FAH PS3 update

A new version of Folding@home for the PS3 was released today.  You can learn more about it here:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/12/18/new-foldinghome-features-coming/
but I'll post the update below as well in verbatim. 

Noam Rimon is the lead of the development team we work with at Sony and has played a critical role in the development of FAH/PS3 (in fact, he was the one who contacted me to consider the port in the first place and then helped push for it to happen).

Posted by Noam Rimon // Sr. Development Manager SCEA R&D

As we approach one million PLAYSTATION 3 consoles participating in the Folding@Home program, we continue to improve the FAH client. With the new Firmware v2.1 we also prepared an updated version of FAH, which can soon be automatically downloaded by clicking on the FAH icon. This updated version includes the following new features:

If you happen to be one of the people that wants to leave their machine running after they finished their late-night gaming session, but wish to shut it down after a limited period of time, we have a great tip for you:

• Go to Settings menu, select Automatic Shutdown and then After Current. You will see a little clock appearing on the top right hand corner of the screen. When this clock reaches zero, the machine will power off completely so you can sleep quietly through the night. In this option the machine will power off after sending the data back to Stanford University so your contribution to the project is maximized.
• You may also choose to shut down after a limited period of time (for example, 3 or 4 hours). To do that choose the Automatic Shutdown option and click on the “In 01h:00m” timer. You will now be able to change the timer settings. After rotating the timer to a new time, you should now see your selected timer appear at the top right corner of the screen. This timer will count all the way down to 0 and then power off the system.
• To disable active timer at any time, go to Settings, choose Automatic Shutdown and then Disable.

What’s a better Holiday addition to Folding than playing music? We’ve added a great feature in this version in the form of a background music player:

• To activate the music player select Music and then a channel. The channels are automatically populated with songs you have stored on your Hard Disk Drive! For holiday music I prefer to choose Dramatic (yeah!) and voila - music is playing.
• If you wish to skip to another track, just use a combination of X + left or right arrow. You can also change the channel by choosing X + up or down arrow. Happy listening!
• To stop music from playing, select Music again from the main menu and choose “disable.”
• Your music playback selection will be saved between consecutive runs of Folding@home.

We hope that these enhancements help improve your FAH experience. The response from PS3 owners really has been spectacular, and thanks to you, the most powerful distributed computer network in the world continues to grow.

          

Comments

[Bryn]

It'd be nice if the "shutdown after amount of time" could be applied to the controllers and not the system. Because I always leave it folding my controllers seem to stay on and run out of batteries.

[J_Rivers]

Bryn: You can in fact turn off the Sixaxis while folding - I do it ALL the time. Simply press the PS button & select the 'turn off controller' option. It does NOT affect Folding@Home in any way. Give it a shot, man.

[Sneakers55]

Wish the SCEA people would drop by the folding forum from time to time.

[Ivoshiee]

Are those 2 items only changes made to the FAH PS3 v1.3?

[Micke N]

I only wish new updates for the SMP client on Windows would come and also a new GPU client so that my HD 2900 Pro can get to work :D

[Darkdrium777]

These are two bugs that I have noticed in the new version of the PS3 client:
First off, the internet browser will freeze from time to time, sometimes up to a few minutes, before control is returned to the user.
Secondly, when you pause the visuals when using the "Backbone" display mode and switch to "Liquorice" while paused, the molecule will display incorrectly (atoms and links scattered across the screen) until the visuals are unpaused. I have not tested this bug thorouhgly though, so the same problem migh happen with other display modes as well...

Hoping to see those corrected in further improvements of the client :) Great job otherwise, I really hope that as PS3 users we are helping a lot in finding a cure for these terrible diseases...

(Donor name is Darkdrium)

[Vernon]

I personally find these upgrades great it allows me more time on folding. It used to get boring for me after one or two minutes but now with the music i can actually stay on for a good hour

[ian]

is it possible to play music from a media server so that i dont have to copy all my mp3's to the ps3?

thanks
ian

[Darren]

can i surf the net while folding?