Ocean Aquarium 3D Screen Saver Deluxe

Rating:
Summary: Pretty, but not too impressive
Review: OK, first you need to know that there appears to be several versions of this program published by Broderbund, Selectsoft and Arcmedia. I've seen both a regular and a "deluxe" version sold both online and in retail stores. The "deluxe" version has several extra fish. This is reviewing the "deluxe" version published by Arcmedia. The Arcmedia deluxe version appears to be the best deal on this particular program.

There are really just two decent aquarium type screen savers on the market at the moment, this one and Serene Screen (also packaged with Windows XP Plus!, and also known as Marine Aquarium 2.0 by Encore). I own them both now. This one (Arcmedia Ocean Aquarium 3D Deluxe) is more detailed, as far as number of fish and animation of fish goes. But I prefer Serene Screen.

In Ocean Aquarium 3D Deluxe, there are too many fish, and they can swim great distances away from your viewpoint. Thus you have a lot of fish on the screen, but can only really see a few of them at once, as the rest are too far away. You can not reduce the number of fish on the screen without reducing the overall detail, which means (for example) turning off the lighting. There is no separate control for lighting or number of fish, etc., just a slider for detail. The effect is that you have a more realistic "ocean" type view, but it makes for a rather boring screen saver, as there's not much to look at.

So basically, if it's realism you're looking for, this is your program. If it's a good aquarium screen saver you are looking for, go for Serene Screen. The only thing that this has that Serene Screen doesn't is that you can use THIS aquarium as an active desktop in Windows XP. However, you need a pretty powerful video card (I'd suggest directx9 hardware) to use the active desktop feature, and a good video card is strongly suggested if you want to use this as a screen saver, also.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of fish but less satisfying
Review: When I bought this program, I already owned the Marine Aquarium 2.0 screen saver. If I were not already spoiled by that excellent program, I might have given this program more stars. Ocean Aquarium looks more like open water, not a constrained aquarium. You have a choice of a vast number of fish and other sea creatures. You can also have many fish visible at the same time.

The overall program settings are more difficult to adjust. If you have a lot of fish visible at the same time it can be distracting. the fish go back and forth in a predictible line, unlike actual fish. The manta ray and the dophin were well rendered, but some of the other fish appeared to move in more 2 dimensional pattern.

It is more difficult to get the screen saver to fit a wide coputer screen. tha active desk top was a bit distracting for me because of the moving elements, but others might not find it so.