by Mike Swope August 27, 2002

With the release of Mac OS X, screensavers are now built into the operating system, and compared to their Windows counterparts, they're beautiful. Mac OS X's advanced graphics engine renders its screensavers smoothly, colorfully, and with depth and sophistication. Unfortunately, there are only two or three really good screensaver modules in Mac OS X for my taste. My favorite built-in module is slideshow, which displays my own photos, enlarging and reducing them dynamically, fading from one to the next. Really very nice.

But slideshow isn't my favorite screensaver. Aquarium by Prolific Publishers is my favorite. Because it's very, very cool. Its realism is astounding. Where most 3rd party screensaver modules for Mac OS X disappoint, Aquarium is engrossing. People watch it as if they were watching real fish in a real aquarium!

Prolific's marketing is accurate. Aquarium does indeed turn your Mac or PC into a virtual saltwater aquarium - in glorious 3D. The gravel at the bottom of the tank appears to be up against the glass. A column of bubbles rise from among the coral at the bottom of the tank. The lighting effects cause shadows from the "surface" to shimmer softly across the fish, coral and gravel. Foreground and background lighting transitions from daytime to nighttime, from front to back, as if the aquarium were truly on the desk at varying times of day. Fish swim in front of and behind the coral and each other.

Aquarium's animation is as convincing as its 3D. Everything about the animation is fluid and graceful, even on slower, less powerful machines (more about this in a moment). The fish swim in full 3D, turning in the tank, and avoiding collisions with the coral and one another! The bubbles rise smoothly to the surface. The shadows from the surface glide flawlessly across the fish, coral and bottom without hitching, stuttering or other distortion.

As with a real aquarium, the user has control over how many fish are in Aquarium's tank, which fish are in the tank, and how the tank is lighted. The user may choose to display as many as 7 fish at a time, and may choose from 21 exotic species, including butterflyfish, clown triggerfish, angel fish, lionfish, tangs, and damselfish. In this case, too, the user also controls sound on/off, bubbles on/off, frame rate (fps), multiple monitors and whether the lone starfish in the application can attach itself to the glass.

Of course, having control over these things also means that the user also has control over Aquarium's performance, particularly on slower, less powerful machines. For example, I have used Aquarium on a G4/867 and an iBook/500/12.1". On the G4/867, I don't notice any performance hit, whatever preference choices I make. On the iBook/500, however, Aquarium's performance is, as expected, less than acceptable with similar settings. On the iBook/500, the frame rate drops to 7.9 fps at similar settings (the user has the option to display the frame rate on-screen...a huge help troubleshooting and making preference selections). This is unacceptable. But not permanent.

The user has options to increase performance for performance-challenged late-model machines. Increasing performance is as simple as reducing Aquarium's overhead requirements by reducing the number of effect to be rendered, the complexity of the effects, and the number of fish to be displayed at one time. For the iBook/500, I have reduced the number of fish to 2 and reduced the frame rate to 30, and disabled shimmer. These preferences have the most impact on performance. I have elected to keep the bubble column and sound activated and kept the lighting effects at automatic, since I enjoy these attributes of Aquarium. My frame rates on the iBook/500 are now between 14-15 fps. These results are better than I had expected on the iBook.

If you own a late-model G3 or G4 Macintosh running Mac OS X (or gasp! a machine running Windows 95, 98, 2000, or XP) and enjoy saltwater aquariums, you'll love Aquarium from Prolific Publishers. It is astoundingly realistic and sophisticated, and at $21.95 much less expensive than a real saltwater aquarium . You may even decide to name your virtual fish!

Summary: MacAquarium offers a realistic virtual aquarium when your Mac or PC slips into screensaver land. With 21 types of fish, beautiful fluid life-like motion, awesome lighting effects, and a convincing soundtrack, Aquarium is a no-brainer. You've got to have it if you love aquariums or screensavers or both.

Mike Swope is publisher of inetreviews.com, a site that publishes hardware, software and book reviews and sells Macintosh and Coca Cola merchandise. Mike and his wife are also partners in SuperPersonalized.com, offering professional quality photo calendars, mousepads, magnets, t-shirts and other photographic gifts. Mike is also president of MacWichita Macintosh User Group in Wichita, KS, a full-time graphic/web designer for Koch Business Solutions, and proprietor of Swope Design.