The Tenuous Link

I've just bought Lucy her first piece of computer software: a fishtank screen saver. I used to think that sort of thing was pointless - just turn your monitor off and save some electricity? But Lucy loves looking at fish, and she's quite impressed with this. Also it runs in the full-screen interactive mode where you can feed the fish, or harass them with a pointy finger, so it's not strictly just a screen saver.

Another reason to buy it was that I don't have any other games on my new computer, so I had no application that would show off the 3D graphics. Finally, Em had £15 of WH Smiths vouchers, and I was bored while we were out shopping :-)

That's me in the fishtank :-)

As well as keeping Lucy amused while she eats her lunch, Em and I have both been staring at the fish. Our conclusion is that it's "quite good". Including the Bonus Pack (on the same CD as the main install) and the extra fish that you can download after you register, there are 36 tropical fish to choose from. You can have between 15 and 45 fish in the tank at the same time (the smaller fish come in threes and only count as one fish).

The fish swim in all directions, and details like shine and translucancy are quite impressive. It is a little odd that they don't cast any shadow though, despite the otherwise convincing rippling lighting effects.

There alre also 7 different sets of fish tank decorations (static coral) to choose from, although the fish only seem to be able to swim behind objects in 4 of them. You can also chose illumination lighting colour, and set a background photo -- so I spent a happy hour finding suitable pictures. Combined with the splashing noise (I switched the frog option off), it's quite hypnotic.

Requirements:

• Pentium 450 MHz or higher
• 8 MB 3D grapics card
• DirectX 8.1 or newer

Even an empty fish tank sends my brand new 2GHz machine to 100% CPU load though, so I suppose it just uses all the resources it can get! That's another reason not to use this as a screen saver -- my computer gets HOT when it's working hard.

While I was playing with this, I discovered that I already had something similar installed on my PC: The Windows MCE "Aquarium" screen saver (also part of the Windows XP Plus pack). Aquarium might even be better than the PC Aquarium that I paid extra for: the fish are fancier (they are goldfish with big swishy tails), and are slightly more convincing swimmers, the pond weed drifts about in the water, and the edges of objects aren't so obvious. However, there are fewer options to customise the tank, and it is strictly a screen saver (it goes away when you move the mouse). I think it is from the same people that sell the Marine Aquarium program (see below).

So, does PC Aquarium show off my new PC well? Sort of; I use the on-board graphics (Intel 915G chipset/Graphics Media Accelarator 900) of my motherboard. Although this is DirectX 9 compatible, it doesn't implement some optional features. The most obvious "defect" of the virtual fish is that the fine detail is a bit pixilated, and can shimmer when the fish move about. That shouldn't happen if the anti-aliasing features of DirectX are being used, but it turns out that my computer doesn't have full-screen anti-aliasing. It's been good enough to fool Lucy though.

From Amazon in the UK: I bought my copy from WH Smiths (£20), but it's cheaper at Amazon.co.uk.
From Amazon in the US: Amazon.com doesn't list PC Aquarium 3 Delux. The closest to it is Marine Aquarium 2, which seems to be from the same company as the MCE Aquarium screen saver. It also lets you have a clock, or a calendar in your fish tank, but you can only have 7 fish, and there is only one tank layout.