DreamScene Final Edition is Available!

Solar

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
228
From the pages of "When pigs Fly" Microsoft finally did it, they released the final version of DreamScene for download today. While I still have a paper to write and class to attend I thought it would be prudent to say "wow." Now comes the question of performance. But its great to see that the guys made their deadline of shipping by the "end of summer, " which is still in full swing on the east coast. For those who did use the beta and have upgraded, what do you think? More at the DreamScene Blog and at WinCustomize.
 
I updated it yesterday but I haven't played with it yet. MS really dropped the ball on Ultimate extras.
 
^What he quoted.

I totally forgot about the "extras" package on Vista ultimate. Maybe I should tinker around with DS now that it's 'official'...
 
I'm going to try using one of the animations from BioShock with it as soon as I get a chance.

One of the Bink/Smacker movies is just the title looping with the water and light moving over it, it should look good as a wallpaper, though I'll have to convert it first.
 
I really like the Dreamscenes, especially the ones that you can get at wincustomise.com

Dreamscenes FTW! :D
 
I updated it yesterday but I haven't played with it yet. MS really dropped the ball on Ultimate extras.

so far...but i thought ultimate users were gonna get some kind of internet tv? maybe thats for all media center users. hmm...
 
Neat I will have to check this out when I get home. I thought the preview build I tried seemed pretty cool and didn't use much as far as CPU at all, however I never could get any videos to work right at 1920x1200, I would always ended up with some blank space around the edges of the desktop even if the video was at that res, no idea why. Hopefully that works right now.
 
i just played 2hrs of TF2, absolutely no slowdowns with dreamscene running. im for sure keeping dream scene up 24/7, too cool.
 
So after playing around with it, I can't get it to render for longer than 5minutes. DreamScene keeps giving me a decoder error. I've updated my codecs and I'm thinking it may be DirectX. But my DirectX is up to date...
 
Most fo the dreamscene they install/upate on my machine are a POS. WTF is this??



Is this somekind of a sick joke on Microsoflt behalf?

Now that Wincustomize site have some nice dreamscene!
 
So after playing around with it, I can't get it to render for longer than 5minutes. DreamScene keeps giving me a decoder error. I've updated my codecs and I'm thinking it may be DirectX. But my DirectX is up to date...

What video card are you running and how much memory do you have on Vista? I have 4gig or ram and already it's eating up 2gig.
 
EVGA 7900 GT KO slightly underclocked at @ 495 / 745 (it keeps me from getting the nvidia screen scramble when going into games) I'm using 158.24 becasue they're the most stable release from nvidia. Anything newer and the screen scrambles upon startup. I have 2gb of OCZ ram and an Opty 170 holding down the fort.
 
lol 2GB? no. try 30mb. 2gb is ur entire system usage not just dreamscene. open up task manager, check explorer.exe. thats what dreamscene is running under. check before and after you start dreamscene, it wont be more than 50mb. mine goes from 77MB to 110MB when dreamscene is running. and im running a 720p 160MB video.
 
FYI 'dreamscene' has been available for W2k/XP for free and for years. It's called Vital desktop and you can find it through Google.

It supports animated 3D screensavers and lately also video.
 
Update:
After playing around with decoder settings for a bit I noticed two things
1) there is no nvidia control panel on the taskbar when playing wmv videos
2) there is a nvidia control panel on the taskbar when playing mpg videos

In the first observation, the wmv videos wold loop endlessly (making DreamScene work). In the second, they would play oncd and then crash (making DreamScene not work). After tinkering around in the nvidia control panel and reading a few online forums about DXVA and Vista, I arbitrarily chose to disable hardware acceleration by un-clicking the 'hardware acceleration' check box. VOLA! mpg videos and WinCustomize Dreams now work. At what expense you may ask? Well my CPU is now "idling" at between 35 and 50% and using 30-96mb of RAM while doing so.... at least DreamScene works now. Do I have another reason to be angry at nvidia?

Once again, disabling hardware acceleration makes DreamScene work, at least in my case with nvidia's 158.24 drivers.

Update 2:
While Hardforum has been updating their servers, I've had more time to ruminate about DreamScene. To be honest I currently still prefer a screen saver animated desktop better. The ones I use are more dynamic, non-descript, and look better than most of the CG and looped video out there.
 
well dood each system will be different. for me 30-50mg is nothing, i have 4gb. cpu usage is 5-10% for small vidoe/animations, and up to 28% for large stuff like 720p/1080p. again, with dual core thats no prob. quad core even better.
 
So how is it different than Dreamscene preview?
It comes with 2 extra backgrounds. :p

It seems to use less CPU than before. I'm looking at 7-8% utilization (waterfall background) on the lowest multiplier on my E4300 @ 3.1GHz (vs 1-2% utilization without DS running). It is only MPEG-2 videos so that's still not too impressive.

edit: step into liquid (1080p) as a background uses ~29% CPU utilization at the lowest multiplier (2.05GHz) on the same system.
 
Glad you guys are enjoying it.

Wish my PC had the same kind of HP yours all have. :)

I need all the CPU cycles I can get!
 
Update:
After playing around with decoder settings for a bit I noticed two things
1) there is no nvidia control panel on the taskbar when playing wmv videos
2) there is a nvidia control panel on the taskbar when playing mpg videos

In the first observation, the wmv videos wold loop endlessly (making DreamScene work). In the second, they would play oncd and then crash (making DreamScene not work). After tinkering around in the nvidia control panel and reading a few online forums about DXVA and Vista, I arbitrarily chose to disable hardware acceleration by un-clicking the 'hardware acceleration' check box. VOLA! mpg videos and WinCustomize Dreams now work. At what expense you may ask? Well my CPU is now "idling" at between 35 and 50% and using 30-96mb of RAM while doing so.... at least DreamScene works now. Do I have another reason to be angry at nvidia?

Once again, disabling hardware acceleration makes DreamScene work, at least in my case with nvidia's 158.24 drivers.

Update 2:
While Hardforum has been updating their servers, I've had more time to ruminate about DreamScene. To be honest I currently still prefer a screen saver animated desktop better. The ones I use are more dynamic, non-descript, and look better than most of the CG and looped video out there.

I would recommend you should try and update your driver to one of the 163 beta. I use to own a 7900GT OC and dreamscene work just fine under Vista 64.

I realized dreamscenes are nice but almost totally not worth it. I spend most of 99% of time looking at other stuff then looking at my desktop.

I have a q6600 and the Deskscapes is only using under 10% of cpu usage.
 
Ok, I give up. I downloaded the dreamscene with my last windows updates, so how/where do you use it? I can't find controls or mention of it anywhere.
 
Ok, I give up. I downloaded the dreamscene with my last windows updates, so how/where do you use it? I can't find controls or mention of it anywhere.

It's under C:\Windows\Web\Windows DreamScene

Righclick on your desktop and select Personal Display and choose Desktop background and find C:\Windows\Web\Windows DreamScene
 
Or... you could just select the Dreamscene category from the background drop box...:rolleyes:
 
I can't believe it took them this long to come out with the final version and these three are all e get? The spinning green things are just ridiculous.
 
You can only do that IF you have a Dreamscene playing or pause in the BG or else it's grey out.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying.

Right click on desktop > personalize > Desktop Background > select Dreamscenes from the drop down box in that dialog.


desktop_dialog_dreamscene.jpg
 
Is there anyway at all (or a good alternative) to get this to run on something other than Ultimate?
 
Vital desktop will do it for W2k,XP and probably Vista (although I havent tested it on Vista).
 
Not that I know of. Stardock's DeskScapes works in conjunction with Dreamscene, not by itself. Thats the only thing I can think of.
 
Alright- nice.
Do any of these have impact on performance? DreamScene (from what I've heard) has little impact... Don't know about these?
 
Is there a way to stretch them so there full screen?

Mine are edge to edge horizontally but have black bars vertically
top and bottom.

Dell 24" monitor, using 8800GTS.
 
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