Living/animated wallpapers?

[Andeh13]

Trying to spruce up my PC a bit, hardware wise it all looks very tidy but id like my desktop to match. Im after a sort of 'living' wallpaper, instead of just a static image.

Ideally dark forest scenes, with subtle movements(something/silhouette in the distance etc) to catch the eye/un-nerve people.


Has anyone had any experience with them and/or know where i could find one? being a student, free-ness is ideal .


cheers folks.

[Stringent]

If you have Windows Vista Ultimate you can download Windows Dreamscene which has MPEGS as wallpapers.

[ikonia]

I hope your machine has a reasonable ammount of grung as displaying a movie as a wallpaper %100 of the time is going to each into resources a fair bit.

[dangel]

Depends on the encoding of the movie tbh (wmv worse than mpeg4 for ex.) - it's not that high on this measly p4 for example, and it's disabled when gaming or if any app is maximized..

[ucjtckc]

I've only got Home premium - is there a freeware version of Dreamscene available anywhere?

[pollaxe]

Stardock do DeskScapes (free) but AFAIK it only works with Vista Ultimate. There are quite a few animated wallpapers for it though.

I have Ultimate on one of my machines but I've switched off Dreamscene - not for resources but because I found it's still very unstable on the PC.

I've a feeling VLC (maybe more) media player can do something like giving you a video wallpaper too but I've not used it or tried it I'm afraid.

[CMC]

I've a feeling VLC (maybe more) media player can do something like giving you a video wallpaper too but I've not used it or tried it I'm afraid.

i was just about to post that, yea VLC has a wallpaper option, and its not hard on ram or anything

[TheAnimus]

i was just about to post that, yea VLC has a wallpaper option, and its not hard on ram or anything

Except on the CPU, oh boy does it lap up the CPU.

my T2250 can't even play with vlc a 720p film.

using MCE it plays flawlessly, even upscaling to 1080p (hardware).

so VLC does suck for performance, but is great for playing formats.

I'd recomend winDvd which has an option, and uses hardware acceleration properly.

[Jay]

you can do this with flash and a webpage as well... anyone remember the crysis one?

[David66]

I experimented with the Vista desktop and played at the same time and kept on framing till I stoppe dthe desktop. So, if you decide to have one, consider a bunch of resources offline

[Marcos]

there must be a way to get a moving wallpaper without it being a movie?

say...a forest scene with some shaky leaves etc?

[directhex]

/usr/lib/xscreensaver/flurry -root

[Andeh13]

Searched the web high & low and found a useful site with a copy of Windows Dreamscape that could be used by other Vista users, didnt work with X64 though. Tried VLC but all that left me with was a black screen. Also with VLC running the background, if i want to start a video, would that cancel my background to play the video?

thanks guys

Hesitant to put the link for the dreamscape (for all vistas) as i dont know if its classed as a crack or not, im happy to PM it to a mod if they want to take a look.

[Andeh13]

Searched the web high & low and found a useful site with a copy of Windows Dreamscape that could be used by other Vista users, didnt work with X64 though.


AFAIK its legit, but im not 100% sure, apologies if it isnt.
Download Windows DreamScene (Motion Desktop) Beta of Vista Ultimate Extras » My Digital Life

[UltraMagnus]

/usr/lib/xscreensaver/flurry -root

sounds like the best idea to me.

[Oobie-]

I dont see the point of this, do people boot their PC's just to watch their desktop?....