Microsoft releases Windows DreamScene
Posted by Mercury_22 on 25 September 2007 - 20:48 · 48 comments & 19007 views
About the Author
Full name: Unknown
Forum name: Mercury_22
Contact: via forum PM
Submissions: Normal · Headline
Full name: Unknown
Forum name: Mercury_22
Contact: via forum PM
Submissions: Normal · Headline
Slashdot It!
Submit to reddit
Submit to blinklist
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Add to furl
Share on Facebook
Add to Windows Live
Add to Google- Advertisement
-
-
(1 reply)
#1 Posted by DemonicHawk on 25 Sep 2007 - 20:52
- well... at least they remembered... but i still don't see how language packs can be considered windows ultimate extras.
-
#3 Posted by ozzieXP on 25 Sep 2007 - 20:58
- cool.. now whats the difference exactly between the preview and the final? there are like 3 new videos in the content pack but thats it
-
(6 replies)
#4 Posted by soldiers33 on 25 Sep 2007 - 21:02
- never used dreamscene and never will. takes far too much of my computer resources.
-
#4.1 Posted by briangw on 25 Sep 2007 - 21:08
- Quote - (soldiers33 said @ #4)never used dreamscene and never will. takes far too much of my computer resources.
So how do you know it takes too much of your computer resources if you never used it???
Maybe it's time to upgrade your hardware? Works perfect here with no noticable lag. -
#4.2 Posted by excalpius on 25 Sep 2007 - 21:24
- With the latest performance fixes for vista and the current batch of nvidia drivers, I've found DreamScene is now very usable, even with much lower end hardware than before. You might want to give it a(nother) shot.
-
#4.3 Posted by NightmarE D on 25 Sep 2007 - 21:41
- Quote - (excalpius said @ #4.2)With the latest performance fixes for vista and the current batch of nvidia drivers, I've found DreamScene is now very usable, even with much lower end hardware than before. You might want to give it a(nother) shot.
According to their post, they never used it in the first place. How could they know it hogs resources?
Before some ram died on me I was running Vista Ultimate. My system is nothing special:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ running at 1.67GHZ
512mb's of ram
256mb Nvidia GeForce 6200
80gig hard drive
Dreamscene actually ran smooth for me. I was very surprised by that and that was before the better Nvidia drivers were out. Wish I had the extra money for some ram right now. I had to switch back to XP and now that Vista SP1 is about to come out I'm no longer running Vista I have the worst luck -
#4.4 Posted by phiberoptik on 25 Sep 2007 - 22:13
- Quote - (NightmarE D said @ #4.3)Quote - (excalpius said @ #4.2)With the latest performance fixes for vista and the current batch of nvidia drivers, I've found DreamScene is now very usable, even with much lower end hardware than before. You might want to give it a(nother) shot.
According to their post, they never used it in the first place. How could they know it hogs resources?
Before some ram died on me I was running Vista Ultimate. My system is nothing special:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ running at 1.67GHZ
512mb's of ram
256mb Nvidia GeForce 6200
80gig hard drive
Dreamscene actually ran smooth for me. I was very surprised by that and that was before the better Nvidia drivers were out. Wish I had the extra money for some ram right now. I had to switch back to XP and now that Vista SP1 is about to come out I'm no longer running Vista I have the worst luck
You do realize 512mb of ram for your system is like $22....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820141167 -
#4.5 Posted by +Zhivago on 25 Sep 2007 - 23:27
- Quote - (briangw said @ #4.1)Quote - (soldiers33 said @ #4)never used dreamscene and never will. takes far too much of my computer resources.
So how do you know it takes too much of your computer resources if you never used it
hint: he's computer doesn't support Aero. -
#4.6 Posted by soldiers33 on 26 Sep 2007 - 07:46
- Quote - (Zhivago said @ #4.5)Quote - (briangw said @ #4.1)Quote - (soldiers33 said @ #4)never used dreamscene and never will. takes far too much of my computer resources.
So how do you know it takes too much of your computer resources if you never used it
hint: he's computer doesn't support Aero.
I made a mistake!! I have used it once and it used up, about 20% of my cpu.
And yes my pc does support aero.
-
(2 replies)
#5 Posted by Chicane-UK on 25 Sep 2007 - 21:03
- Feel sorry for "Barry Goffe, Director, Windows Vista Ultimate" - he must be getting a real pounding over the state of Ultimate Extra's!
I know if i'd paid extra for downloadable content, I wouldn't exactly be thrilled with whats trickled out of Redmond so far.. -
#5.1 Posted by Croquant on 25 Sep 2007 - 22:00
- Nah, he's out playing golf every day. What an easy job, "Directing" a department of Microsoft that doesn't do anything, eh?
They should just rename the whole thing "Microsoft Vaporware 2008"
-
#6 Posted by Jugalator on 25 Sep 2007 - 21:42
- I'm not too interested in this because I have windows open.
-
#7 Posted by EnzoFX on 25 Sep 2007 - 21:47
- the videocard is supposed to do the work, not the cpu, so it should be running smooth for everyone even with a very modest cpu
-
(4 replies)
#8 Posted by Turbonium on 25 Sep 2007 - 22:19
- I love how the world is worried about climate change, with energy consumption being a contributing component of it.
Meanwhile, we introduce useless eye candy into a good chunk of the world's OSes that just ends up being a big waste of electrons. Silly. -
#8.1 Posted by jadkins555 on 25 Sep 2007 - 22:45
- Quote - (Turbonium said @ #1)Silly.
You're right. You're entire post is silly.
-
#8.2 Posted by Turbonium on 26 Sep 2007 - 00:36
- Quote - (jadkins555 said @ #8.1)Quote - (Turbonium said @ #1)Silly.
You're right. You're entire post is silly.
How about you back up your post with some reasoning, then make claims. Otherwise, you're just an idiot. -
#8.3 Posted by seamer on 26 Sep 2007 - 01:16
- Quote - (Turbonium said @ #8.2)Quote - (jadkins555 said @ #8.1)Quote - (Turbonium said @ #1)Silly.
You're right. You're entire post is silly.
How about you back up your post with some reasoning, then make claims. Otherwise, you're just an idiot.
How about this:
Electricity isn't the cause if global warming - the generation of electricity is the cause. Solar power is as friendly as you can get. -
#8.4 Posted by Turbonium on 26 Sep 2007 - 03:48
- Quote - (seamer said @ #8.3)Quote - (Turbonium said @ #8.2)Quote - (jadkins555 said @ #8.1)Quote - (Turbonium said @ #1)Silly.
You're right. You're entire post is silly.
How about you back up your post with some reasoning, then make claims. Otherwise, you're just an idiot.
How about this:
Electricity isn't the cause if global warming - the generation of electricity is the cause. Solar power is as friendly as you can get.
How about this:
A good chunk of energy production still isn't clean. On top of that, the very location I'm typing from had a huge blackout for like a day a few years ago, so there's also energy availability issues.
I mean, if you're playing a game, then yea, go ahead and use that GPU and CPU. But for ambient "effects" that really shouldn't matter for anything just goes against my mentality. I dunno about you guys.
Just imagine half the people out there who manage to leave their monitors on 24/7 (the same types of people who leave lights on when they go out to work in their V8+ SUVs). Couple that with some DreamScene, over a few thousand homes, and it's just such a waste.
-
(1 reply)
#9 Posted by Izlude on 25 Sep 2007 - 23:20
- wait what's the difference between the preview and the real thing?
my guess would be (aside from the extra videos) is a more complete code? i remember reading an article saying they were working on a more stable build that would use even more less video resource than what the preview shows. can anyone confirm it? either way, it's super smooth all the way and quite fun. -
#9.1 Posted by :: Lyon :: on 25 Sep 2007 - 23:39
- Well, dreamscene often crashed on me last time, so maybe this is one of the thing to make it more stable
-
(3 replies)
#10 Posted by
L3thal on 25 Sep 2007 - 23:35
- Actually, though it is not laggy on my PC (4200+, 8600GTS, 2gb RAM), CPU usage increases a good amount when DreamScene is enabled. When off, both of my cores have around 1-3% CPU usage but once I enable DreamScene, the CPU usage on both cores jumps to 18-25%.
And I thought it would be GPU powered only... -
#10.1 Posted by ViperAFK on 25 Sep 2007 - 23:55
- Same here with my 3.0 ghz p4 and 7600GS usually 1-5% cpu, with dreamscene constant 25%
-
#10.2 Posted by neufuse on 26 Sep 2007 - 00:42
- Quote - (L3thal said @ #10)Actually, though it is not laggy on my PC (4200+, 8600GTS, 2gb RAM), CPU usage increases a good amount when DreamScene is enabled. When off, both of my cores have around 1-3% CPU usage but once I enable DreamScene, the CPU usage on both cores jumps to 18-25%.
And I thought it would be GPU powered only...
What type of file are you playing as your background? Windows Media files take more CPU time up to decode them... use a MPEG file and you will see very low CPU usage... most of the previews that come with dreamscene are WMV files...
-
(10 replies)
#11 Posted by scaramonga on 26 Sep 2007 - 00:26
- More BLOAT adding to the rest of the BLOAT
-
#11.3 Posted by seamer on 26 Sep 2007 - 01:18
- Bloat is a funny word when it comes to software. Its generally used to describe a feature one person doesn't use, who ignores the 3 people who do use the 'bloated' feature.
On the other hand, bloat is also used by people who have no idea how to code but insist on trying to install XP via floppy discs onto a harddrive as old as the stone age. -
#11.4 Posted by balupton on 26 Sep 2007 - 03:33
- Eh... How is it bloat? It is not bundled, and many users love it...
-
#11.5 Posted by toadeater on 26 Sep 2007 - 04:54
- Quote - (Raa said @ #11.2)Dont install it.
I think he's upset that MS releases bloatware instead of improving the core OS experience. -
#11.6 Posted by Atlonite on 26 Sep 2007 - 06:57
- Quote - (seamer said @ #11.3)Bloat is a funny word when it comes to software. Its generally used to describe a feature one person doesn't use, who ignores the 3 people who do use the 'bloated' feature.
On the other hand, bloat is also used by people who have no idea how to code but insist on trying to install XP via floppy discs onto a harddrive as old as the stone age.
hmmm thats very funny i dont equate bloat to either of those ideas im more the why make software bigger than it needs to be because those who do the coding cant get it right the first time and then need to place patch after fix after code jump into the base code just to make it work if you cant get it right the first time try again with all the unnessarary garbage added in to fix it point incase i have a graphical demo that is just 64KB in size yet it manages to play for 15 minutes showing off directX aswell as playing 15mins of music.... how do they do it well its coz the code is tight and not full bugfixes and crap that ms software is so full of the same can be said for most other software aswell from OS's to Games and everyday programs if they made sure thier code was tight and not full of crappy fixes then vista would come on a cd not a dvd and would proly only be a 1 gig install not inexcess of 2.5gigs -
#11.7 Posted by +Lt-DavidW on 26 Sep 2007 - 08:22
- Quote - (Atlonite said @ #11.6)Quote - (seamer said @ #11.3)Bloat is a funny word when it comes to software. Its generally used to describe a feature one person doesn't use, who ignores the 3 people who do use the 'bloated' feature.
On the other hand, bloat is also used by people who have no idea how to code but insist on trying to install XP via floppy discs onto a harddrive as old as the stone age.
hmmm thats very funny i dont equate bloat to either of those ideas im more the why make software bigger than it needs to be because those who do the coding cant get it right the first time and then need to place patch after fix after code jump into the base code just to make it work if you cant get it right the first time try again with all the unnessarary garbage added in to fix it point incase i have a graphical demo that is just 64KB in size yet it manages to play for 15 minutes showing off directX aswell as playing 15mins of music.... how do they do it well its coz the code is tight and not full bugfixes and crap that ms software is so full of the same can be said for most other software aswell from OS's to Games and everyday programs if they made sure thier code was tight and not full of crappy fixes then vista would come on a cd not a dvd and would proly only be a 1 gig install not inexcess of 2.5gigs
Jeez.. learn how to use paragraphs and punctuation. -
#11.8 Posted by RAID 0 on 26 Sep 2007 - 08:30
- Quote - (Atlonite said @ #11.6)Quote - (seamer said @ #11.3)Bloat is a funny word when it comes to software. Its generally used to describe a feature one person doesn't use, who ignores the 3 people who do use the 'bloated' feature.
On the other hand, bloat is also used by people who have no idea how to code but insist on trying to install XP via floppy discs onto a harddrive as old as the stone age.
hmmm thats very funny i dont equate bloat to either of those ideas im more the why make software bigger than it needs to be because those who do the coding cant get it right the first time and then need to place patch after fix after code jump into the base code just to make it work if you cant get it right the first time try again with all the unnessarary garbage added in to fix it point incase i have a graphical demo that is just 64KB in size yet it manages to play for 15 minutes showing off directX aswell as playing 15mins of music.... how do they do it well its coz the code is tight and not full bugfixes and crap that ms software is so full of the same can be said for most other software aswell from OS's to Games and everyday programs if they made sure thier code was tight and not full of crappy fixes then vista would come on a cd not a dvd and would proly only be a 1 gig install not inexcess of 2.5gigs
I feel dumber just having read that "statement".
-
#11.9 Posted by HawkMan on 26 Sep 2007 - 08:57
- Quote - (Atlonite said @ #11.6)Quote - (seamer said @ #11.3)Bloat is a funny word when it comes to software. Its generally used to describe a feature one person doesn't use, who ignores the 3 people who do use the 'bloated' feature.
On the other hand, bloat is also used by people who have no idea how to code but insist on trying to install XP via floppy discs onto a harddrive as old as the stone age.
hmmm thats very funny i dont equate bloat to either of those ideas im more the why make software bigger than it needs to be because those who do the coding cant get it right the first time and then need to place patch after fix after code jump into the base code just to make it work if you cant get it right the first time try again with all the unnessarary garbage added in to fix it point incase i have a graphical demo that is just 64KB in size yet it manages to play for 15 minutes showing off directX aswell as playing 15mins of music.... how do they do it well its coz the code is tight and not full bugfixes and crap that ms software is so full of the same can be said for most other software aswell from OS's to Games and everyday programs if they made sure thier code was tight and not full of crappy fixes then vista would come on a cd not a dvd and would proly only be a 1 gig install not inexcess of 2.5gigs
Yeah, I put you in the peopel thatdon't know how to code category... because you. have no idea what you're talking about.
I mean, I could go into a whole detailed explanation about that 64kb demo and how it really isn't 64 kb, and how it's not even possible to compare it to the OS coding and all that and how bug fixes and stuf liek that don't actually need to negatively afect the size of code and is more likely to imrpvoe it and optimize it.
Byt it'd be waste of time. -
#11.10 Posted by +mrbester on 26 Sep 2007 - 09:46
- Quote - (Atlonite said @ #11.6)...i have a graphical demo that is just 64KB in size yet it manages to play for 15 minutes showing off directX aswell as playing 15mins of music.... how do they do it well its coz the code is tight and not full bugfixes
No, it's because they use advanced compression algorithms (involving such esoterica as fractals) in order to crunch the executable size down. 64kB is just the ceiling for the distributed executable. However, it uses a shedload of memory in order to store the unpacked runtime...
-
(1 reply)
#12 Posted by Atlonite on 26 Sep 2007 - 08:43
- yup i know my punctuation suks but i get wound up and just go off without a thought as to who is and isn't reading the post my bad tuff sh*t build a bridge and get over it. As for the statement it's just my opinion on Bloat like it or lump it i dont realy care, your all entitled to your own
-
#13 Posted by signalpirate on 26 Sep 2007 - 13:21
- they missed the cue... and they also "forgot" that this thing was RTM on july 19th ..... i work for the government ... and even we get stuff done faster hahaha
-
#14 Posted by astrokat on 26 Sep 2007 - 13:29
- I don't see it on my Windows Update. Is this included in SP1 Beta?
-
(2 replies)
#15 Posted by zeroomegazx on 26 Sep 2007 - 13:32
- Is it just me or do people not realize with programs like VLC and Media Player Classic, you can and have been able to do this for years at a much less resource loss......
-
#15.2 Posted by Glassed Silver on 26 Sep 2007 - 16:18
- Quote - (zeroomegazx said @ #15)Is it just me or do people not realize with programs like VLC and Media Player Classic, you can and have been able to do this for years at a much less resource loss......
wooot...
and the best is they run constantly, never stop, not in games, never!
oh and you have to start up VLC everytime again...
and when you wanna play a movie with it, oh... well... we'll simply elegantly turn off the wallpaper...
dont get me wrong ,your point is 100%
but VLC doesn't seem like a good alternative, but for the "hey, developers, why did this take ages to finish" part i aggree!
Glassed Silver:mac
-
#16 Posted by zeta_immersion on 26 Sep 2007 - 17:12
- i dont get dreamscene, i have it installed and same 20%+ cpu no diff from the beta ... i reverted back to the wallpaper, is better and i can use those extra cycles for pron or games like halo 2.45
kidding ... what a waste though ... dreamscene is just stupid (cool but not very good implemented) sad, i feel sad for those lines of code ...
-
#17 Posted by TC17 on 26 Sep 2007 - 21:18
- I downloaded the file, and all it gave me was the ONE dreamscene background, nothing else.
-
#18 Posted by notuptome2004 on 27 Sep 2007 - 16:01
- they just released a content pack with with 8 dreamscenes it is nice runs great
As most of you already know, Windows DreamScene transforms your desktop from a static wallpaper image into a full-motion video. In conjunction with Stardock, we’re pleased to also offer a number of cool, new animated DreamScene desktops, including “Aurora”. Additionally, you can use your own videos as DreamScene desktops or visit Stardock’s Dream.WinCustomize.com website to download Stardock’s DeskScapes (an add-on to DreamScene) as well as a collection of fabulous content created by Stardock and members of the Ultimate community.