Aquarium Screensaver v1.3.1

Fixes brief black squares that could flash on screen.

A rounding error could make a surface normal look slightly past 'facing the camera', which turned one pixel into NaN. The bloom blur and the temporal anti-aliasing then spread it into a black square for a frame.

• Clamped every pow(1.0 - ndv, ...) and other unsafe math (negative bases, normalizing zero vectors).
• Added a safety net so bloom, depth of field, TAA and the final composite discard any invalid pixel instead of spreading it.

Install: download Aquarium.scr, right-click it and choose Install. The file is not code-signed, so SmartScreen or an antivirus may warn about it.

Aquarium Screensaver v1.3.0

A big realism update.

Fish

• Translucent fins (rays glow when the sun shines through), bump-mapped scales, subsurface scattering, iridescence, gills, mouths and glossy eyes
• Two new species (discus, lionfish); everyone flees when the shark gets close

The reef

• Branching and table corals, lattice sea fans, anemones with glowing tentacles, seagrass, hundreds of pebbles, layered rocks with moss and cracks, sand with grain and ripples
• Kelp forests now cast soft shadows

Lighting and image

• Ray-traced ambient occlusion and bounced light from the sunlit sand
• Temporal anti-aliasing, depth of field, chromatic aberration and film grain
• Marine snow sparkles inside the light shafts
• AMD FSR 1.0 upscaling is now on by default (quality) to pay for it all: about 93 FPS uncapped on an RTX 3060 across three monitors

New settings: taa, dof, lens (also in the settings dialog).

Install: download Aquarium.scr, right-click it and choose Install. The file is not code-signed, so SmartScreen or an antivirus may warn about it.

Aquarium Screensaver v1.2.0

Adds optional AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 upscaling.

• New upscaling setting (off, quality 1.5x, balanced 1.7x, performance 2x) and sharpness, also in the settings dialog. Off by default.
• On an RTX 3060 across three monitors the uncapped frame rate goes from about 81 FPS to 128 / 148 / 177 FPS.
• fsr.py is a standalone, reusable GLSL 3.30 port of AMD's EASU + RCAS (MIT license, see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md).

Install: download Aquarium.scr, right-click it and choose Install. The file is not code-signed, so SmartScreen or an antivirus may warn about it.

Aquarium Screensaver v1.1.1

Fixes the pixelated look of some effects.

• Caustics on the sand: the lines of focused light are now smooth up close (2560x1200 caustic map, denser surface mesh, slight mip blur).
• Water surface seen from below: reflections are traced at 2/3 resolution (was 1/4) with distance-filtered ripples, so no more blocky or sparkly noise.

Install: download Aquarium.scr, right-click it and choose Install. The file is not code-signed, so SmartScreen or an antivirus may warn about it.

Aquarium Screensaver v1.1.0

Hybrid ray tracing, still fully shader-based (no RT cores needed, OpenGL 3.3).

Install: download Aquarium.scr, right-click it and choose Install.

What's new

• Soft ray-traced shadows from fish, jellyfish, rocks and coral
• Physical caustics: sun rays refracted through an animated water surface
• Volumetric light shafts that pick up the caustics and the shadows
• The water surface seen from below as a total-internal-reflection mirror, with Snell's window
• Refraction: jellyfish act as gel lenses and every bubble is a tiny lens with chromatic dispersion
• New raytracing setting (on by default); turn it off for the cheaper procedural look

About 120 FPS uncapped with ray tracing on an RTX 3060 across three monitors (medium quality), so a 75 Hz cap is comfortable.

The file is not code-signed, so SmartScreen or an antivirus may warn about it.

Aquarium Screensaver v1.0.0

A real-time 3D aquarium screensaver for Windows, multi-monitor and fully procedural.

Install: download Aquarium.scr, right-click it and choose Install. Use Settings... in the picker to tweak the scene. Requires a GPU with OpenGL 3.3 or newer.

Highlights

• Procedurally generated 3D fish (six species) with boid schooling and a shark patrol
• One continuous world across all your monitors
• Caustics, god rays, depth fog, bubbles, seaweed, coral and jellyfish
• Day/dusk/night lighting that follows your clock
• Settings dialog, live preview, refresh-rate pacing, battery-friendly mode

The file is not code-signed, so SmartScreen or an antivirus may warn about it.