These are the screen savers currently included in the
XScreenSaver distribution:
Abstractile
Generates mosaic patterns of interlocking tiles.
Written by Steve Sundstrom; 2004. |
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Anemone
Wiggling tentacles.
Written by Gabriel Finch; 2002. |
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Anemotaxis
Anemotaxis demonstrates a search algorithm designed for locating a
source of odor in turbulent atmosphere. The searcher is able to sense
the odor and determine local instantaneous wind direction. The goal is
to find the source in the shortest mean time.
Wikipedia: "Anemotaxis"
Written by Eugene Balkovsky; 2004. |
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AntInspect
Draws a trio of ants moving their spheres around a circle.
Written by Blair Tennessy; 2004. |
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AntMaze
Draws a few views of a few ants walking around in a simple maze.
Written by Blair Tennessy; 2005. |
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AntSpotlight
Draws an ant (with a headlight) who walks on top of an
image of your desktop or other image.
Written by Blair Tennessy; 2003. |
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Apple2
Simulates an original Apple ][ Plus computer in all its 1979 glory. It
also reproduces the appearance of display on a color television set of
the period.
In "Basic Programming Mode", a simulated user types in a BASIC program
and runs it. In "Text Mode", it displays the output of a program, or
the contents of a file or URL. In "Slideshow Mode", it chooses random
images and displays them within the limitations of the Apple ][
display hardware. (Six available colors in hi-res mode!)
On X11 systems, This program is also a fully-functional VT100 emulator.
Wikipedia: "Apple II series"
Written by Trevor Blackwell; 2003. |
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Atlantis
A 3D animation of a number of sharks, dolphins, and whales.
Written by Mark Kilgard; 1998. |
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Attraction
Uses a simple simple motion model to generate many different display
modes. The control points attract each other up to a certain
distance, and then begin to repel each other. The
attraction/repulsion is proportional to the distance between any two
particles, similar to the strong and weak nuclear forces.
Written by Jamie Zawinski and John Pezaris; 1992. |
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Atunnel
Draws an animation of a textured tunnel in GL.
Written by Eric Lassauge and Roman Podobedov; 2003. |
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Blaster
Draws a simulation of flying space-combat robots (cleverly disguised
as colored circles) doing battle in front of a moving star field.
Written by Jonathan Lin; 1999. |
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BlinkBox
Shows a ball contained inside of a bounding box.
Colored blocks blink in when the ball hits the sides.
Written by Jeremy English; 2003. |
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BlitSpin
Repeatedly rotates a bitmap by 90 degrees by using logical operations:
the bitmap is divided into quadrants, and the quadrants are shifted
clockwise. Then the same thing is done again with progressively
smaller quadrants, except that all sub-quadrants of a given size are
rotated in parallel. As you watch it, the image appears to dissolve
into static and then reconstitute itself, but rotated.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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BlockTube
Draws a swirling, falling tunnel of reflective slabs. They fade from
hue to hue.
Written by Lars R. Damerow; 2003. |
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Boing
This bouncing ball is a clone of the first graphics demo for the Amiga
1000, which was written by Dale Luck and RJ Mical during a break at
the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show (or so the legend goes.)
This looks like the original Amiga demo if you turn off "smoothing"
and "lighting" and turn on "scanlines", and is somewhat more modern
otherwise.
Wikipedia: "Amiga: Boing Ball"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2005. |
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Bouboule
This draws what looks like a spinning, deforming balloon with
varying-sized spots painted on its invisible surface.
Written by Jeremie Petit; 1997. |
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BouncingCow
A Cow. A Trampoline. Together, they fight crime.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2003. |
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Boxed
Draws a box full of 3D bouncing balls that explode.
Written by Sander van Grieken; 2002. |
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BoxFit
Packs the screen with growing squares or circles, colored according to a
horizontal or vertical gradient, or according to the colors of the
desktop or a loaded image file. The objects grow until they touch,
then stop. When the screen is full, they shrink away and the process
restarts.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2005. |
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Braid
Draws random color-cycling inter-braided concentric circles.
Written by John Neil; 1997. |
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BSOD
BSOD stands for "Blue Screen of Death". The finest in personal
computer emulation, BSOD simulates popular screen savers from a
number of less robust operating systems.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1998. |
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Bubble3D
Draws a stream of rising, undulating 3D bubbles, rising toward the
top of the screen, with transparency and specular reflections.
Written by Richard Jones; 1998. |
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Bumps
A spotlight roams across an embossed version of your desktop or
other picture.
Written by Shane Smit; 1999. |
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Cage
This draws Escher's "Impossible Cage", a 3d analog of a möbius
strip, and rotates it in three dimensions.
Wikipedia: "Maurits Cornelis Escher"
Written by Marcelo Vianna; 1998. |
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Carousel
Loads several random images, and displays them flying in a circular
formation. The formation changes speed and direction randomly, and
images periodically drop out to be replaced by new ones.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2005. |
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CCurve
Generates self-similar linear fractals, including the classic "C Curve".
Wikipedia: "Levy C curve"
Written by Rick Campbell; 1999. |
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Circuit
Animates a number of 3D electronic components.
Written by Ben Buxton; 2001. |
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CloudLife
Generates cloud-like formations based on a variant of Conway's Life. The
difference is that cells have a maximum age, after which they count as
3 for populating the next generation. This makes long-lived formations
explode instead of just sitting there.
Wikipedia: "Conway's Game of Life"
Written by Don Marti; 2003. |
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Compass
This draws a compass, with all elements spinning about randomly, for
that "lost and nauseous" feeling.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1999. |
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Coral
Simulates coral growth, albeit somewhat slowly.
Written by Frederick Roeber; 1997. |
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Crackberg
Flies through height maps, optionally animating the creation and
destruction of generated tiles; tiles `grow' into place.
Written by Matus Telgarsky; 2005. |
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Crystal
Moving polygons, similar to a kaleidoscope. See also the
"Kaleidescope" and "GLeidescope" screen savers.
Wikipedia: "Kaleidoscope"
Written by Jouk Jansen; 1998. |
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Cube21
Animates a Rubik-like puzzle known as Cube 21 or Square-1.
The rotations are chosen randomly. See also the "Rubik",
"RubikBlocks" and "GLSnake" screen savers.
Wikipedia: "Square One (puzzle)"
Written by Vasek Potocek; 2005. |
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Cubenetic
Draws a pulsating set of overlapping boxes with ever-chaning blobby
patterns undulating across their surfaces. It's sort of a cubist Lavalite.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2002. |
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CubeStorm
Draws a series of rotating 3D boxes that intersect each other and
eventually fill space.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2003. |
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CubicGrid
Draws the view of an observer located inside a rotating 3D lattice of colored
points.
Written by Vasek Potocek; 2007. |
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CWaves
This generates a languidly-scrolling vertical field of sinusoidal colors.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2007. |
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Cynosure
Random dropshadowed rectangles pop onto the screen in lockstep.
Written by Ozymandias G. Desiderata, Jamie Zawinski, and Stephen Linhart; 1998. |
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DangerBall
Draws a ball that periodically extrudes many random spikes. Ouch!
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2001. |
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DecayScreen
This takes an image and makes it melt. You've no doubt seen this
effect before, but no screensaver would really be complete without it.
It works best if there's something colorful visible. Warning, if the
effect continues after the screen saver is off, seek medical attention.
Written by David Wald, Vivek Khera, Jamie Zawinski, and Vince Levey; 1993. |
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Deluxe
Draws a pulsing sequence of transparent stars, circles, and lines.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1999. |
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Demon
A cellular automaton that starts with a random field, and organizes
it into stripes and spirals.
Wikipedia: "Maxwell's demon"
Written by David Bagley; 1999. |
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Discrete
More "discrete map" systems, including new variants of Hopalong and
Julia, and a few others. See also the "Hopalong" and "Julia"
screen savers.
Written by Tim Auckland; 1998. |
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Distort
Grabs an image of the screen, and then lets a transparent
lens wander around the screen, magnifying whatever is underneath.
Written by Jonas Munsin; 1998. |
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Drift
Drifting recursive fractal cosmic flames.
Written by Scott Draves; 1997. |
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Endgame
Black slips out of three mating nets, but the fourth one holds him tight!
A brilliant composition!
See also the "Queens" screen saver.
Wikipedia: "Chess endgame"
Written by Blair Tennessy; 2002. |
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Epicycle
This draws the path traced out by a point on the edge of a
circle. That circle rotates around a point on the rim of another
circle, and so on, several times. These were the basis for the
pre-heliocentric model of planetary motion.
Wikipedia: "Deferent and epicycle"
Written by James Youngman; 1998. |
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Eruption
Exploding fireworks. See also the "Fireworkx", "XFlame" and "Pyro"
screen savers.
Written by W.P. van Paassen; 2003. |
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Extrusion
Draws various rotating extruded shapes that twist around, lengthen,
and turn inside out.
Written by Linas Vepstas, David Konerding, and Jamie Zawinski; 1999. |
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FadePlot
Draws what looks like a waving ribbon following a sinusoidal path.
Written by Bas van Gaalen and Charles Vidal; 1997. |
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Fiberlamp
Draws a groovy rotating fiber optic lamp.
Written by Tim Auckland; 2005. |
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Fireworkx
Exploding fireworks. See also the "Eruption", "XFlame" and "Pyro"
screen savers.
Written by Rony B Chandran; 2004. |
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Flame
Iterative fractals.
Written by Scott Draves; 1993. |
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FlipFlop
Draws a grid of 3D colored tiles that change positions with each other.
Written by Kevin Ogden and Sergio Gutierrez; 2003. |
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FlipScreen3D
Grabs an image of the desktop, turns it into a GL texture map, and
spins it around and deforms it in various ways.
Written by Ben Buxton and Jamie Zawinski; 2001. |
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FlipText
Draws successive pages of text. The lines flip in and out in
a soothing 3D pattern.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2005. |
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Flow
Strange attractors formed of flows in a 3D differential equation phase
space. Features the popular attractors described by Lorentz,
Roessler, Birkhoff and Duffing, and can discover entirely new
attractors by itself.
Wikipedia: "Attractor: Strange attractor"
Written by Tim Auckland; 1998. |
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FluidBalls
Models the physics of bouncing balls, or of particles in a gas or
fluid, depending on the settings. If "Shake Box" is selected, then
every now and then, the box will be rotated, changing which direction
is down (in order to keep the settled balls in motion.)
Written by Peter Birtles and Jamie Zawinski; 2002. |
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Flurry
This X11 port of the OSX screensaver of the same name draws a colourful
star(fish)like flurry of particles.
Original Mac version: http://homepage.mac.com/calumr
Written by Calum Robinson and Tobias Sargeant; 2002. |
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FontGlide
Puts text on the screen using large characters that glide in from the
edges, assemble, then disperse. Alternately, it can simply scroll whole
sentences from right to left.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2003. |
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FuzzyFlakes
Falling colored snowflake/flower shapes.
Written by Barry Dmytro; 2004. |
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Galaxy
This draws spinning galaxies, which then collide and scatter their
stars to the, uh, four winds or something.
Written by Uli Siegmund, Harald Backert, and Hubert Feyrer; 1997. |
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GFlux
Draws a rippling waves on a rotating wireframe grid.
Written by Josiah Pease; 2000. |
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GLBlur
This draws a box and a few line segments, and generates a
radial blur outward from it. This creates flowing field effects.
This is done by rendering the scene into a small texture, then
repeatedly rendering increasingly-enlarged and increasingly-transparent
versions of that texture onto the frame buffer. As such, it's quite
GPU-intensive: if you don't have a very good graphics card, it
will hurt your machine bad.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2002. |
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GLCells
Cells growing, dividing and dying on your screen.
Written by Matthias Toussaint; 2007. |
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Gleidescope
A kaleidoscope that operates on your desktop image, or on
image files loaded from disk.
Wikipedia: "Kaleidoscope"
Written by Andrew Dean; 2003. |
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GLHanoi
Solves the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. Move N disks from one pole to
another, one disk at a time, with no disk ever resting on a disk
smaller than itself.
Wikipedia: "Tower of Hanoi"
Written by Dave Atkinson; 2005. |
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GLKnots
Generates some twisting 3d knot patterns. Spins 'em around.
Wikipedia: "Knot theory"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2003. |
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GLMatrix
Draws 3D dropping characters similar to what is seen in the title sequence
of "The Matrix".
See also "xmatrix" for a 2D rendering of the similar effect that
appeared on the computer monitors actually *in* the movie.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2003. |
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GLPlanet
Draws a planet bouncing around in space.
The built-in image is a map of the earth (extracted from `xearth'),
but you can wrap any texture around the sphere, e.g., the planetary
textures that come with `ssystem'.
Written by David Konerding; 1998. |
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GLSchool
Uses Craig Reynolds' Boids algorithm to simulate a school of fish.
Wikipedia: "Boids"
Written by David C. Lambert; 2006. |
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GLSlideshow
Loads a random sequence of images and smoothly scans and zooms around
in each, fading from pan to pan.
Written by Jamie Zawinski and Mike Oliphant; 2003. |
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GLSnake
Draws a simulation of the Rubik's Snake puzzle. See also the "Rubik"
and "Cube21" screen savers.
Wikipedia: "Rubik's Snake"
Written by Jamie Wilkinson, Andrew Bennetts, and Peter Aylett; 2002. |
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GLText
Displays a few lines of text spinning around in a solid 3D font.
The text can use strftime() escape codes to display the current
date and time.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2001. |
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Goop
This draws set of animating, transparent, amoeba-like blobs. The blobs
change shape as they wander around the screen, and they are translucent,
so you can see the lower blobs through the higher ones, and when one
passes over another, their colors merge. I got the idea for this from
a mouse pad I had once, which achieved the same kind of effect in real
life by having several layers of plastic with colored oil between them.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1997. |
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Grav
This draws a simple orbital simulation. With trails enabled,
it looks kind of like a cloud-chamber photograph.
Written by Greg Bowering; 1997. |
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Greynetic
Draws random colored, stippled and transparent rectangles.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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Halftone
Draws the gravity force in each point on the screen seen through a
halftone dot pattern. The gravity force is calculated from a set of
moving mass points. View it from a distance for best effect.
Wikipedia: "Halftone"
Written by Peter Jaric; 2002. |
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Helix
Spirally string-art-ish patterns.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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Hopalong
This draws lacy fractal patterns based on iteration in the imaginary
plane, from a 1986 Scientific American article. See also the
"Discrete" screen saver.
Written by Patrick Naughton; 1992. |
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HyperBall
This screen saver was removed from the XScreenSaver distribution as of
version 5.10. It has been replaced by the more general "Polytopes"
screen saver, which can display this object as well as others. The
Polytopes "120-cell" object corresponds to this one.
Hyperball is to hypercube as dodecahedron is to cube: this displays
a 2D projection of the sequence of 3D objects which are the projections
of the 4D analog to the dodecahedron. Technically, it is a "120 cell
polytope".
Wikipedia: "Hypercube"
Wikipedia: "Regular polytope"
Written by Joe Keane; 2000. |
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HyperCube
This screen saver was removed from the XScreenSaver distribution as of
version 5.10. It has been replaced by the more general "Polytopes"
screen saver, which can display this object as well as others.
This displays 2D projections of the sequence of 3D objects which are
the projections of the 4D analog to the cube: as a square is composed
of four lines, each touching two others; and a cube is composed of
six squares, each touching four others; a hypercube is composed of
eight cubes, each touching six others. To make it easier to
visualize the rotation, it uses a different color for the edges of
each face. Don't think about it too long, or your brain will melt.
Wikipedia: "Hypercube"
Wikipedia: "Regular polytope"
Written by Joe Keane, Fritz Mueller, and Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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Hypnowheel
Draws a series of overlapping, translucent spiral patterns.
The tightness of their spirals fluctuates in and out.
Wikipedia: "Moiré pattern"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2008. |
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IFS
This one draws spinning, colliding iterated-function-system images.
Note that the "Detail" parameter is exponential. Number of points
drawn is functions^detail.
Wikipedia: "Iterated function system"
Written by Chris Le Sueur and Robby Griffin; 1997. |
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IMSMap
This generates random cloud-like patterns. The idea is to take four
points on the edge of the image, and assign each a random "elevation".
Then find the point between them, and give it a value which is the
average of the other four, plus some small random offset.
Coloration is done based on elevation.
Written by Juergen Nickelsen and Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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Interaggregate
A surface is filled with a hundred medium to small sized circles.
Each circle has a different size and direction, but moves at the same
slow rate. Displays the instantaneous intersections of the circles as
well as the aggregate intersections of the circles.
Though actually it doesn't look like circles at all!
Written by Casey Reas, William Ngan, Robert Hodgin, and Jamie Zawinski; 2004. |
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Interference
Color field based on computing decaying sinusoidal waves.
Written by Hannu Mallat; 1998. |
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Intermomentary
A surface is filled with a hundred medium to small sized circles.
Each circle has a different size and direction, but moves at the same
slow rate. Displays the instantaneous intersections of the circles as
well as the aggregate intersections of the circles.
The circles begin with a radius of 1 pixel and slowly increase to some
arbitrary size. Circles are drawn with small moving points along the
perimeter. The intersections are rendered as glowing orbs. Glowing
orbs are rendered only when a perimeter point moves past the
intersection point.
Written by Casey Reas, William Ngan, Robert Hodgin, and Jamie Zawinski; 2004. |
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JigglyPuff
This does bad things with quasi-spherical objects.
You have a tetrahedron with tesselated faces. The vertices on these
faces have forces on them: one proportional to the distance from the
surface of a sphere; and one proportional to the distance from the
neighbors. They also have inertia. The resulting effect can range
from a shape that does nothing, to a frenetic polygon storm.
Somewhere in between there it usually manifests as a blob that jiggles
in a kind of disturbing manner.
Written by Keith Macleod; 2003. |
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Juggle
This screen saver was removed from the XScreenSaver distribution as of
version 5.09. It has been replaced by the "Juggler3D" screen saver.
Wikipedia: "Siteswap"
Written by Tim Auckland; 2002. |
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Juggler3D
Draws a 3D juggling stick-man.
Wikipedia: "Siteswap"
Written by Tim Auckland and Jamie Zawinski; 2002. |
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Julia
Animates the Julia set (a close relative of the Mandelbrot set). The
small moving dot indicates the control point from which the rest of
the image was generated. See also the "Discrete" screen saver.
Wikipedia: "Julia set"
Written by Sean McCullough; 1997. |
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Klein
This shows a 4D Klein bottle. You can walk on the Klein bottle or
rotate it in 4D or walk on it while it rotates in 4D. Inspired by
Thomas Banchoff's book "Beyond the Third Dimension: Geometry, Computer
Graphics, and Higher Dimensions", Scientific American Library, 1990.
Wikipedia: "Klein bottle"
Written by Carsten Steger; 2008. |
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Kumppa
Spiraling, spinning, and very, very fast splashes of color rush
toward the screen.
Written by Teemu Suutari; 1998. |
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Lament
Animates a simulation of Lemarchand's Box, the Lament Configuration,
repeatedly solving itself.
Warning: occasionally opens doors.
Wikipedia: "Lemarchand's box"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1998. |
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Lavalite
Draws a 3D Simulation a Lava Lite(r). Odd-shaped blobs of a mysterious
substance are heated, slowly rise to the top of the bottle, and then
drop back down as they cool. This simulation requires a fairly fast
machine (both CPU and 3D performance.)
"LAVA LITE(r) and the configuration of the LAVA(r) brand motion lamp are
registered trademarks of Haggerty Enterprises, Inc. The configuration
of the globe and base of the motion lamp are registered trademarks of
Haggerty Enterprises, Inc. in the U.S.A. and in other countries around
the world."
Wikipedia: "Lava lamp"
Wikipedia: "Metaballs"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2002. |
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Lockward
A translucent spinning, blinking thing. Sort of a cross between the wards
in an old combination lock and those old backlit information displays that
animated and changed color via polarized light.
Written by Leo L. Schwab; 2007. |
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m6502
This emulates a 6502 microprocessor. The family
of 6502 chips were used throughout the 70's and 80's in machines
such as the Atari 2600, Commodore PET, VIC20 and C64, Apple ][,
and the NES. Some example programs are included, and it can also
read in an assembly file as input.
Original JavaScript Version by Stian Soreng: http://www.6502asm.com/.
Ported to XScreenSaver by Jeremy English.
Written by Stian Soreng and Jeremy English; 2007. |
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Maze
This generates random mazes (with three different maze-generation
algorithms), and then solves them. Backtracking and look-ahead paths
are displayed in different colors.
Wikipedia: "Maze generation algorithm"
Written by Martin Weiss, Dave Lemke, Jim Randell, Jamie Zawinski,
Johannes Keukelaar, and Zack Weinberg; 1985. |
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MemScroller
This draws a dump of its own process memory scrolling across the screen
in three windows at three different rates.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2004. |
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MetaBalls
Draws two dimensional metaballs: overlapping and merging balls with
fuzzy edges.
Wikipedia: "Metaballs"
Written by W.P. van Paassen; 2003. |
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MirrorBlob
Draws a wobbly blob that distorts the image behind it.
Written by Jon Dowdall; 2003. |
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Mismunch
This screen saver was removed from the XScreenSaver distribution as of
version 5.08. It was merged with the "Munch" screen saver.
Munching errors! This is a creatively broken misimplementation of the
classic munching squares graphics hack. See the "Munch" screen saver
for the original.
Wikipedia: "HAKMEM"
Wikipedia: "Munching square"
Written by Steven Hazel; 2004. |
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MöbiusGears
Draws a closed, interlinked chain of rotating gears. The layout of
the gears follows the path of a möbius strip. See also the "Pinion"
and "Gears" screen savers.
Wikipedia: "Involute gear"
Wikipedia: "Möbius strip"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2007. |
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Moiré
When the lines on the screen
Make more lines in between,
That's a moiré!
Wikipedia: "Moiré pattern"
Written by Jamie Zawinski and Michael Bayne; 1997. |
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Moiré2
Generates fields of concentric circles or ovals, and combines the
planes with various operations. The planes are moving independently
of one another, causing the interference lines to spray.
Wikipedia: "Moiré pattern"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1998. |
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Molecule
Draws several different representations of molecules. Some common
molecules are built in, and it can also read PDB (Protein Data Bank)
files as input.
Wikipedia: "Protein Data Bank (file format)"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2001. |
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Mountain
Generates random 3D plots that look vaguely mountainous.
Written by Pascal Pensa; 1997. |
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Munch
DATAI 2
ADDB 1,2
ROTC 2,-22
XOR 1,2
JRST .-4
As reported by HAKMEM (MIT AI Memo 239, 1972), Jackson Wright wrote
the above PDP-1 code in 1962. That code still lives on here, some 46
years later.
In "mismunch" mode, it displays a creatively broken misimplementation
of the classic munching squares algorithm instead.
Wikipedia: "HAKMEM"
Wikipedia: "Munching square"
Written by Jackson Wright, Tim Showalter, Jamie Zawinski and
Steven Hazel; 1997. |
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NerveRot
Draws different shapes composed of nervously vibrating squiggles,
as if seen through a camera operated by a monkey on crack.
Written by Dan Bornstein; 2000. |
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Noof
Draws some rotatey patterns, using OpenGL.
Written by Bill Torzewski; 2004. |
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NoseGuy
A little man with a big nose wanders around your screen saying things.
Written by Dan Heller and Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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Pacman
Simulates a game of Pac-Man on a randomly-created level.
Wikipedia: "Pac-Man"
Written by Edwin de Jong; 2004. |
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Pedal
This is sort of a combination spirograph/string-art. It generates a
large, complex polygon, and renders it by filling using an even/odd
winding rule.
Written by Dale Moore; 1995. |
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Penrose
Draws quasiperiodic tilings; think of the implications on modern
formica technology.
In April 1997, Sir Roger Penrose, a British math professor who has
worked with Stephen Hawking on such topics as relativity, black
holes, and whether time has a beginning, filed a
copyright-infringement lawsuit against the Kimberly-Clark
Corporation, which Penrose said copied a pattern he created (a
pattern demonstrating that "a nonrepeating pattern could exist in
nature") for its Kleenex quilted toilet paper. Penrose said he
doesn't like litigation but, "When it comes to the population of
Great Britain being invited by a multinational to wipe their bottoms
on what appears to be the work of a Knight of the Realm, then a last
stand must be taken."
As reported by News of the Weird #491, 4-Jul-1997.
Wikipedia: "Penrose tiling"
Written by Timo Korvola; 1997. |
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Petri
This simulates colonies of mold growing in a petri dish. Growing
colored circles overlap and leave spiral interference in their wake.
Written by Dan Bornstein; 1999. |
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Phosphor
Draws a simulation of an old terminal, with large pixels and
long-sustain phosphor. On X11 systems, This program is also a
fully-functional VT100 emulator!
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1999. |
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Piecewise
This draws a bunch of moving circles which switch from visibility to
invisibility at intersection points.
Written by Geoffrey Irving; 2003. |
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Pinion
Draws an interconnected set of gears moving across the screen.
See also the "Gears" and "MöbiusGears" screen savers.
Wikipedia: "Involute gear"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2004. |
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Pipes
A growing plumbing system, with bolts and valves.
Written by Marcelo Vianna; 1997. |
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Polyhedra
Displays different 3D solids and some information about each.
A new solid is chosen every few seconds. There are 75 uniform
polyhedra, plus 5 infinite sets of prisms and antiprisms;
including their duals brings the total to 160.
Wikipedia: "Uniform polyhedra"
Written by Dr. Zvi Har'El and Jamie Zawinski; 2004. |
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Polyominoes
Repeatedly attempts to completely fill a rectangle with
irregularly-shaped puzzle pieces.
Wikipedia: "Polyomino"
Written by Stephen Montgomery-Smith; 2002. |
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Polytopes
This shows one of the six regular 4D polytopes rotating in 4D.
Inspired by H.S.M Coxeter's book "Regular Polytopes", 3rd Edition,
Dover Publications, Inc., 1973, and Thomas Banchoff's book "Beyond the
Third Dimension: Geometry, Computer Graphics, and Higher Dimensions",
Scientific American Library, 1990.
Wikipedia: "Hypercube"
Wikipedia: "Regular polytope"
Written by Carsten Steger; 2003. |
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Pong
This simulates the 1971 Pong home video game, as well as
various artifacts from displaying it on a color TV set.
In clock mode, the score keeps track of the current time.
Wikipedia: "Pong"
Written by Jeremy English and Trevor Blackwell; 2003. |
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PopSquares
This draws a pop-art-ish looking grid of pulsing colors.
Written by Levi Burton; 2003. |
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Providence
"A pyramid unfinished. In the zenith an eye in a triangle, surrounded
by a glory, proper."
Wikipedia: "Eye of Providence"
Written by Blair Tennessy; 2004. |
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Pulsar
Draws some intersecting planes, making use of alpha blending, fog,
textures, and mipmaps.
Written by David Konerding; 1999. |
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Pyro
Exploding fireworks. See also the "Fireworkx", "Eruption", and
"XFlame" screen savers.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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Qix
Bounces a series of line segments around the screen, and uses
variations on this basic motion pattern to produce all sorts of
different presentations: line segments, filled polygons, and
overlapping translucent areas.
Wikipedia: "Qix"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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Queens
Solves the N-Queens problem (where N is between 5 and 10 queens). The
problem is: how may one place N queens on an NxN chessboard such that
no queen can attack a sister? See also the "Endgame" screen saver.
Wikipedia: "Eight queens puzzle"
Written by Blair Tennessy; 2002. |
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RDbomb
Draws a grid of growing square-like shapes that, once they overtake
each other, react in unpredictable ways. "RD" stands for
reaction-diffusion.
Written by Scott Draves; 1997. |
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Ripples
This draws rippling interference patterns like splashing water,
overlayed on the desktop or an image.
Written by Tom Hammersley; 1999. |
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Rocks
This draws an animation of flight through an asteroid field, with
changes in rotation and direction.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1992. |
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RotZoomer
Creates a collage of rotated and scaled portions of the screen.
Written by Claudio Matsuoka; 2001. |
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Rubik
Draws a Rubik's Cube that rotates in three dimensions and repeatedly
shuffles and solves itself. See also the "GLSnake" and "Cube21"
screen savers.
Wikipedia: "Rubik's Cube"
Written by Marcelo Vianna; 1997. |
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SBalls
Draws an animation of textured balls spinning like crazy.
Written by Eric Lassauge; 2002. |
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ShadeBobs
This draws smoothly-shaded oscillating oval patterns that look
something like vapor trails or neon tubes.
Written by Shane Smit; 1999. |
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Sierpinski
This draws the two-dimensional variant of the recursive Sierpinski
triangle fractal. See also the "Sierpinski3D" screen saver.
Wikipedia: "Sierpinski triangle"
Written by Desmond Daignault; 1997. |
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SkyTentacles
There is a tentacled abomination in the sky. From above you it devours.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2008. |
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SlideScreen
This takes an image, divides it into a grid, and then randomly
shuffles the squares around as if it was one of those "fifteen-puzzle"
games where there is a grid of squares, one of which is missing.
Wikipedia: "Fifteen puzzle"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1994. |
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Slip
This throws some random bits on the screen, then sucks them
through a jet engine and spews them out the other side. To avoid
turning the image completely to mush, every now and then it will it
interject some splashes of color into the scene, or go into a spin
cycle, or stretch the image like taffy.
Written by Scott Draves and Jamie Zawinski; 1997. |
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Sonar
This draws a sonar screen that pings (get it?) the hosts on
your local network, and plots their distance (response time) from you.
The three rings represent ping times of approximately 2.5, 70 and 2,000
milliseconds respectively.
Alternately, it can run a simulation that doesn't involve hosts.
(If pinging doesn't work, you may need to make the executable be setuid.)
Wikipedia: "Ping: History"
Written by Jamie Zawinski and Stephen Martin; 1998. |
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SpeedMine
Simulates speeding down a rocky mineshaft, or a funky dancing worm.
Written by Conrad Parker; 2001. |
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Spheremonics
These closed objects are commonly called spherical harmonics,
although they are only remotely related to the mathematical
definition found in the solution to certain wave functions, most
notably the eigenfunctions of angular momentum operators.
Wikipedia: "Spherical harmonics: Visualization of the spherical harmonics"
Written by Paul Bourke and Jamie Zawinski; 2002. |
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Spotlight
Draws a spotlight scanning across a black screen, illuminating the
underlying desktop (or a picture) when it passes.
Written by Rick Schultz and Jamie Zawinski; 1999. |
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Squiral
Draws a set of interacting, square-spiral-producing automata. The
spirals grow outward until they hit something, then they go around it.
Written by Jeff Epler; 1999. |
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Starfish
This generates a sequence of undulating, throbbing, star-like
patterns which pulsate, rotate, and turn inside out. Another display
mode uses these shapes to lay down a field of colors, which are then
cycled. The motion is very organic.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1997. |
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StarWars
Draws a stream of text slowly scrolling into the distance at an
angle, over a star field, like at the beginning of the movie of the
same name.
Wikipedia: "Star Wars opening crawl"
Written by Jamie Zawinski and Claudio Matauoka; 2001. |
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StonerView
Chains of colorful squares dance around each other in complex spiral
patterns. Inspired by David Tristram's `electropaint' screen saver,
originally written for SGI computers in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Written by Andrew Plotkin; 2001. |
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Strange
This draws iterations to strange attractors: it's a colorful,
unpredictably-animating swarm of dots that swoops and twists around.
Wikipedia: "Attractor: Strange attractor"
Written by Massimino Pascal; 1997. |
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Substrate
Crystalline lines grow on a computational substrate. A simple
perpendicular growth rule creates intricate city-like structures.
Written by J. Tarbell and Mike Kershaw; 2004. |
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Superquadrics
Morphing 3D shapes.
Written by Ed Mackey; 1987, 1997. |
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Swirl
Flowing, swirly patterns.
Written by M. Dobie and R. Taylor; 1997. |
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Thornbird
Displays a view of the "Bird in a Thornbush" fractal.
Written by Tim Auckland; 2002. |
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TimeTunnel
Draws an animation similar to the opening and closing effects on the
Dr. Who TV show.
Written by Sean P. Brennan; 2005. |
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TopBlock
Creates a 3D world with dropping blocks that build up and up.
Written by rednuht; 2006. |
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Triangle
Generates random mountain ranges using iterative subdivision of
triangles.
Written by Tobias Gloth; 1997. |
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Truchet
This draws line- and arc-based truchet patterns that tile the screen.
Wikipedia: "Tessellation"
Written by Adrian Likins; 1998. |
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Twang
Divides the screen into a grid, and plucks them.
Written by Dan Bornstein; 2002. |
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Vermiculate
Draws squiggly worm-like paths.
Written by Tyler Pierce; 2001. |
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VidWhacker
This is a shell script that grabs a frame of video from the system's
video input, and then uses some PBM filters (chosen at random) to
manipulate and recombine the video frame in various ways (edge
detection, subtracting the image from a rotated version of itself,
etc.) Then it displays that image for a few seconds, and does it
again. This works really well if you just feed broadcast television
into it.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1998. |
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Voronoi
Draws a randomly-colored Voronoi tessellation, and periodically zooms
in and adds new points. The existing points also wander around.
There are a set of control points on the plane, each at the center of
a colored cell. Every pixel within that cell is closer to that cell's
control point than to any other control point. That is what
determines the cell's shapes.
Wikipedia: "Voronoi diagram"
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 2007. |
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WebCollage
This makes collages out of random images pulled off of the
World Wide Web. It finds these images by doing random web searches,
and then extracting images from the returned pages.
WARNING: THE INTERNET SOMETIMES CONTAINS PORNOGRAPHY.
The Internet being what it is, absolutely anything might show up in the
collage including -- quite possibly -- pornography, or even nudity.
Please act accordingly.
See also http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1999. |
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WhirlWindWarp
Floating stars are acted upon by a mixture of simple 2D
forcefields. The strength of each forcefield changes
continuously, and it is also switched on and off at random.
Written by Paul 'Joey' Clark; 2001. |
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Wormhole
Flying through a colored wormhole in space.
Written by Jon Rafkind; 2004. |
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XAnalogTV
XAnalogTV shows a detailed simulation of an old TV set showing various
test patterns, with various picture artifacts like snow, bloom,
distortion, ghosting, and hash noise. It also simulates the TV warming
up. It will cycle through 12 channels, some with images you give it,
and some with color bars or nothing but static.
Written by Trevor Blackwell; 2003. |
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XFlame
Draws a simulation of pulsing fire. It can also take an arbitrary
image and set it on fire too.
Written by Carsten Haitzler and many others; 1999. |
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XJack
This behaves schizophrenically and makes a lot of typos.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1997. |
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XMatrix
Draws dropping characters similar to what is seen on the computer
monitors in "The Matrix".
See also "GLMatrix" for a 3D rendering of the similar effect that
appeared in the movie's title sequence.
Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1999. |
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XRaySwarm
Draws a few swarms of critters flying around the screen, with
faded color trails behind them.
Written by Chris Leger; 2000. |
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XSpirograph
Simulates that pen-in-nested-plastic-gears toy from your childhood.
Wikipedia: "Spirograph"
Written by Rohit Singh; 2000. |
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Zoom
Zooms in on a part of the screen and then moves around. With the
"Lenses" option, the result is like looking through many overlapping
lenses rather than just a simple zoom.
Written by James Macnicol; 2001. |
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