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Old 12-28-2005, 10:30 PM   #1361
Lyndamax
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I dont have 28 fish only 26 and a star fish. Is there a way i can get the others. when i bought the cd it didnt have the star fish on it i had to download the shareware version to the same directory to get the starfish. I have tried the Marine Aquarium MD and it made no changes that i can see.
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Old 12-28-2005, 10:41 PM   #1362
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Sorry for the mutiple posts my computer kept freezing and i tried to cancel the message and start again. ooooops!
Now I'm really embarrassed
Lynda
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Old 12-28-2005, 11:39 PM   #1363
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I recently added two more fish, but Prolific has not put the new version up on the website yet.
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Old 12-29-2005, 01:31 AM   #1364
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OK Thanks for that Jim I will try to be patient and wait for prolific to put it up.
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Old 12-29-2005, 07:53 AM   #1365
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Originally posted by Lyndamax:
I dont have 28 fish only 26 and a star fish. Is there a way i can get the others. when i bought the cd it didnt have the star fish on it i had to download the shareware version to the same directory to get the starfish. I have tried the Marine Aquarium MD and it made no changes that i can see.
Cheers
Lynda  
MD is a slight quality bump for people with high quality flat panel screens.
It also allows you to run the Aquarium on 2 or more screens and contains both regular (4:3) and widescreen versions.
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Old 12-30-2005, 08:06 AM   #1366
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Jim.Did Prolific give you date to add the 2 new fish Version ..
Imagination is more important than knowledge
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Old 12-30-2005, 09:07 AM   #1367
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They were hoping to release it about 3 weeks ago, but decided that releasing the new Goldfish was higher priority.
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Old 12-30-2005, 09:27 AM   #1368
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Jim,

Dare I ask what may in the distant past have been called a $64,000 question:

What are the chances of SereneScreem MA being adapted to work on two monitors, in a similar fashion to Dream Aquarium? - ie. Two independent screens in place of the current way that Marine Aquarium supports multiple displays.


[thinks] .......... If you don't ask, you may never find out! [/thinks]
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Old 12-30-2005, 09:35 AM   #1369
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Higher priority to who?
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Old 12-30-2005, 09:56 AM   #1370
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I think it must be a Tetris day, Michael. .....
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Old 12-30-2005, 11:39 AM   #1371
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Cliff -

The background of 3.0 will be approximately two widescreens wide, so it should be possible to span it across two monitors with no distortion. I have no idea what to do about a third monitor.

With a single monitor, the user would be able to have either a static display, or pan the camera back and forth across the wider tank.
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Old 12-30-2005, 11:47 AM   #1372
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Cliff,

Are you wanting an identical background on both monitors but with one set of fish? If so, how many fish would be shared between the 2 monitors?

Two different 2D backgrounds is not in the cards.
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Old 12-30-2005, 04:07 PM   #1373
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Jim/Morgan,

The background for 3.0 will no doubt be far superior in a number of ways, to what I was suggesting. And I have been looking forward to the two widescreens wide setup since the concept was first explained to us. But I shall be disappointed if it is required to have the two monitors running in Horizontal Span, as opposed to DualView. - The DualView I am referring to is nVidia DualView, provided in Display Properties when you have GeForce video card drivers installed whilst running Win2000Pro - Not the WindowsXP dual view, (which I have no experience of, and know nothing about), that is referred to here.

However, my reason for asking came about when it became obvious to me that it could not have been .NET (because it is not now required), that allowed Dream Aquarium to have independent setups for each monitor. - I was just imagining how nice it would be if MA2MD could similarly have a separate selection of fish, moving independently of each other, on each of two monitors. - (Or even the same selection, but moving independently).
I have no idea how feasible it would be, and obviously I haven't a clue how it is done in Dream Aquarium. But the effect, even with an identical background on each monitor, is most impressive! - If it was at all possible, I would rate it as very highly desirable.

If anyone else has not seen the way Dream Aquarium operates on two monitors, do try to see it, - it's magic! - It is not a clone on the second monitor, like MA2MD, it runs like a second tank, even with the same background and same fish selection.

Prolific have allowed the resolution and anamorphic values to be different on each monitor. What I am suggesting here is to take it a stage further and have the fish moving differently on each monitor! - The different background can come later!!! ..... Dream Aquarium have done it!
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Old 12-30-2005, 04:49 PM   #1374
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DualView is a kludge to deal with applications that do not properly support dual monitors. Marine Aquarium 3 should no longer require DualView to run on 2 monitors. That should be a good thing! What else do you lose besides the menu bar on both screens when you get rid of DualView?

It would take a lot of programming effort, and the fish selection box in Marine Aquarium would have to be adapted to allow 14 or however many fish selections you're going to allow, to support the same background on 2 screens. The hardest part though is that the collision avoidance code in the Aquarium is hard-coded in basic math (according to Jim) instead of modular code written with calculus/physics/etc. and so cannot simply be adapted over to work with a different background. I think it's simply too much effort to do this on the 2D background when a 3D background is in development and that effort is then wasted.
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Old 12-30-2005, 05:41 PM   #1375
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Cliff - I'll look into it, but it sounds pretty hard.
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Old 12-31-2005, 07:20 AM   #1376
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First of all, thank you for reading my lengthy posts and for your reasoned replies.

Morgan,

I don't see DualView, (as is provided as a nView Display Mode), as being a kludge. To me it is the only way to realistically use two monitors 99.9% of the time. - Are you perhaps referring to the dual view implementation that I have been told only exists in WindowsXP? - (Which I knew nothing about, other than what was said to me in connection with trying to run Aqua Garden spanned across two monitors, in that link I gave.) - With XP it appears that you can change to and from dual view without rebooting, - if I have understood it correctly!

.... What else do you lose besides the menu bar on both screens when you get rid of DualView?
It would honestly be easier and quicker to list what I didn't lose! - Horizontal Span can best be described as a complete disaster most of the time! - Other than Aqua Garden, those fish screensavers that do work are either split down the centre, in common with most dialogue boxes, or stretched x2 horizontally with ridiculous looking distorted fish. Their settings panel recognise only one monitor when in Horizontal Span mode! - The same effect is present in such as Photoshop Elements, - (unless I keep changing the screen resolution, or the nView Display Mode, when I change applications). - Can you imagine trying to use a x2 horizontally stretched Photoshop?

I also prefer not to have Icons and the Taskbar across both screens, and things are also made worse by having a 4x3 CRT coupled with a 5x4 LCD. ..... (Let's not go into why LCDs are 5x4 !!! )

With DualView I can have the optimum resolution for each monitor, and the anamorphic factor on the screensavers allows the correct settings to be made for each monitor. (Which means I have a truly circular clock on each screen in MA2.6 !)

Do you not see the simplicity with which the two monitors in Dream Aquarium, can each have their setting changed from one common menu, by only moving the mouse pointer to the screen you wish to change?

Jim,

Unless I have got something horribly wrong here, I have a feeling that if your 3D background is going to be anything remotely like Aqua Garden when displayed on two monitors, then it will require Horizontal Span set for say 2048x768 in order to work across both screens. On Win2k, that requires a Display Mode change, which in turn requires a system reboot. If the Display Mode is left in Horizontal Span, the above problems will then prevail.

I have never used Windows XP, but if what I was told whilst trying to get Aqua Garden working satisfactorily on two screens is correct, then there may be a fundamental difference between XP and Win2k, in the way that wide displays are controlled and changed to and from, when spread across the two monitors.

The current version of MA2MD works fine on two monitors set for DualView, - The way Dream Aquarium works, is even better!
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Old 12-31-2005, 11:53 AM   #1377
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The technical Windows issues of running on multiple displays would fall into Edgar's purview. My responsibily would be associated with having that many fish and background objects in play at the same time. Memory usage, collision avoidance, and especially frame rate are all major factors. Yes, I know that Dream Aquarium does this, but it makes sacrifices that I am not willing to. Even with the minimum amount of fish, the frame rate of Dream Aquarium is extremely low on my computer. I assume this is because the author came from the film industry, where it's OK to take all day to render a frame. Coming from the gaming industry, my main priority is speed and smoothness. I don't know what is causing the slowdown, since Alan has done a wonderful job at keeping the polygon count down. It's possible that his highly effective collision-avoidance and schooling routine is simply a WHOLE LOT of code.
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Old 12-31-2005, 12:12 PM   #1378
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Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP all support multiple monitors without any special software.

I think DualView is to allow you to use a dual-head video card as 2 cards even though Windows only recognizes it as one. You can also span for applications which are not multiple monitor-aware.

Originally posted by cliff:
Let's not go into why LCDs are 5x4  
If you wanted a 4:3 LCD, you could have bought a 15", 17", or 19" LCD which are 4:3. Sounds like you bought an 18" LCD which is indeed 5:4 ratio. I don't mind the 18" that Jim got me even with its unusual ratio.
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Old 01-01-2006, 10:08 AM   #1379
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Originally posted by feldon29:
... If you wanted a 4:3 LCD, you could have bought a 15", 17", or 19" LCD which are 4:3. Sounds like you bought an 18" LCD which is indeed 5:4 ratio. I don't mind the 18" that Jim got me even with its unusual ratio.  
I think you will find that 99.99% of currently available 17" and 19" LCDs are 5x4 not 4x3. - There may be a few old 15" still available, but the only 4x3 ones I could find whilst doing a recent search were very expensive ~20"+.

I like my 17" ViewSonic very much, it's superb! - But I would like flat panels even better if they were 1280x960 instead of 1280x1024.
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Old 01-01-2006, 11:23 AM   #1380
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I'll admit that 1280 x 1024 threw me off at first.
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