A screenshot of the scenery (as of Mar 23, 2008) viewed from about 6500 feet above ground in very early development.

What is version 3.x of The Supernatural Olympics like?

• Time advance mode - Got a tricky jump or you want to perform a tough stunt that requires timing finer than 5 milliseconds? Look no further than time advance mode. With a simple key press, you can advance a small amount of time, down to durations less than a millisecond in actual time. While the 2.4 version had this, you could only advance one full frame and it was called "frame advance mode" for this reason. The 3.x version has time advance by a small amount of time regardless of the frame rate, but up to one full frame. Typically, there are 60 frames every second.
• Time control - Does fiddling with time seem like fun? How about slowing time way down to make 700 mph seem like just 7 mph? How about speeding it way up to make it seem like 70,000 mph, 4 times faster than the shuttle orbits the Earth? Besides normal time, of which is what you'd be using most of the time, you can have it flow anywhere from 1% as fast or 100 times faster. The 2.4 version had this, but was restricted to powers of 2 only and when slower than normal time, the movement was no longer smooth, due to halting frame advancements for several frames. The 3.x version improves on this by not only having a bigger range, especially toward the slow end, but no matter what factor is used, the motion is always smooth.
• Game demo - Bored and just want to watch the computer mess around, perhaps learn something from watching it? The game demo is what is used for this. The 2.4 didn't have this as, at the time, I didn't know how I could do it. I've got it now and although the addition of the landscape makes things a bit trickier, it's still possible and just about as easy, thanks, in part, to insta-teleport. This sort of turns the game into a screensaver, but it's not a true screensaver. The screensaver edition will always have this running. The free edition does not have this, but the full edition does.
• Resolution - This is a standard feature common with pretty much any computer game. The resolution is the number of pixels used to draw the scene, of which, in this game, affects the field of view. The more pixels, the crisper the image is and the wider the field of view is as well. The 2.4 version only supported 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. The 3.x version goes much, much further. You can set the resolution to anything from 512-1920 pixels wide by 384-1440 pixels tall. While I could add support for 2048x1536 or 2560x1600, I'm not able to test at these resolutions since my monitor can't take it. 1440x900 and 1280x1024 are the two most common upper resolutions used, though 1680x1050 and 1600x1200 are also fairly common for the extreme end. There are more than a dozen presets, both in full screen (4:3) and wide screen (8:5) formats, but, exclusive to windowed mode, any resolution can be used, including oddballs like 939x782, 1108x1390, or 1587x613.
• Interactive tutorial - Want to learn how to play the game in a more interactive way? The interactive tutorials are the way to go. 2.4 had its tutorials going on for nearly an hour as they contained a lot of unnecessary details. While 3.x will still have this, you get a lot more control and there's also a quick run tutorial. You can control the verbosity and level of detail for the tutorials. For the quick run, it'll get you up and going with the basic controls within 5 minutes. The quick run, however, leaves out most useful tips and hints that the regular tutorial covers. Both editions have this, though the free edition is only limited in the way of what area of the landscape is chosen.
• Horizon indicator - While this was useful in the 2.4 version due to its perfectly level landscape, this, in 3.x, is now a "just for fun" element due to the slopes and varied landscape. All this is is just a faint horizontal line, of customizable opacity, whose center marks where the horizon is. Both editions have this, however, the free edition only has 3 presets available.
• On-screen data - Spread along the top and bottom edges of the screen is where you'll find many pieces of information such as your score or time remaining during a tournament, your position, speed, height, and abilities used. The 2.4 version had a lot of information, some completely unnecessary and none of it was configurable. The 3.x version allows for great freedom in customizability. Not only can you pick and choose what details you want, you can also choose where you want them to be at. On top of that, you can can choose the measurement units used and the degree of precision. The free edition only allows the high importance details and with fairly low precision. Also, only common measurement units are allowed (only m/s, mph, km/h, meters, kilometers, feet, miles, seconds, minutes, and hours). The full edition has a few dozen options for measurement units.
• Terrain map side view - With the speeds in 3.x potentially pass 1000 mph, you essentially have no time to react to an impending collision as you wouldn't know when it's coming. Fortunately, with the terrain map side view, a scaled down version of the landscape, this problem is not present, especially with the optimal default setting of 1:360. At a rather high 1600x1200 resolution, you have just 50 milliseconds to react to the collision at normal time when going 800 mph. With the terrain map side view, moving at just one pixel per frame with the default size, you have 2 seconds to react, more than enough time to react and take action. Ever heard of the 2-second rule with driving? This gives new meaning to that rule. This minimap can be resized and it's colors can also be changed. For the clouds and water, the opacity can be changed, and on an individualized basis. The zoom factor can be changed too. The bigger the second number (in 1:360), the more of the landscape is present and the slower it moves, but the harder it gets to detect small hills that you'd otherwise catch at a closer zoom.
• Video recording - Figured out a wonderful stunt and want to post it on YouTube or something? This feature is not any ordinary video-recorder you find. Video-recording is quite CPU-intensive and this has a strong negative effect on the frame rate. What it does is that it allows you to play the game normally as if nothing was happening, but, after you're done recording when you no longer need it, and upon accepting, the CPU usage kicks up while a long series of BMP images are saved. You can then use Virtual Dub or some video-editing program to turn these BMP frames into a video file (and apply a codec as needed). The free edition does not allow you to save your videos, and they are only at 20 fps. The full edition has no limits, outside being limited to up to 60 frames per second with up to 24 "subframes" within each for motion blur mimicking a recording rate of 1440 frames per second. 1440 seems crazy, but the actual output will only be 60. The other 24 within each is merged to provide a motion-blur effect. By saving as BMP, quality is preserved. This works at every resolution and the duration is only limited by disk space. 30 fps and 4 subframes is the recommended values. Fractional frame rates, like 29.97 (the NTSC standard), are also allowed.
• Classified feature 0001 - Sorry, this feature (ID 0001) is currently classified and details about it will not be revealed. You'll have to wait until a certain point in the development progress before the details are revealed.
• Classified feature 0002 - Sorry, this feature (ID 0002) is currently classified and details about it will not be revealed. You'll have to wait until a certain point in the development progress before the details are revealed.