Vista Dreamscene

[oldman420]

I just downloaded the new Vista Dreamscene content pack from MS and WOW the effect is cool to have a desktop that is a rainy puddle or dancing brook is just somehow too cool.
the content is also hd so the desktop image is just super.
:beer::thumbsup:
low overhead as well, seems to work just fine without hogging resources.

 

[Smilin]

Yeah, it's pretty pimp. The MS provided ones have almost no resource usage (I'll run them on 2nd monitor while playing a 3d on the first).

Beware some of the 3rd party ones though. There are some great looking ones but I've seen upwards of 20%cpu usage ... not that that is so bad if you are doing the day-to-day.

 

[AllGamer]

yeah it is nice, but is an old idea, similar Animated Desktops was already available in Win2K and XP, like Matrix for example, and the other one, the name escapes me now, but it looks almost identical to the dreamscape default animation.

 

[Smilin]

It's the low CPU usage that's the beauty of it. It leverages Vista's new display model very well.

I used to use the animated wallpaper out of winamp but it was: low res (but stretched), CPU intensive and not at all smooth when you were putting any load on the PC.

 

[mamrey]

where'd you download from?

 

[VladMM]

Sounds interesting, where can we get it?

 

[stash]

You have to have Vista Ultimate. It's an Ultimate Extra.

 

[JackBurton]

Pretty cool.

 

[AllGamer]

Originally posted by: mamrey
where'd you download from?

part of windows update, but only for ultimate licenses, it is "free" relatively speaking, since you already paid like $400 for the OS, hell yeah it better be free

 

[VladMM]

So can't run it on Vista Business?

 

[stash]

No.

 

[Sk8orDie]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Beware some of the 3rd party ones though. There are some great looking ones but I've seen upwards of 20%cpu usage ... not that that is so bad if you are doing the day-to-day.

Where'd you find these 3rd party ones? I like the idea, but didn't really care for any of the clips that microsoft gives you. Would like to try out some other ones, but haven't managed to find anything good.

Thanks

 

[Smilin]

http://www.stardock.com/products/deskscapes/

There is an actual add-on to dreamscene to get the 3rd party ones to work. Like others have said the CPU usage on the 3rd party tends to be higher. There are a handful of user submitted ones that can be downright awful.

 

[bX510]

I wish I can get a free dreme scene... Vista ultimate is so expensive.

 

[spyordie007]

Every time I turn Dream Scene on I end up with stability issues (thanks Nvidia!) so I ended up turning it off. Shame too since it looks nice (with a subtle video) and has no noticeable hit on my system.

On my laptop I dont run it because I do see a noticeable CPU hit and the system runs hotter (obviously).

 

[Smilin]

When it first came out, dreamscene or video drivers would stop responding sometimes.

There have been several months of nVidia updates and I don't seem to have any trouble now.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: Smilin
When it first came out, dreamscene or video drivers would stop responding sometimes.

There have been several months of nVidia updates and I don't seem to have any trouble now.

I've continued to have issues, even with the newer drivers.

However looks like there are even newer ones on nVidia's site so I may just try it again...

Erik

 

[blackangst1]

Yep its pretty cool. Im a big penguin fan, so I made a 6 minute AVI clip from March of the Penguins that is now my desktop Its awesome.

My good friend had an idea...why not loop a pr0n as your desktop? LOL I wouldnt, but it's possible haha I apologize if I offended some

 

[SynthDude2001]

I can't use Dreamscene when both of my monitors are enabled - it complains that the desktop size (3200x1200 in my case, two 21" CRT's) is larger than my video card's maximum texture size.

I guess that's what I get for using a 9700 Pro in Vista

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
I can't use Dreamscene when both of my monitors are enabled - it complains that the desktop size (3200x1200 in my case, two 21" CRT's) is larger than my video card's maximum texture size.

I guess that's what I get for using a 9700 Pro in Vista

Yeah, I've got that multimon problem here at work too. Not that my wallpaper ever gets the light of day tho.

 

[spyordie007]

With the latest nVidia drivers I've been running Dream Scene for the past 24 hours and havent had a crash yet!

 

[spyordie007]

Spoke too soon, it just caused Explorer to crash on me