Pixelated at 1920x1200
 

I have MA 2.6 on my Mac and on the display at 1920x1200 is pixelated.

What are my options? Are there any options besides having it be pixelated if it's fullscreen and having it display over only some of the screen?

Thanks,
Jonathan Hayward

The background artwork was built at 1280 x 768. So it is being stretched substantially to fit on your monitor.

A future version of the Aquarium will include a procedurally created (2D bitmap on 3D objects) so it will look excellent at your resolution.

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for the welcome!

Are there any publicly estimated release dates for the newer version?

Thank you,
Jonathan Hayward
Jonathan's Corner: A Glimpse into Eastern Orthodox Christianity

October, but we don't know which year. ;)

That's a running joke by the way.

Um, OK... I was hoping to be able to give a Christmas gift without issues of pixelation.

Would it be possible to have an interim release or patch that just had the original images, resized without pixelation? I could do something that would look reasonable, and not be technically difficult to use.

Jonathan Hayward
Jonathan's Corner: A Glimpse into Eastern Orthodox Christianity

I suspect a solution like that isn't very probable. Sorry.

Jonathon - it's just not worth it for me to spend any time patching up the old program. All the background artwork would have to be done at double the current resolution (4 times the pixels). It took almost a year to create it the first time at 1280x768.

Currently, all my efforts are going into MA3, which will solve the problem by using hi-res textures on 3D objects, instead of a 2D background.

If pixels are quite obvious on your monitor, I'm wondering if it might be a driver issue. I have seen a few drivers which maintain discreet pixels instead of doing a smooth stretch as they should. Even though the MA background is only 1280x768, it was still good enough for Apple to use in ads for their Cinema monitor.

I too have a 1920x1200 display and noticed a the same problem only it is worse (I assume) because my displays are portrait. I just upgraded to 2.6 because I needed it to run on my Intel MacPro (previous version was 1.0).

I am glad to hear that you are working on it - but since it has been over 2 years since V 3 was started I was wondering if work is still continuing on this or if I am just going to have to live with it as is.

Also, I cannot adjust the resolution - the pull down is disabled.

Alpha testers are currently running a test version of Marine Aquarium 3 with the totally rebuilt background which looks very good at 1920 x 1440. Also note the tank is now over 2 screenfuls wide and will span over multiple screens, so would look great at 3840 x 1440. ;)

It is hoped that MA3 will be released this year. There are still interface and multi-monitor issues being resolved. Stay tuned!

Thanks. What I should have said is that my displays are 1200x1920 because they are rotated to portrait mode (I am a software dev so I use them this way for editing text and I prefer it anyway).

I assume (correct me if I am wrong) that the v 3 changes are intended to scale to any high resolution? Because my next step is to go to 30 inch monitors.

What I would prefer for multi-monitor is that the aquarium span the multiple monitors rather than duplicating itself. I note however that most (all?) screen savers on OSX do this (duplicate and not span) so maybe it is not possible?

Also, can someone answer why the resolution pull down in the preferences pane is disabled?

The currently testing Windows version spans two or three monitors with ONE wide aquarium, not cloning or duplicating the same aquarium multiple times. Two regular monitors (4:3 ratio) will show almost the entire width of the aquarium. :)

Using your current monitor in a portrait ratio may present some interesting challenges. The highest VERTICAL height of the aquarium that has been tested is 1440 pixels and it looked smooth then. So it might be a LITTLE pixelated at 1920 vertical res, but certainly MUCH better than MA2.

All that info is assuming that Jim O'Connor can get the Mac version to behave the same as the PC version.

Being part of the Alpha testing team and in posession of a 1920x1200 monitor with a pivot function, I promise to try out the current alpha in 1200x1920 if I just can get the pivot thing rolling.

On OSX you don't need any special drivers like on Windows (I don't have Vista, but drivers were needed for XP IIRC) - you just change the rotation in the "Displays" preference pane.

If you need/desire OSX testing I am willing to test v. 3 on my system - I am not using 2.6 (although I just upgraded) because it doesn't look very good stretched out like that. I have both a PowerBook with Tiger and an Intel MacPro with Leopard so I can test on both.

My displays are side by side 24" monitors.

TT - If you're using an nVidia card, it's very easy to rotate the display. Under the nVidia tab in Display Properties, there's a nvRotate button to switch between landscape and portrait modes. Works fine for me.

LCB,
There is no Mac version at this moment.

Jim,
I'm on the green team so that should work just fine.