When the New Marine version will released ?

[drfish]

Is Thursday roughly Tuesday enough?

[Surferminn]

have to remember doc, holiday mail season, things get lost in the mail during the holiday rush and all, you know!

[abeery]

Don't know when MAPPC will make it to SereneScreen site but here's a teaser... hopefully prolific will not be too sore with me

[drfish]

oooOHh... Pretty! :heart: Does it scroll?

Edit: What kind of hardware do you need? Will the 400Mhz PXA255 in my Asus A620 make the cut? I'm assuming it will... What kind of framerates can I expect?

[Surferminn]

same question, can you scroll across the aquarium?
can you also rotate the picture 90 degrees and display in a landscape mode as opposed to portrait mode (vertically as you have it pictured). also, is it possible select the size aquarium (i.e. shrink the aquarium so you can see the whole thing but with tiny fishes or have it bigger but see bigger fishes, etc..)

Here's a idea, how about if somebody here created a portable aquarium like the size of an 8x10 picture frame or bigger and you can carry it around and put it up on your desk at work or on your desk at home just like you do pictures of your family -- independent of the computer. a mobile picture frame virtual aquarium. what do you think?

[Socrates]

I guess you could also ask why my smartphone also has windows media player 10 in it, or why it plays Tetris, has 512MB of ram, plays movies, mp3's... Because it CAN.

LOL

All that in addition to the actual practical business stuff it does like displaying live traffic, syncing with a blue tooth gps box, doing map routing, and having my complete Outlook contacts and calendars.

The reason I have an MS SMartphone is that I got tired of having to carry around a bulky Palm and a phone.

As far as a Palm or PPC sitting in a cradle all day??? That seems kind of odd. Isn't a device meant to make you portable?

[abeery]

Socrates

I stand (sit actually) humbled and corrected. I will endeavor to test on a SmartPhone... not sure what resolutions are available as I have never looked into this before. I will at very least see what emulator options I have available. what is a typical configuration from a RAM point of view, SD or CF cards available?

[Socrates]

Well the the two current big boys are the Audiovox SMT5600 (which has about 20 other model names and is really made by HTC) and the Motorola MPX220. There are also some older Samsung i600 and Moto MPX200 and various others on the market, but the 5600 and 220 are the latest and greatest.

I don't know about the 220 but the 5600 has a 200MHz processor, 32 MB of Ram, and 64 of built in storage... both the 220 and 5600 have MiniSD slots and both currently run anything up to 512... it's unknown whether they can handle the new 1GB miniSD cards which aren't widely available yet.

You can look at http://www.Microsoft.com/smartphone for specs on the major phones. There are also the Palm phones, etc, but I would suspect that porting to the MS Smartphone would be easier since it's supposed to be a derivative of the Pocket PC.

[kona001]

This sounds like a great thing. Let me know which palm product would display the new Marine Aquarium with the best possible resolution and speed.

[Wizwad]

Originally posted by drfish
Is Thursday roughly Tuesday enough?

Also, did he specify which Tuesday, or is this going to be like MA-3D being ready in October?

[abeery]

My apologies guys (and gals)… I should have never mentioned MAPPC would be coming out last Tuesday. That is the word I had received but it looks like this has slipped. Prolific has their hands full and I'm not surprised something had to give. As for the new date... I’m not as tightly in the loop as you might imagine -- but the software itself is done -- has been for a while... just a matter of getting distribution website setup etc. Hopefully it will be worth the wait. Have a Happy New Year

Andy

[lannp]

I am new to this forum. I own a 200 gal. reef aquarium in the middle of my living room, and right now its lights are off until I can fix the cooler unit. I miss it! So when I found the MA2 wide screen, I am so happy! The things I miss the most are the live rocks! I wish the 3D background would be animated! Instead of making more and more fish, I would vote for Jim to make anemones, feather dusters etc... I am displaying the wide screen MA2 on my Dell Inspiron 9100, and I wish the purple mushrooms and the other live rocks would react to the currents. By the way, this is better than "Finding Nemo." I like Jim's blue tang better than Dory in the movie. In this version of MA2, one thing that is not quite right is the bubbles: the fish cannot get behind them, ever, so the 3D effects are incorrect whenever the fishes go near them. Can we have the crystal in the wide screen version? Jim said not! I also miss my coral shrimp and my reef crab. DO NOT put more than one coral shrimp in your tank. They will fight each other to the death!

Lan from Miami

[Marian Nichols]

Welcome to the forum, Lan. Jim will answer your questions soon.

Visit us informally in the coffee house where we have lively discussions on a variety of subjects. You can learned a great deal there as well as being entertained with jokes and photos.

[Jim Sachs]

Hi, Lan -

Yes, all of those things have been planned for a long time, but life sometimes gets in the way of the grandest plans.

Lately I have been discussing with Prolific the idea of putting the Freshwater Tank on hold, and returning to the Marine Aquarium for a major update. Encore has been pushing for this for some time now, hoping to have a product to fill the store shelves when CD sales start to flag. Since I make such a tiny percentage from hardcopy sales, Encore's wishes have never held much sway with me, but Prolific has a good relationship with them, and I want Prolific to do well.

So, I will make a decision on this in the next few days. There are still major technical hurdles to be overcome, like the 3D format issue. I also must finish my home design and turn it over to my General Contractor before I can start writing software again.

And then there's the rain. Our area is being deluged by an enormous storm, and there will be no relief for several days. At 6000 feet, we are right at the snow level. There is about 2 feet of snow on the ground, and the rain has now super-saturated it. Water is pouring into the closet of my bedroom, and I've had to stop writing this message twice to go bail it.

Could be worse - a short distance from here 200 people have been trapped in their cars overnight awaiting rescue.

[Marian Nichols]

Oh no! I had heard of the downpours in California but my goodness that has got to be the pits.

Maybe you should consider a houseboat. (kidding)

I bet that puts a damper on the excitement of building a new home. How are you managing to cope?

[Jim Sachs]

Well, the new home will be in Oregon, and will be well-prepared for rain. Here in California, raindrops are so many months apart that we forget how to deal with them.

[Bob]

Jim,

I'm really sorry to hear about the rain problems you're having. I've got family in California and I know they are having problems, too. They don't know how to build for rainy weather in California, but your are right about being better prepared in Oregon.

I would vote for putting the fresh water aquarium on the shelf for a while and working on the MA update, IF that means the 3D background. Otherwise I don't know what you would do that would qualify as a "major" update.

More fish, schooling, new creatures would be nice but not earth shattering.

I encourage you to do which ever projects gets us to the 3D background the quickest.

Thanks for a beautiful product.

[patscarr]

If you do decide to go back to the Marine Aquarium, which would be awesome, might I suggest wipping out a quick 10 creature pack first, to take in some revenue quickly, then dive into the 3D background etc. because it may take quite awhile?

[lannp]

Hi Marian and Jim:

Thank you both for the welcome. Jim, I am sorry for the deluge in your area, and that you only get a meager financial return with your beautiful "art" work. I am a programmer and did do some work in 3D medical modeling (OpenGL mostly) so I know how hard this is. But I am so impressed with the details you put into your rendering. I have no idea how you manage to incorporate "personality" in your fish. I have my 200 gal aquarium for many years, and I spent an enormous time watching my tank at nights. Your fish behave just right. I love your lion fish, and the clown trigger, and the Picasso, in fact all of them. If you decide to go back to the salt water reef tank, I think you would do all of us a big favor. There are just so much you can get from a fresh water tank, but a reef tank has infinite potential. Please make your feather duster retracts when the fish pick on it... etc... I am recommending to a friend of mine opening up a restaurant at the foot of the Eiffel tower in Paris to place a 50" LCD screen to display your work. Hope he'll listen. The only worry I have is the burning in of the display. But it is still cheaper than keeping up a real reef tank. All dental offices should look into this for their office too.

Lan

[Tiny Turtle]

Pat,
Won't work – The creatures require a 3D background to interact with. The banded coral shrimp can't climb on 2D and there's no cave for a moray to hide in...