Vista DreamScene users: burn in hell?

Ok, so what's up with Microsoft's latest Vista DreamScene movie-desktop? Besides feeling like something distinctly more nightmarish than dreamy, do they really want us to feel like we're burning in the smoldering pits of hell? Because we kind of do, and we get enough lectures about our heathen, gadget-idol-worshpiping lifestyle from our mothers, thankyouverymuch.

[MP4] Download the video (VGA)
[AVI] Download the video (VGA)

[Matt @ Mar 17th 2007 5:12PM]

oh my

[dov @ Mar 17th 2007 5:13PM]

funny..
I had bliss with moving clouds.. pretty nice.. :)

[jason @ Mar 17th 2007 5:19PM]

dremples desktop has been doing this for years...
http://www.geisswerks.com/drempels/index.html

[Dudeskee @ Mar 17th 2007 5:19PM]

Is it just me, or is that eyecandy taking up ~50% of that user's CPU? (The tachometer-like thing in the upper right.)

[Chris F @ Mar 17th 2007 5:24PM]

The whole dreamscene thing is a waste of time imho! Its also buggy if you have dual screens as if you maximize an app on one screen, it stops the animation on the other. Looks stupid...

[Syphon Filter @ Mar 17th 2007 5:29PM]

If you look really closely you just about make out the face of the devil amongst that swirling mess!

An movie desktop background/wallpaper would drive me nuts in about 30seconds flat!

[Archicuit @ Mar 17th 2007 8:57PM]

Yep, I looked closely and I recognized Bill Gates.

[Loker @ Mar 17th 2007 5:36PM]

dudeskee my CPU usage goes up about 8% when I have the dreamscene going....not really enough to worry about....

[MEAT! @ Mar 17th 2007 5:40PM]

Ah, perhaps it's measuring something else, then, or perhaps the user is starting a program.

I'm hesitant to install Vista. Is it worth it? I've seen it on internet kiosks and its graphical rendering seems buggy, unstable, and unusable for complicated sites at worst.

[pyro @ Mar 17th 2007 7:53PM]

The high cpu usage in the video is probably do to the recording program.

[paloooz @ Mar 17th 2007 5:41PM]

No, the "go to hell" part was in the EULA before you even installed it.

[Twist @ Mar 17th 2007 5:53PM]

Wow. Vista just isn't slow enough for some people I guess.

[GenNove @ Mar 17th 2007 6:08PM]

Taking stuff out of context i see?

This can be taken so many ways..how about vista is fire? do you know how many geeks or pc enthusiast have dragons etc as their wallpapers?
come on get real..i know a shit load of people that from seeing how they mod their computers this will fit just right in.

I for one think it woud look freaking awesome on a glossy black setup. Come on you know PC CASE MODS etc and fire go hand in hand.

[Carl @ Mar 17th 2007 6:36PM]

It doesn't use much CPU, but it does eat a fair amount of ram. On my System explorer.exe uses ~30MB of ram with a jpg background, and ~165MB of ram with a Dreamscene loaded.

[sentient.exe @ Mar 17th 2007 6:41PM]

I have that as my background and think it looks awesome. There is also a blue plasma you can get by the stardock people. Overall I've been impressed with the feature and it doesn't seem to kill my cpu while running it. Then again I can run Media Player, World of Warcraft and Internet Explorer at the same time and not have any problems either, so meh.

[Joe Smith @ Mar 17th 2007 6:46PM]

That music is good! What is it?

[Paul @ Mar 17th 2007 7:05PM]

"Night on Bald Mountain" by Moussorgsky.

[JD @ Mar 17th 2007 7:05PM]

I believe the music was Night on Bare Mountain. Also, M$ mostly thought this out. If you have a Discreet GPU, vista loads the whole movie into the GPU RAM and Runs it from the GPU. My 7950GT handles it fine, obviously, and my CPU usage doesn't go up at all, except for when loading the video onto the GPU. I'm liking vista, not liking the terrible Creative X-Fi drivers, and not too fond of the Nvidia Vista drivers. But I'd say it's worth it, If you've got the cash around.

[Joshieca @ Mar 17th 2007 7:38PM]

Oh wow....i feel like i have just lost 20 seconds of my life watching that.

[Andrei Vassiliev @ Mar 17th 2007 7:38PM]

Seriously, this is the best news engadget has to post?

[Steven @ Mar 17th 2007 8:17PM]

Vista really isn't as bad as everyone is making it out to be. DreamScene honestly doesn't use much of CPU (the most it uses is about 3% on my machine) and Vista, as a whole, has been pretty stable and running fast for the time I've had it.

[Kev50027 @ Mar 17th 2007 8:17PM]

I noticed this, found it distracting and turned it off. It's an optional update upon a nother optional update anyway, so really if you don't want it, don't get it. It does not make my CPU go up at all, but it does eat RAM like crazy.

[Kev50027 @ Mar 17th 2007 8:21PM]

Oh.. and just for the record, this is Engadget being their stupid biased anti-Vista self. Those dolts don't even mention the other soothing DreamScene backgrounds that are available.

[LongshotX @ Mar 17th 2007 8:46PM]

I use Vista Ultimate and its better than XP MCE 2005, its quicker to boot and it runs smoother. I don't understand all the hating.

[alcuin @ Mar 17th 2007 8:59PM]

fyi from Wikipedia:
Note on the title: The Russian word «лысая» (lïsaya) literally means "bald", but is used in this case figuratively for a mountain supposedly barren of trees. Therefore, most experts officially title the piece A Night on the Bare Mountain, even if they commonly refer to it as Night on Bald Mountain.

[Andrew M. @ Mar 17th 2007 9:22PM]

I

[Jiffylush @ Mar 17th 2007 9:49PM]

I thought the hell part was going to be the screen going black and then when the desktop comes back you see the display driver recovery message bubble.

That is what happens to me at least every other day while running dreamscene (which I like btw).

I was running the hi-res little big planet trailer on it, looked great.

[fdg008 @ Mar 17th 2007 10:37PM]

I donno about hell,but I like DreamScene alot. Especially the Aurora mpeg.

And some of the Object Desktop Dreams are cool too.
No big hit on my machine. Go figure. Eye candy will only increase with Gen Y and Gen I coming into the marketplace for software. So you Windows Classic look and feel folks better get with the program.It's only going to get crazier. And note to Steve-O: for God's sakes when are you going to update Aqua? It's been 6 years of the same look and feel. At least Windows refreshed their tired XP presentation layer.

[Z @ Mar 17th 2007 11:05PM]

Good one, Microsoft. Way to go. What a way to present your newest product.

[js @ Mar 17th 2007 11:27PM]

I wouldn't be surprised if the video is captured using BootCamp and a Macbook Pro.

[NeoK182 @ Mar 18th 2007 12:19AM]

lol nice. Dreamscene is kinda nice but finding a good looping video is hard. I have a few that i toss on everyonce and a while when i'm just talking on AIM or playing one of the card games but usually i just use a static wallpaper.

For me if the video is an MPG or WMV i only use up about 5-20% more CPU, depending on the size of the video. if it's in the stardock .dream format, around 10-30% extra CPU again depending on the size of the file.

But personally i love vista. it works perfect on my machine and it's an amazing OS. Dreamscene is just a nice little bit of eye candy that really isn't needed 90% of the time. but it's nice that it's there.

[HyperHacker @ Mar 18th 2007 2:15AM]

Animated background... for the love of God why?

I'd guess the 50% CPU usage comes from whatever program is being used to capture the video though. Also, what's this have to do with Playstation 3?

[e_rocm @ Mar 18th 2007 2:25AM]

Back in the day I had an ATI All-in-wonder that would let you set live TV as your wallpaper. I was probably running Windows 98 (or maybe 2000), so this is definitely not a new feature. I have to admit that it is not very practical (how often am I looking at my desktop?) but it looks cool nonetheless.

[ddt @ Mar 18th 2007 9:39AM]

I would settle for an option to automatically change the background picture every day randomly, from a directory you choose.

[nate @ Mar 20th 2007 9:25AM]

I think it looks pretty cool personally. It really does seem like a good idea. Sure, it uses up some of comp's resources... but then again so do most (all?) other visual effects on computers, right? For example, windows (on Macs or PC's) don't have to have any effects when they're minimized or restored, but they do, and no one complains about that. Things don't NEED to ever look nice... but it is nice to have that option. I give props to DreamScene. Shame on you, Ryan. Now they need to make desktops that are interactive... like the cursor makes ripples when you click on the desktop or something. That would probably kill a large portion of my life.

[Seth @ Mar 22nd 2007 11:42PM]

There is a free third party add-on to Dreamscape called Deskscape which has a much better and much larger selection of video. I am kind of embarrased to say I purchased one of their two $5 video backgrounds - but I actually like it alot. Its a field of moving grass and its kind of soothing.

If I didnt have a 24" monitor, where I dont run my browser fullscreen and can actually see it, it wouldnt be worth it.

[T @ Apr 10th 2007 10:09PM]

To You its hell to me its Beautiful Energy Be more Open Minded Than Just Heaven or Hell...

[Andrew @ May 10th 2007 3:24AM]

As a little tip, try the Deskscapes extension to Dreamscene as Seth mentions above. The main benefit is the support of 'Dynamic' wallpapers, which are rendered 3D, and take far less strain on the components. The spinning globe is simply wonderful, and yeah, pretty much no performance impact.

[Drake Steele @ Jun 4th 2007 7:52PM]

I use both DreamScene and SD's DreamScape on my Vista Ultimate and it's like buttah. Smooth, and eats very little of my resources. And I run with 1 GB of RAM to boot. So I don't get the negative BS I see from some of you here.

DreamScenes and DreamScape are definitely unnecessary... but then so are still wallpapers.

For productivity they could just stick with a solid-colored background. But where's the fun in that? Just as a photo/image background takes some juice to put up, so does animating it - and both are just for fun.

So, enjoy them and use them or STFU and let the rest of us enjoy and use them. Why moan about what you don't like when it's OPTIONAL to install?

Sheesh.