New Windows Vista DreamScene content available

**Twisted_Firestarter** · 03-14-2007, 12:50 PM

New HD looping video content has been released for Windows Vista Ultimate DreamScene. The new content includes:

A field of thistle, with a bee gathering pollen
The rushing water of a forest stream
A streetlamp reflected in a puddle, with softly falling rain
Orange wisps flowing in a computer-generated scene

Running the new DreamScene HD content as the desktop background on my computer runnning @ 1920x1280 uses about 4% CPU.

**HSantal** · 03-14-2007, 01:01 PM

hmmmm. Shiny.

**Twisted_Firestarter** · 03-14-2007, 03:49 PM

I just spent the last 2 minutes trying to spell the noise the ferret makes as he collects shiny objects, but for the life of me I couldn't come up with a spelling that anyone would recognize as a ferret noise...

.

Anywho, no doubt the video portion of DreamScene is eye candy, but I kinda like it in small doses. Although it's hard to focus on work when you have a bee periodically flying onto the screen and then flying off again. The forest stream animation is much less distracting.

And DeskScapes from Stardock is a free add-on to DreamScene which extends the framework to allow dynamically generated content in addition to static (looped) content. StarDock has a lot of cool animations which can be found over at Dream.WinCustomize.

I'm using this one now and it is outstanding. The level of detail and subtle animations are great. Check out this screenshot of my desktop:

A screenshot doesn't do it justice. Both planets are rotating--the close one is fairly fast and the far one is very slow, there are stars winking in the background, and some of the nebula is slowly changing.

Also, you can find some free HD videos which you can set as a DreamScene background here.

**Zid** · 03-14-2007, 05:24 PM

i really wanted that puddle one.

**Twisted_Firestarter** · 03-14-2007, 05:45 PM

A torrent search would probably yield good results...

**Zid** · 03-15-2007, 01:15 AM

no i reverted back to xp after having driver issues with my sound board and other things.

**Ferris Bueller** · 03-15-2007, 01:54 AM

Originally Posted by Twisted_Firestarter

And DeskScapes from Stardock is a free add-on to DreamScene which extends the framework to allow dynamically generated content in addition to static (looped) content. StarDock has a lot of cool animations which can be found over at Dream.WinCustomize.

I cant wait for the new version of deskscapes to come out. Theyre implementing something that dreamscene alone doesnt: the ability to have your wallpaper change based on any number of influences such as time/weather/mood, etc and its all programmable. I'm going to set mine up to change based on both time and weather. I've probably got 30-40 dreamscene/deskscapes backgrounds that I can string up for variables.

Also, if youre interested in creating your own deskscapes, on the same site you can find the studio app that allows you to make your own.

**fldash** · 03-15-2007, 06:00 PM

Okay, I downloaded dreamscapes and purchased that rotating planet thing. I had it on my desktop and it looked great. I went to set on the couch, and noticed my screen go blank a few times, but immediately come back to the desktop with the rotating planet (my monitor/screen saver doesn't come on for an hour). I thought it was just a fluke, then it did it again. I started messing with my PC and didn't notice anything crazy. I went to take a shower, came back and my PC had rebooted and I can't find anything in the event log other than (your last shutdown was unexpected). Any ideas?

**Twisted_Firestarter** · 03-16-2007, 01:05 AM

Hrm...I have my screen timeout after about 10 minutes and haven't had any problems getting it to wake up properly. I haven't noticed any random reboots, but then again I didn't look very closely.

I am running an nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX with the latest WHQL drivers from Microsoft, if that helps any.

**fldash** · 03-16-2007, 12:21 PM

I re-enabled it while I was coding and at one point it did the blank out thing and came back and another time the background got distorted completely but eventually fixed itself. I'm guessing that it's a driver issue, because that's what it looks like. I'm running an 8800 GTS 640, not sure what driver...

**Twisted_Firestarter** · 03-16-2007, 04:26 PM

Originally Posted by fldash

I re-enabled it while I was coding and at one point it did the blank out thing and came back and another time the background got distorted completely but eventually fixed itself. I'm guessing that it's a driver issue, because that's what it looks like. I'm running an 8800 GTS 640, not sure what driver...

Ah, you know with the older nVidia Vista drivers I had problems with the driver crashing quite often when running DreamScene. Vista would catch the driver crash and automatically reload it. This would cause the screen to flicker and come back.