Screensavers... Which Will Work For Pandora?

[-Tj-]

Occasionally I like to have my PSP run some interesting graphics while I work on other things, even made a somewhat interesting clock app in Lua as an exercise... Which made me wonder: what Linux screensavers will work with Pandora?

Since I hear programs would have to be compiled for ARM-based Linux (or something like that), I'm a bit confused as to if screensavers off the web would work on Pandora. Would be nice to have a fish tank one I could run on the side while I work on my PC.

 

[Kimundi]

Well, under Windows Screensaver are just normal Programms with an *.scr ending instead of *.exe
I don't know how that is handled in Linux, but I guess it depends on the Windows Manager?

 

[atomicthumbs]

Xscreensaver oughta work if recompiled.

 

[Squidge]

So, you want an application to run on the Pandora to waste cpu cycles and battery life whilst your not using it? Seems like a strange request, but ok...

A lot of the screen savers should work, so long as they are recompiled.

As already stated, XScreenSaver should be portable, and includes some nice savers which'll probably be perfect for you. For example, Atlantis & possibly GLSchool,

 

[-Tj-]

So, you want an application to run on the Pandora to waste cpu cycles and battery life whilst your not using it? Seems like a strange request, but ok...

I'd be running these while it's plugged in at home, of course. Kinda similar to how people run visuals while playing music. Xscreensaver looks like it has a lot of interesting ones. I guess another option for me would be to just have some random game going through its attract (demo) mode.

 

[borgqueenx]

to bad 3planesoft screensavers wont work. those are my 100% favorite screensavers beautiful scenery.
but they are .exe unfortunatly

 

[-Tj-]

I just looked those up... they are amazing! They look pretty detailed, too...

I found a lot of fish tank screensavers on Google, but "linux screensavers" or "linux fishtank screensavers" usually ended up being either x86 Linux or not related to Linux at all. Kinda disappointing. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll have to learn how to compile programs for Pandora ARM Linux for a lot of other things.

But then again, I don't intend Pandora to be some kind of desktop replacement. It should do everything I expected it to do well first and foremost (emulation of classic games, limited Linux desktop stuff). Everything else will be a happy bonus, screensavers included.

 

[dflemstr]

List of all of the xscreensavers that *could* run on the Pandora if ported (they run on every Linux version out there, pretty much):
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/screenshots/

Also, take a look at projectM if you would care to use music visualizations for your screen saver:
http://projectm.sourceforge.net/

Oh and before I forget, take a look at the electric sheep project (more abstract screen savers FTW):
http://community.electricsheep.org/

electric sheep are "computer dreams" aka computer-generated videos that are used for screen savers. All computers running electricsheep help creating those videos, and they are shared amongst everyone. Then there's a voting system for which sheep are the best, and there's DNA simulation and whatnot, pretty cool. Bottom line: you get a screen saver that a computer has designed all by itself, kinda, and it looks fantastic.

 

[berichandcreamy]

Wasn't there a way to make VLC play as a screen saver? I remember reading something like that years ago.

 

[Alec]

Aside from the ones in XScreensaver, there's also these: http://rss-glx.sourceforge.net/

 

[psj3809]

Screensavers ?

Are we back in 1995 ?! Surely people in this day and age aren't bothered by screensavers ? They're almost as tacky as mobile phone ringtones !

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Screen savers were useful back in the days of CRT monitors to help prevent phosphor burn in due to static images such as the menu bar from a word processor etc. I personally don't see the point of a screen saver on a handheld device especially when you don't get burn in on TFTs. The thing that degrades on TFT displays is the backlight, so I would say turning that off after inactivity would be the way to go.

Mind you, I am forgetting the fun side of screen savers and would like to totally contradict myself and say that a good screen saver could be used as a sort of attract show off mode, demonstrating the raw power of the Pandora. So maybe they do have a use after all .

You know, I sometimes confuse even myself..... :blink:

 

[-Tj-]

Yes, yes, I realize screensavers are somewhat passe, but I'm not really considering old-school bezier curves, starfields, or 3D phrases. Many are definitely not "as tacky as cellphone ringtones," especially not the more powerful or unique ones. I kinda chuckled at the "back in 1995" comment, considering one of Pandora's main draws is to emulate game systems of that era.

The way I'm thinking is this. While I work I like to have things going on within the peripheral area of my senses, be it visual or aural. My laptop is using an external screen, and the internal screen is doing nothing, mainly because some of my apps don't like the combination of dual screens and my tablet (throws the mapping off horribly). I'd have my PSP running with video or some emulator in attract mode, but I don't have a stand for it, and videos take forever to encode to PSP's screen and video formats. Since Pandora's running a flavor of Linux, stands on its own, is fairly powerful, and doesn't use nearly as much power as a 2nd laptop, I thought it'd be fairly easy to run some of the more interesting screensavers on it, or eventually something of my own. Running it as a photo viewer is another idea. It's definitely not something to 'save the screen'. ^_^

Thanks for the links, guys. As far as recompiling for ARM goes, how difficult is it? I've never looked into recompiling for different platforms, so I'm completely blank in that area.

 

[WoD]

Recompiling the screen savers on the Pandora should be absurdly easy. You shouldn't even need a toolchain and/or another system to do the grunt work, compilation can just happen on the device itself assuming you've got all the pre-requisites installed.

I, for one, wouldn't mind a screen saver or two for shits and giggles, particularly a photo slideshow loaded with pictures of my daughter so I can have the Pandy plugged in at home acting as a photo frame in its down time (what little there may be).

 

[borgqueenx]

what about somehow get 3planesoft screensavers to work on pandora? they are .exe only and i dont think they wanna port it.
But what about extracting music, and make a kinda print screen movie?

would be a perfect goodie to show off check the screensavers, but not on their own site, they look horrible there.

 

[WoD]

I'd check them were I not a dirty Mac user. Are they real-time 3D, or pre-rendered animations?

Ripping them in their entirety probably wouldn't sit well, as they are commercial screen savers, but I don't think it's impossible for similar things to arrive on the Pandora if there is a) demand and B) someone out there with the know-how and time to pull it off.

I, for one, would like a port of this great Free_Screensaver.exe that someone sent me via email, I haven't tried it yet (Mac user, obviously) but they say it's absolutely awesome.

 

[borgqueenx]

I'd check them were I not a dirty Mac user. Are they real-time 3D, or pre-rendered animations?

Ripping them in their entirety probably wouldn't sit well, as they are commercial screen savers, but I don't think it's impossible for similar things to arrive on the Pandora if there is a) demand and B) someone out there with the know-how and time to pull it off.

I, for one, would like a port of this great Free_Screensaver.exe that someone sent me via email, I haven't tried it yet (Mac user, obviously) but they say it's absolutely awesome.

its real-time 3D, and its beautiful. for samples: a ancient mayay waterfall, or just nature, or a lighthouse in storm. They all come with beautiful matching music and sound effects to. And birds/fighses or other stuff flying/swimming around.

 

[-Tj-]

I imagine it'd be pretty difficult to convert them from .exe to a Linux/Pandora compatible package. They use DirectX for their visuals, so it might take some coding to convert the shaders and such to OpenGL ES. If you had their asset files (3d models, animations, textures) I don't think it'd be difficult to take an existing engine that works under Linux and OpenGL and make something out of it, like a 3D scene viewer or something.

That brings up an interesting thought. Does Linux have any kind of 3D screensaver maker software? If not, are there any 3D game engines that support realtime cutscene creation, like Unreal Engine 3's Matinee, or the one HL Source or CryEngine uses? I wouldn't mind making my own stuff if there was software for it.

 

[lulzfish]

There's stuff like the Irrlicht Engine and Blender Game Engine (not to mention OGRE, which I just now mentioned)

But screensavers have constantly eluded me.
I would rather make a standalone OpenGL application and call it manually, so I don't have to code around the screensaver architecture.

 

[-Tj-]

I'd read that Irrlicht was being ported, and heard someone was going to port Blender, but is someone going to port Blender Game Engine? I don't have much experience with Blender or Blender Game Engine, so I'm kinda wondering how easy they are to use. I'm more of an XSI/Maya guy.

Making a standalone app would be fine, something that runs on execution. Screensavers just came to mind when I thought about what I wanted, and I figured there'd be a lot out there already.