit old. Developing something now with the aim of it looking good enough to sell to people buying computers today won't be helped by having to factor in the performance of a portable computer released in early 2000...
Sorry if I come across as grumpy. /Tiny Reflective Scales ![]() So to support small-VRAM systems, would not a technique called Mipmapping help out? This method draws low-res textures on large distant objects and swaps in a higher-res texture when the camera moves closer. Given a low VRAM system you can use the lower res textures and for modern 512-Meg VRAM cards you an use all the high res textures. As I have never coded in OpenGL I have no idea how easy or hard or stupid MipMapping is ![]()
Reasons people don't watch Star Trek:
60% - It’s for nerds. 39% - The show’s stupid. 01% - My parents were killed by Klingons and it's still too painful. |
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#1434 |
Forum Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 10,939
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If someone wants a great Aquarium that runs on older computers, that's what Marine Aquarium 2.6 is for. Hopefully it won't be removed from SereneScreen.com when 3.0 comes out.
"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 |
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#1435 |
is pleased
Join Date: Mar 2001
![]() Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Posts: 7,365
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Probably just renamed "Marine Aquarium Classic"
![]() Thanks to Morgan, Tiny Snapshots is up and running again with "Tiny Järvafält" as the latest addition – Go have a look and tell me what you think.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." /Robert Oppenheimer on witnessing the first thermonuclear detonation in history. |
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#1436 |
the Doc
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Zeeland, MI
Posts: 5,355
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MAC? I think they could get into trouble for that...
![]() What about, "Sachs Marine Aquarium Classic?" Oh wait... ![]()
I don't watch commercials.
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#1437 |
is pleased
Join Date: Mar 2001
![]() Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Posts: 7,365
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![]() ![]() Thanks to Morgan, Tiny Snapshots is up and running again with "Tiny Järvafält" as the latest addition – Go have a look and tell me what you think.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." /Robert Oppenheimer on witnessing the first thermonuclear detonation in history. |
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#1438 |
Developer
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Southern Oregon
Posts: 9,785
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Too many questions for me to remember, so I'll just throw out some answers and maybe they'll match up to some of the questions
![]() Procedural textures - I've never seen any that were very realistic. Even Alan doesn't use them, and he won an Academy Award for computer effects. Mipmapping - nearly all Direct3D programs use them, and MA is no exception. A mipped texture is 33.3% bigger (in bytes) than a single-level texture, so they are not a byte-saving item, but a visual-quality item. When a 3D object goes off into the distance so that its size is only half what it was when near the camera, the graphics system has a hard time deciding which of pixels of the original large texture to display on the now-small object. This causes aliasing, or sparkling of the texture. With mipmapping, it just switches to the next smaller picture, until it finds one which more closely matches the size of the object on the screen. Lionfish barbs - The new Lionfish does have polygon barbs on its head. The barbs on the fins are in the textures. Yes, all the new fish will have more polygons than the existing fish, but the added realism will mostly come from bigger textures. A high-res texture with alpha will automatically anti-alias itself when stretched, but the only card that I've ever seen perform a decent job of polygon anti-aliasing is the now-obsolete 3Dfx series (and then only when using its native Glide language). I wrote MA to squeeze every last bit of realism possible out of an 8-meg card at 1024x768. Sure, a lot of people still have these cards, and for them MA 2.6 will continue to be sold and supported for years to come. Now it's time to move on and give the people with systems made in THIS decade something to look at.
Jim Sachs
Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium |
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#1439 |
Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2000
![]() Location: Tennessee
Posts: 9,725
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Jim,
I am glad to hear things are progressing. As for something to consider for future use, ( I know you have too much going on getting things built for now ), but maybe someone at Prolific could get it added later. Would you even consider actinic lighting in the new version? It would be awesome to see something like the Blue Faced Angel in the first photo, turned into the second one with lighting changes. ![]()
Michael
Administrator of Inside:SereneScreen Aquarium Forum, Chatroom, Fan Site & Gallery DVD Collection |
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#1440 |
Forum Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Rock Hill, SC
Posts: 10,939
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Basically it would be a second texture that only lights up when that texture gets close to a certain light source. I would love to see this. I don't know if that second texture would have to have the same resolution as the fish's main texture.
"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 |
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