New Folding@Home Features Coming

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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:

Folding@Home1

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:

Folding@Home2

  • 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.

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82 Comments

2 Author Replies

  • Fugin Sweeeeeeet!

    Now i can start folding again..Woot! And the music is just awesome…thats all i can say…Awesome!

    NOW GIVE ME BLA BLA BLA THAT I ASK FOR ON EVERY POST AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS POST!!!! STUPID SONY!!!!

    Roflmao…J/K@Sony!!!!!!!

  • Folding@Home is one of the coolest, neatest and innovative apps. out there, and it’s amazing that Sony and Stanford has packaged it so that anyone with a PS3 can do it so simply. Adding in these features is a great idea to encourage more folks to contribute their PS3 processing time to a better goal. It also gives the PS3 that much more separation and distinction from the other consoles, that “just” play games. I am hopelessly naive and optimistic, but it would be SO cool to hear that both Sony and Stanford was able to achieve some medical breakthroughs because of the findings they have learned through the results of the distributed computing network they have.

  • This is a nice little additon to the F@H program, thanx

  • Nice little addition to the F@H project, thanx Sony

  • Why is it I cant access the “Backbone” visual? I couldve sworn ive used it before.

  • holy crap, it didnt take long for the b*#ching to begin did it?

    Being a big believer of Folding@Home, its nice to see it expanding so much.

    Now, when im around the house, doing things, I can be F@H and listening to music. Also, alot of times, ill leave my unit on to Fold when I go upstairs to take care of other things or go out to the movies, but im always worried about forgetting to turn off my PS3 or I dont wanna turn off my TV just to turn it back on (Not good to turn on and off a rear projection SXRD) so this makes me feel comfortable as I can set a time for it and once its done doing what it is that its doing, the unit will just power down.

    So a very welcomed update. Thanks team and hopefully, this means more people joining.

  • Nice feature…too bad it didnt come packed with soothing music. When mine started up the first time it blasted out Linkin Park. Fitting, but jarring.

    One idea i had and thought it could be posted here, a partnership between F@H and Google? How cool would it be to chose between F@H globe, and Google Earth? Just a thought.

  • Wow, that music things was unexpected. Thanks, now I have more good reasons to fold at home.

  • Is the update going to make the program more efficient use of the cell like the last update, or is it just cosmetic features.

  • wow that’s awesome.

    I used to do a lot of folding, back in the day when there we no games to play for this beauty. Now though, i play to much, and my PS3 makes my room way to warm to sleep while it is folding.

    However, these features are really cool. I like the automatic shutdown, that is something i really wanted when i used to fold 24/7…So I may actually start folding again!

    I also love the music playing! That gives me something to do whilst folding, instead of just turning the TV off, or staring at a molecule doing sweet piss all.

    Thanks for this Sony. You are SIMPLY THE BEST lol

    Merry Christmas to you all. From me, and my PS3. Happy christmas to you Jeff, if you are reading this (if not, you should be :P). Hope you have a good one.

  • Nice! Thanks for adding the great features

  • Sweet. Expecially music. Now I can fold when I’m bored.

  • this maybe a noob questions, but what happens if say my cable modem crashes (as its prone to do every once in a while) before the auto turn off time is specified? does it keep the progress and still turn off? or does it wait until a connection to send the info before it turns off?

  • This scratches one of the things on my BIG LIST. lol. Thanx!

  • I’ve always thought that a small easy update to folding@home would be you could make my yellow dot on the map a different color, and all of my friends could be another color as well. For example, make me a green dot and all of my friends idk… orange. For me personally it would be kinda cluttered because I only have PSN friends that I actually know in real life, but for some people it might look alright.

  • Nice upgrade to F@H….the auto off feature WILL let me participate more often.

    Thanks all.

  • This week is one of the best update weeks ever! First PS3 v.2.10, which by the way is awesome.DIVX. Then the PSP update which allows PS1 games to be played through remote play – thank you! Also the Warhawk update and pack is really good. Thanks for all these updates and support for games, i like them alot and look forward to more frequent updates. :)

  • @63

    It dosent matter. THe nice thing about F@H is that you can do either 5 minutes or 5 hours and it will just take in how much you have done. It does work in “packets” and dosent need a consistent connection to function, thus, you can do a little at a time and once its calculated that packet, it sends out the info

  • @68, I get that part, but what if it finished that “packet” but cant send it because my network is down, and then the auto off turns off folding before it can send it. does it save it for next time its online?

  • STUPIDEST METHOD OF CHOOSING MUSIC EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just give us our freaking list of music and let us choose which ones we want to play! Is that soooooo hard?!?!?!?! I just dont see hard it is to let us message and listen to music during a game! Listen to me NOW! WE DONT CARE ABOUT ALL THE OTHER FEATURES, JUST GIVE US MESSAGING AND MUSIC ANYTIME WE WANT AND WE WILL BE OFF YOUR FREAKING BACK!!!!! COME ON SONY!!!!!!!!

  • Wow, what a crappy feature list. Does nothing. Real stupid in my opinion. I guess they don’t care to add anything useful.

  • The new features are wonderful but I am stuck with a bug that will force me to not do anymore folding until fixed. Every time I start the program the hard disk start to work for nearly 25 minutes without pause even when i have music and sleep timer disabled. I think it is the program looking on the music database to populate all channels, but It is done every time I start folding. I do not want to stress test my hard disk when my folding sessions are of approximately 1 hour (half of the time the disk working hard).

    I have a 160 Gb hard disk with a lot of audio and video files.

    I would have preferred that the standard music selection XMB used on other games are using so i can use my own playlists.

  • This is an amazing enhancement! Love it! Not sure which new option I like better; autoshut-down or the personalized tracks!

    I am truly impressed, keep up the great work and PLEASE do not stop with the updates! The more frequent the better!

    Happy Holidays.

  • New features are nice… but I’d like an “auto-on” feature, instead of “auto-off”. Basically, if the PS3 sits in the XMB for like 5-10 minutes, I’d like it to auto-launch F@H. Often times I watch a movie at night with friends, then I turn off the TV, then go eject the disc. The tv’s not on, so I can’t see to go to F@H and turn it on. I’d love to contribute even more, but I don’t want to think about it. This is probably an XMB feature request, though, not an F@H one.

  • @Ciscorucinski:
    > Nice. Now all I need is high speed internet.
    >
    Actually you can start Folding with any kind of Internet connection. The protein download is actually quiet small (few 100’s of kilobytes)

    > Question: Does F@H also use the RSX processing power or just the CELL BE.
    >
    The RSX power is only used for the graphical representation of the client. The actual Folding calculation is done on the CELL/B.E. alone.

    Thanks,

  • Excellent new features! My fiancee is loving the music while folding.

    Any chance that we can link play lists to this selection? That would be so nice if we could setup our own play lists to listen to rather than have the program choose. Still, sweet update!

    Keep ’em coming!

    I look forward to every new PS3 update, firmware & software!!!!

  • @glitched:

    To answer your question: we have went to great lengths to assure no work unit (WU) is lost under any scenario. In the scenario you are describing, the system will turn off and will try to send the unit as soon as you turn Folding back on.
    There are many other scenarios, for example network connectivity problem when you set to shut down after the current WU (in which case the system will try for extra 20 minutes before shutting down)
    Each WU is backed up and will only be discarded under predetermined scenarios (for example, if it is extremely old)
    Nice to see all the other nice comments here,
    Merry Christmas everybody!

  • Great update !
    Question though , does it not bother anyone that the Earth rotates the wrong way or is it intended that the “observer” is flying West to East ?

    Secondly , the example at the top shows a grid around the Protein . How do you set that ?

    Thanks in advance ,

    Scott……..

  • @Noam Rimon
    Has the team seen my thread about the bugs I found in v1.3? http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=psnetwork&message.id=180595#M180595

    Although, I am wondering why the #9 is not offset in your screenshot. Do I have an old version of v1.3 that was silently fixed?

  • I had this issue as well. I installed FAH 1.3 before the 2.10 system update and it kept hanging. Eventually cleared it by deleting and reinstalling FAH and the 1.3 update.
    ______________________________
    Kedaro said:
    I’m getting a glitch of some sort now that I’ve downloaded the new v 1.3 folding@home application update..I tested it, but all I can see is the ‘Loading folding@home screen’
    ______________________________

  • @Noam Rimon

    Any chance of being able to choose our own music playlist, in the next f@h client?

  • Nice addition to the experiment. What I still find to be mind-boggling, is to watch all those little dots of light on the globe, all doing their own little processes for this global experiment!

  • Ive seen the following suggestions on the official folding forums, but the PS3 client should be able to remember our auto shut down functions. So if i check “after current” and leave my ps3 idle it will auto start folding and then auto shut down after current.

    Also it would be nice for an option that doesnt turn off the ocean sounds

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