dreamscene is somewhat ... unimpressive?

[Scott]

Excited to try out my Vista Ultimate, I immediately used Windows
Update to download an install one of these fantastic extras that
justifies the extra money I spent, DreamScene.

To call what I received unimpressive is an understatement.

There is no help to explain how to use it. Typing "dreamscene" into
the startup menu does not result in anything being found. I know it's
a wallpaper-type-thing, so I went into Personalizeesktop Background,
and changed the location to "Windows DreamScene Content". This finds
one video called "vid1337". All this appears to be is the standard
turqiouse Vista background with an occasional minor effect.

Am I missing something? I thought this was supposed to have some kind
of cool waterfall effect....

 

[On the Bridge!]

I dont know if you guys know this yet,
but stardock just released a preview of its dreamscene-like program FREE and
it works with all versions of vista that support glas aero..

its called deskscapes 2.0

read about it and get it here

http://www.stardock.com/products/deskscapes/downloads.asp

you can then find many free deskscapes here
http://dream.wincustomize.com/

the deskscapes are less CPU intensive and support interactive content unlike
the vista dreamscene that is a simple video

 

[On the Bridge!]

you must have glass aero enabled and a video card that is capable of glass
aero of course for this to work.

you can look around on google since there and literally hundrends of
dreamscene videos you can download from various sources..
after you download a dreamscene video just right click on it and select "set
as wallpaper"

if you have glass aero enabled it will be animated

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Scott,

Yes, it sort on non-intuitive and not much content is included. Fortunately,
you can actually use any short video clips you want as the background,
you're not limited to just the included content.

My personal opinion is that this particular "extra" was very poorly rolled
out.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Excited to try out my Vista Ultimate, I immediately used Windows
Update to download an install one of these fantastic extras that
justifies the extra money I spent, DreamScene.

To call what I received unimpressive is an understatement.

There is no help to explain how to use it. Typing "dreamscene" into
the startup menu does not result in anything being found. I know it's
a wallpaper-type-thing, so I went into Personalizeesktop Background,
and changed the location to "Windows DreamScene Content". This finds
one video called "vid1337". All this appears to be is the standard
turqiouse Vista background with an occasional minor effect.

Am I missing something? I thought this was supposed to have some kind
of cool waterfall effect....

I don't understand the appeal of a distracting desktop that uses lots of
your computer's resources.

ss.

 

[Scott]

you must have glass aero enabled and a video card that is capable of glass

aero of course for this to work.

I do. Nvidia 8800GTS, all the glass effects are working. The cheesey
button that displays all of the windows in 3D works. As far as I can
tell aero is doing everything that it should do.

The problem appears to be that there are no dreamscene videos other
than this plain, barely animated, turquois one.

Poking around, I read about a "dreamscene content pack" that is
supposed to download via windows update, but it does not seem to be
available.

Scott

 

[Scott]

I don't understand the appeal of a distracting desktop that uses lots of

your computer's resources.

After dropping $300 for Vista Ultimate for this new PC, I just want
something, *anything*, that I can look at and say "gee whiz that looks
nicer than XP". If and when I can get dreamscene to work I'll probably
shut it off the next day, but still I want to see what it does.

I'm running VMWare Workstation on this machine, so I suppose I can
install Ubuntu in a VM and get my kicks that way....

 

[bp]

I don't understand the appeal of a distracting desktop that uses lots of
your computer's resources.

1. Because they are not distracting. Have you ever seen one?
2. they don't take lots of resources if done right
3. Even if they do they turn off when something goes full screen.
4. Some of them are pretty cool but I use mostly Stardocks stuff since they
actually have some content.

But so far extras have been a flop.
Gives us some real extra's bitches!!! I gave you real money.

 

[Scott]

By chance, do you have the Vista SP1 installed? If so, then you will

not have the "Dreamscene Content Pack" update available until they
release one for a SP1 version, or you uninstall SP1 and install the
update before the SP1.

Nope, no SP1. I did another search for updates the next day, and it
found the dreamscene content pack.

I must say, dreamscene did look cool, and didn't seem to consume much
(if any) resources while running.

However, later that day the video froze up solid (even the mouse
pointer), and I had to power cycle to reboot. After the reboot,
dreamscene notice the lock up and popped up a dialog that it was
automatically disabling itself. No bizarre lockups or freezes since. I
guess dreamscene isn't quite ready for the real world yet.

Scott