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:

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.