Life with PlayStation
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| Developer | Life with PlayStation Sony Computer Entertainment Folding@Home Channel Sony Computer Entertainment of America Stanford University / Pande Group |
| Type | Virtual globe Virtual encyclopedia News client Distributed computing |
| Launch date | September 18, 2008 |
| Current Version | 3.21 |
| Last Updated | November 18, 2011 |
| Platform | PlayStation 3 |
| Website | Official Life With PlayStation website |
Life with PlayStation is an online multimedia application for the PlayStation 3 video game console on the PlayStation Network. The application has four channels, all of which revolve around a virtual globe that displays information according to the channel. The application includes the one that it replaced, Folding@home, which is a distributed computing project for understanding human diseases such as cancer. The application is focused around a virtual globe which depicts similar information to that of a news program, allowing users to browse this information while simultaneously contributing to the Folding@home project.
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[edit] History
Stanford announced in August 2006 that a folding client would be available to run on the Sony PlayStation 3.[1] The intent was that gamers would be able to contribute to the project by merely "contributing electricity", leaving their PlayStation 3 consoles running the client while not playing games. PS3 firmware version 1.6 (released on Thursday, March 22, 2007) allows for Folding@home software, a 50 MB download, to be used on the PS3.[2] A peak output of the project at 990 teraFLOPS was achieved on March 25, 2007, at which time the number of FLOPS from each PS3 as reported by Stanford fell, reducing the overall speed rating of those machines by 50%. This had the effect of bumping down the overall project speed to the mid 700 range and increasing the number of active PS3s required to achieve a petaFLOPS level to around 60,000.
On April 26, 2007, Sony released a new version of Folding@home which improved folding performance drastically, such that the updated PS3 clients produced 1500 teraFLOPS with 52,000 clients versus the previous 400 teraFLOPS by around 24,000 clients.[3] Lately, the console accounts for around 26% of all teraFLOPS at an approximate ratio of 35½ PS3 clients per teraFLOPS.
On December 19, 2007, Sony again updated the Folding@home client to version 1.3 to allow users to run music stored on their hard drives while contributing. Another feature of the 1.3 update allows users to automatically shut down their console after current work is done or after a limited period of time (for example 3 or 4 hours). Also, the software update added the Generalized Born implicit solvent model, so the FAH PS3 client gained more broad computing capabilities.[4][5] Shortly afterward, 1.3.1 was released to solve a mishandling of protocol resulting in difficulties sending and receiving Work Units due to heavy server loads stemming from the fault.
On September 18, 2008 the Folding@home client became Life With PlayStation. In addition to the existing functionality, the application also provides the user with access to information "channels", the first of which being the Live Channel which offers news headlines and weather through a 3D globe. The user can rotate and zoom in to any part of the world to access information provided by Google News and The Weather Channel, among other sources, all running while folding in the background. This update also provided more advanced simulation of protein folding and a new ranking system.[6]
[edit] Channels
Life features five channels which are updated frequently with new information.[7]
[edit] Live Channel
Live Channel is a news, time zone and weather feed, designed to provide users with the same services as Google News and The Weather Channel. The channel is, incidentally, powered by both websites and is organised by city. The content includes live camera feeds and cloud data, similar to Google Earth. Live Cameras is provided by earthTV and the Webcams.travel website. The application only supports certain cities of the world, with limited coverage, such as with the continent Africa, with only four cities covered by the Live Channel.
[edit] Folding@Home
Folding@home ("Folding at Home") (sometimes abbreviated as FAH or F@h) is a distributed computing (DC) project that simulates protein folding and other molecular dynamics (MD), and improves on the methods available to do so. It was launched on October 1, 2000, and is currently managed by the Pande Group, within Stanford University's chemistry department, under the supervision of Professor Vijay Pande. The application became available for the PS3 in March 2007 and became a channel on Life with PlayStation when Life was released.
[edit] PlayStation Network Game Trailers Channel
For users in the United States, the PSN game trailers channel allows direct access to the streaming of the PlayStation Store's game trailers. It also has the ability to purchase titles from the store, without having to leave Life.
[edit] United Village
United Village, provided by its respective website, and hosted by Frontier International Inc., is a cultural documentary-like project that gathers stories, interviews and articles worldwide. It targets rural and/or third world stories rather than urban life. Generally, the stories come from developing countries, but there are occasionally some in rural parts of other countries. The contents of the channel include culture, development, education, social issues and tourism. The United Village channel was discontinued on March 30, 2011.
[edit] World Heritage
World Heritage, by α Clock, shows UNESCO-selected locations of special cultural or physical significance around the world. These World Heritage sites link to their respective articles on Wikipedia. Each location has the introduction directly from the Wikipedia articles.
[edit] Features
In addition to the channels, Life With PlayStation also features photo slideshow viewing, music & video playback. The virtual globe is periodically updated from servers to ensure that cloud, weather, live camera feed and news update data are all up to date. All channels except for the Live Channel have a static representation of Earth, whereas the Live Channel itself shows time effects (such as day and night). Additionally, the Folding@home protein folding can be disabled.
[edit] Bugs
Somewhere in the latest Life with PlayStation update cycle a bug has been introduced that degraded the quality of audio when music is being played from the user's library using selectable "moods". The sound distortion is similar to a lowered bitrate (such as when going from 16 bit audio to 8 bit).
[edit] References
- ^ Vijay Pande (2006-10-22). "PS3 FAQ". Stanford University. http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-PS3.html. Retrieved 2006-11-13.
- ^ "Client Statistics by OS". Folding@home distributed computing. Stanford University. 2006-11-12 (updated automatically). http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
- ^ "PS3 Folding Kicking Ass, Getting Update". http://kotaku.com/gaming/folding%40home/ps3-folding-kicking-ass-getting-update-255086.php.
- ^ "Folding@home for PLAYSTATION3 Version 1.2". http://www.scei.co.jp/folding/en/update.html. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
- ^ Rimon, Noam (2007-12-18). "New Folding@home Features Coming". http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/12/18/new-foldinghome-features-coming/. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
- ^ "Life With PlayStation out now". Kotaku. http://kotaku.com/5051551/life-with-playstation-out-now.
- ^ "Channels". PlayStation.com. http://www.playstation.com/life/en/aboutch.html. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
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