Q. How are the characters in Real Lives constructed? How could there be so many?

A. Characters are built "on-the-fly" based on statistical information. So, for instance, if your character is born a girl in India, which is very likely, a data base of Indian girl's names is consulted as well as a database of Indian last names, Indian cities, Indian health statistics, etc. From various databases, Real Lives makes choices based on real-world statistics. This results in a huge number of possible lives. In fact, Real Lives can create billions of simulated characters.

Q. I have the download version and I can't zoom in on the map on the main screen.  How can I get that to work?

A. Download the high resolution maps file from here. Unzip them in Real Lives' Tilemaps folder and you will then be able to zoom.

Q. Real Lives is interesting but it would be more interesting if you added ... (name your feature). Can you add that?

A. Use the product suggestions page to suggest a feature. We'll consider all of these suggestions and implement the best of them.

Things to be aware of in Real Lives 2010

• The download version does not include the higher resolution (8 km and 4 km) maps for the main screen. You can download these separately from www.edsims.com/downloads/maps.zip. Copy them to Real Lives' Tilemaps folder. This will enable the zoom in feature of the main map.
• The Windows theme must be set to the default for Real Lives to operate properly.  Right-click on the Windows desktop and click on Personalize or Properties to set the theme.
• Display properties must be set to use the default DPI setting for Real Lives to operate properly. Right-click on the Windows desktop and click on Personalize or Properties to set the DPI.
  
• Opening a saved life changes the facial characteristics of the various characters.
• Some machines with AMD processors with integrated ATI graphics cards of the ATI Radeon X Series may encounter a system error using Real Lives 2010. To resolve this problem, update your graphics card driver here.
• Some machines running 64-bit Windows 7 have an exception on startup (Real Lives hangs).  This seems to be related to Real Lives expecting Flash to be installed in Internet Explorer.  To work around this problem, open Internet Explorer, navigate to the Adobe website, download and install Flash Player (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer). You may need to restart your computer.
• Facial textures showing aging for older characters are not yet working. We hope to resolve this in a maintenance update.