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Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

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Re: Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

#11

Post by ComputerGuru »

behnamoh wrote: post #10

It's taxing on CPU and GPU: normal | running screensaver in browser CPU: 5% | 15% GPU: 10% | 45%

What’s your GPU? My phone can handle the demo without freaking out so I find it hard to understand why a PC would take half its available GPU compute to do the same.

Re: Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

#12

Post by melony »

krackers wrote: post #3

What's the gist behind how the flow lines are generated? It looks sort of like the vector field for a differential equation, can we plug in our own values?

Doesn't look like typical CFD/ODE sims but somebody more experienced in shaders can comment below

https://github.com/sandydoo/flux/tree/main/flux/shaders

Re: Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

#13

Post by rob74 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #6

Are these screensavers designed to be impressive and fun while also requiring minimal processor (battery)? I always assumed the screensavers that ship with the Mac are carefully designed not to unnecessarily drain the battery, but I realised just now that’s just an assumption.

I guess screensavers are something for nineties nostalgics nowadays, because no screensaver can be as battery friendly as turning the screen off completely. Ok, maybe you can enable the screensaver only when your laptop is on AC power, but that's one extra configuration step that not many make...

Re: Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

#14

Post by fulafel »

Waterluvian wrote: post #6

Are these screensavers designed to be impressive and fun while also requiring minimal processor (battery)? I always assumed the screensavers that ship with the Mac are carefully designed not to unnecessarily drain the battery, but I realised just now that’s just an assumption.

Even though running a screensaver on battery seems ridiculous at first, it might be cool to try to come up with a battery friendly design. It might need laptop screen hw that works in ambient light without backlight and changes patterns very slowly.

Re: Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

#15

Post by rob74 »

suntuba wrote: post #4
lioeters wrote: post #2

Browser demo: https://flux.sandydoo.me/

Hit "C" to bring up the control panel which, btw, is written in Elm!

I see it also has an "UA" mode - which is funny, because the animation reminds me of the waves you can see in a field of wheat on a windy day, and the Ukrainian flag represents a field of wheat under a blue sky. Hey, I guess that's an idea for another screensaver with a similar mechanic...

Re: Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

#18

Post by paulgb »

nsxwolf wrote: post #17

Why did screensavers ever do anything besides just blanking the screen?

I think the intent was not only to not do harm, but to undo the burn-in caused when the screen is on by cycling each pixel on and off. (Early CRT monitors used to have a “memory” of what was on there before, similar to the artifacts left behind after e-ink screens are cleared)

Re: Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

#20

Post by spk_ »

"it might stand to dethrone the venerable Flurry screensaver" - You are absolutely right. The first time I saw the screensaver, I was completely mesmerized and watched it for a few minutes before getting back to work.

Out of curiosity, why Rust? Not saying anything against it, just looking to understand your take on it.

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