![]() ![]() Some species have randomly generated patterns, so each one you plop in your tank is unique. Our free trial version lets you preview several of our species in action, and isn't loaded with toolbars, adware or any other garbage. Once you try Dream Aquarium you'll realize what all our fans and customers know-that no other aquarium screensaver even comes close to the beauty and realism of our product. Watch the feisty fiddler crab run after and try to catch nearby fish. Watch as your amazing fish school together, chase each other, peck at object in the tank, or drop in some food and watch the feeding frenzy begin. Anyone interested in filling the screen undersea life should give this download a shot.Ĭreated by an Academy Award winning visual effects artist, this next-generation virtual aquarium brings the beauty of a lush freshwater aquarium to your screen, complete with gently swaying plants, rippling light effects, and the most realistic fish movement and behavior of any virtual aquarium and screensaver. While its lack of direction for controlling the program was annoying, it wasn't enough to deter us from the spectacular graphics and options for the aquarium. Throughout the extensive Options menu we only found one vague command to set when the aquarium appears, and oddly, this was only when the computer was running on battery. While it seems like every opportunity was taken for users to control the tank, the designers neglected to give them as much control over when the screensaver operates. ![]() Users can choose between seven different aquariums, different fish, lighting, and can even feed the fish. The program's options are the highlight of the program once the menu is accessed. Up to six species of sea creatures (the trial limits the tank to six) move in realistic ways and look lifelike, whether they are brightly colored angelfish or crabs scurrying about on the sea floor. But the actual fish tank action is impressive. The program has a somewhat confusing interface that requires the user to right-click on the aquarium as it's running in order to access the Options menu. With a surprising amount of options, you can control virtually every aspect of the program except for one important one. It should be understood that the extensions are not guaranteed to work in all situations but one can fall back to the already excellent MA and not lose anything, only potentially gain additional functionality.Īnyway, that's my amateur perspective as simply a member of the public who loves MA and would like to see some extensions too.Dream Aquarium Screensaver offers users an opportunity to turn their computer screen into a fish tank when they are not using it. Even if the extensions were free, they would be useless without purchasing MA, so the extensions could encourage more sales of MA. ![]() Consequently I don't understand the reluctance to encouraging those sort of extensions since they have the potential to garner additional or renewed interest in MA. I'm not a programmer, but it seems like Flippers extension are like plugins to a main program that add functionality but can not do anything without that original program at its core. It's a shame this wasn't able to be taken further as an experiment to see what was possible as an extension to an already existing program. I wonder what it would look like with a blurry distant static view of other corals as a background, like a "tacky" wallpaper background on a real aquarium. MA is an amazing program that still holds me entranced to this day, however life seems to have planned other things for Jim and it seems extremely unlikely there will ever be any further major developments.įlippers extension of MA is also a major achievement, however I think it gets its wow factor from providing a different perspective of the corals that adds to the illusion that it is solid 3D and not particularly from the background that I actually find a bit distracting. I solved the problem 12 years ago by positioning the camera so that the problem area was not visible, and don't see any good reason to re-open the can of worms. I have never seen an algorithm which could realistically duplicate all the reflections/refraction/perturbations to achieve this - not in a software product or a $100-million movie. As a scientist, I try to keep an open mind, but just the fact that the underside of the surface would show is enough to (almost) certainly doom it to failure. My official position on this background-addition subject is that I don't see how it could ever be good enough to fool anyone into believng that it's real. However, as I mentioned somewhere else, the Mindspark advertising connection has improved sales enough so that I might be adding a couple of freebee critters. Anything fish-related would be ignored as old-hat.īob - Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think I'll be doing that. It would have to be something new, with a very different look to attract any attention.
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