Apr 28

Stardock DeskScapes Extends the Vista DreamScene

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista

This article was written on February 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

Yesterday Microsoft released the pre-release of DreamScene as part of the Ultimate Extras that Vista Ultimate users have the capability to use. It’s one of those “wow” factors that a lot of people will probably be impressed with. You could take it and use it for it’s face value, or you could dive in and try out DeskScapes which extends the Windows DreamScene and adds more capability.

DeskScapes was created by Stardock who was contracted by Microsoft to work with them on the animated wallpaper feature. Stardock were actually the ones that created the default wallpapers that you’ll find with the DreamScene. While they were at it, they created the program DreamScapes which is free, and supports the new .DREAM format (which supports dynamic content instead of video, generated dynamically). According to the official news release, the program extends the DreamScene to include dynamic/live content, and triggers.  These triggers could be used to change videos when the weather changes.

The graph below shows you what Windows DreamScene can do, and what Stardock DeskScapes adds to the feature. Remember, it’s not a replacement for DreamScene, rather it just adds more capability.

The WinCustomize forum has a great post detailing all of the enhancements which you can visit for all of the details, I’ll just point out some of the highlights.

  1. Dynamic Wallpaper: Create your own dynamic, animated wallpaper (or download one from the gallery).  The image below was taken from the WinCustomize forum, and it just gives a glimpse at what you could do.  The World actually rotates in real-time.
      
  2.  Triggers: Using triggers, you can set different conditions. The example they give is: IF time is morning, then play wallpaper A, IF Time is afternoon, play wallpaper B, etc. So based upon the time of the day, you could have your wallpaper change, and you’d be able to set a variety of conditions. The image below is just a basic example of a trigger you could do:

 

They have a gallery that will contain a list of some of the “Dreams” people have created using “Dream Maker” which you can download. There’s not much to choose from yet, but you can expect over time that it will fill up. If by chance you decide to create a Dream and submit it to the gallery, you’ll be given credit so that people will know who created it.

So, in a nutshell, DeskScapes was created by Stardock. It extends the capabilities of Windows DreamScene which can be downloaded and used by Windows Vista Ultimate users. You can create your own Dream for your use, and to share with others using Dream Maker. Both DeskScapes and Dream Maker are free. Enjoy!

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