Better than porn

May 18, 2005 7:27 PM

Remember the default screensaver that came with SGI IRIX around 10 years ago? Has anyone ported that to Windows?

I had the privilege of working on an SGI Indigo in 1995, but as soon as the screensaver kicked in my productivity dropped to nil as I was mesmerized by the screensaver. It was the one where these simple flakes would dance around in formation -- what was amazing was the very complex and organic way the flakes would move. I've seen many other screensavers that are, in the first few seconds, more graphically impressive, but I've never seen something that is as fascinating to watch for five, ten, even fifteen minutes.

I haven't used an SGI since then, but I've always dreamed of having that screensaver on my Windows PC. Does anyone know if that screensaver has been ported or imitated on the Win32 platform? Or even Linux? And what's the algorithm behind it? I can't imagine how someone would program something that behaves so organically.

posted by randomstriker to computers & internet (11 comments total)

see discussion here (first google hit for "sgi screensaver algorithm").
posted by andrew cooke at 7:33 PM on May 18, 2005

Electropaint has also been ported to MacOS.
posted by zsazsa at 8:20 PM on May 18, 2005

On Linux, it's called 'StonerView' and ships standard with xscreensaver, I think (at least, it's been included in every distro I've ever used).
posted by ubernostrum at 8:32 PM on May 18, 2005

Yeah, there's a Mac and Windows version of StonerView.
posted by kindall at 9:50 PM on May 18, 2005

Is it something like this? Your description reminded me of the "IFS" screensaver that comes with xlock/xscreensaver on most Unixes. A google search turned up the one I linked above.
posted by knave at 10:08 PM on May 18, 2005

Note that Stoner View isn't nearly as nice looking as Kent Rosenkoetter's version of electropaint.
posted by nmiell at 11:13 PM on May 18, 2005

So I tried out Stonerview and bleu - IGL. Thanks for the links, but they weren't as sophisticated as how I remember electropaint being. I hope nostalgia isn't tainting my memory, but I remember watching electropaint for ages before I would notice it ever repeating a cycle of patterns. Both Stonerview and bleu - IGL seem to be rather limited in the patterns that they form.
posted by randomstriker at 12:17 AM on May 19, 2005

The one thing I miss about sgi workstations is the screen saver. ElectroPaint and StonerView somehow aren't nearly as hypnotic. If I can dig up the sourcecode I'll try to see if sgi will consider open sourcing it (I had absolutely nothing to do with the screen saver, I just work there)
posted by substrate at 5:52 AM on May 19, 2005

IGS Twisted is another IRIX derivative with more interesting variations than StonerView.
posted by zedediah at 6:20 AM on May 19, 2005

Random striker, what res are you running them at? As I recall, most Iny's ran 1024x768 default.

You weren't thinking of "Life", were you? That has a distincly organic feel to it, given the Conway "Game of Life" algorithim that fuels it.
posted by cosmicbandito at 8:32 AM on May 19, 2005

randomstriker and substrate, if you read the IGL page it says that it uses the actual SGI code for electropaint. However, it looks like it's based on an old version of the code (1986!), and they may have increased the complexity of the algorithm over the years. It doesn't seem to be quite as mesmerizing as I remember seeing it on the late-90s SGI machines I last saw it on.
posted by zsazsa at 9:27 AM on May 19, 2005