Screensaver simulation

[bananasdoom]

I would love to have my solar system as a screen saver, maybe some sort of evolution of the system or just my solarsystem as is. Maybe it should start as a some gas and dust and slowly become a solar system so we can watch the star forming and then the planets forming from the dust, and we watch this by having periodic change of view between different bodies, panoramic, speed visualization, graph......

So what do you think about my screensaver idea? I am sure that I haven't been the first to think of this idea, what are the issues? The only issue that I can think of is that running a stimulation like this would take considerably more system resources than the average screen saver such as pipes or having bananas smells bouncing across my screen. I do realize that the evolving solar system idea needs to come to the sim (Dan is working on it) before it can be implemented in a screensaver but I thought that I should throw it in anyway.

If a screen saver was to come to fruition what would you want from it?

[MassiveEffect]

I like this idea.

Not sure if Dan will get around to implementing a screensaver function , but like everything there are "workarounds".


I could suggest this for a screensaver.

1. Record Video of your system in a 30s. or 1minute loop (or more if needed).  Then find a screensaver utility that will play a video and it could just loop it for you.    

2. Take multiple snapshots with a program like fraps to create an animation type effect, and use either windows or other software to automatically change the screenshots every few seconds or so.

This is all I could think of for your screensaver idea. Hope it helps.

[ChemicalBR0]

I don't think it would really be possible to make a looping animation of the solar system.
say it takes earth 30 seconds to do the orbit in your animation, the other planets take longer or shorter time depending on the planet

your earth will look like a continuous loop but all other planets will not so you'll get a start, jump, restart animation not a loop

unless you have a time step of zero so the planets don't orbit at all and just animate the camera doing a 360 orbit, that would work

[MassiveEffect]

Yes that's true,  It would not be a seamless loop but its really the only method I could think of

[Omnigeek6]

I think the main point of screensavers is to save power, so using a computationally expensive n-body gravity simulator as a screensaver would be a little bit counterproductive.

Maybe if you could do an (extremely) simplified simulation where each body was only affected by the gravity of its parent, in short a "screensaver mode" it would be doable.

However, you also have to remember that at the scale of planetary systems, planets will either appear as points of light or be completely invisible.

[Lazareth]

I think the main point of screensavers is to save power, so using a computationally expensive n-body gravity simulator as a screensaver would be a little bit counterproductive.

Actually the point of screensavers were to, well, save the screens! Originally screensavers were meant to prevent still images on computer monitors from "burning in", harming the monitor. This was a problem with older computer monitors and is largely a non-issue nowadays. Now screensavers are mostly used for eye-candy when not using the computer.

That said unless you also want to lock the screen you can emulate a screensaver by going under options -> switch to fullscreen and options -> hide interface. Just leave it in whatever timestep you want. As for automatically loading up the program, the simulation and doing this like a screensaver, I have no idea currently and it would most likely be OS specific.

[turgsh01]

I just created this account to say that if a proper screensaver option becomes available for Universe Sandbox 2, then I'll buy it. I made the mistake of buying the first one thinking it would likely have it, but it didn't... though I was able to hide the menus and stuff and make it into a sort of screensaver and I used that for a while (211 hours worth), but it's kind of a process each time and I never know when I'm going to be away long enough to make it worth manually loading up all the time, so  in the end, I just kind of stopped using it.

I see this simulator as an amazing screensaver... not at all as a game. I don't even understand any of the controls or stuff that come with it, and frankly, I have no interest at all in learning any of it. I just want to be able to look at one of the pre-made amazing space simulation scenarios on my gaming rig whenever I'm not using it, because it would look awesome and no other screensaver could compete with that in my opinion... so it would draw a lot of attention to my rig (and maybe even get you guys a few extra customers).

[001002003004005]

You don't need an option, you just have to record a video then make it a screensaver