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Beauty is no less exciting when it flees.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

'Maya' and 'Optimal Mandelbrot' screen savers


May 7, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   Dull screen savers aren't worth running. If you're going to "save the screen" on your PC, give it a rescue worth remembering. I've found a new Windows screen saver that does the job in a spectacular fashion. And I've become reacquainted with one that should stand near the top of any list of the best screen savers for Windows.
   The new one is the Maya Paint Effects Screen Saver, available free from Alias Wavefront at http://www.aliaswavefront.com. A version for Apple Macintosh computers will be ready in May.
   The Maya screen saver creates fantastic (and incredibly realistic) garden and forest scenes, with vines and leaves and limbs and lazy afternoon sunlight filtering through the vegetation. Each scene is different from all others because they are created mathematically using a variation of fractal geometry, and the "seed" of each scene is randomly generated. You will never see the same vine-filled garden twice.
   My first reaction, after running the Maya screen saver for 15 minutes, was disappointment. When I realized the view I was getting would never reappear the same way, I wanted to capture the screen. That's how beautiful these garden scenes are. But beauty is no less exciting when it flees, so I've come to appreciate the images for what they are -- moments of glory.
   (I call these "garden scenes" for lack of a better term. They're "garden" in the sense of "God's garden," maybe, ripe with a thousand climbing vines and branches. They're not "garden" in the sense of your tomato patch.)
    Alias Wavefront is giving away the Maya Paint Effects Screen Saver in the hope that you'll consider buying the company's 3D graphics software. There's no advertising within the screen saver, and the only sign of a commercial pitch is a company logo at the lower left corner of the screen.
   The other is the Optimal Mandelbrot Screen Saver from Improbable Software. It's free. You can download it from http://www.improbable.ukgateway.net/.
   Omandel (the word that shows up in my list of screen savers, and much easier to remember and type than the full name) will give your humble monitor a reason to be proud. It creates fractals from the Mandelbrot set about as quickly as any stand-alone fractal program I have ever seen, then performs color cycling on them.
   Fractals are mathematically generated images that are self referential. Zoom in on a fractal and you see more of the fractal, in the same family of patterns. If this actually makes sense to you, I have two things to say: Congratulations, and now go out and get a life. (Truth to tell, I've wasted away many pleasant hours creating and looking at fractals, and enjoy them immensely. I hope to share my collection of fractals with everyone before long. The last time I checked, I had 10,000 or more.)
   Download and try out both these screen savers. One advantage they have over some of my favorites of the past -- the ones that come with Microsoft's Plus! Pack for Windows 95 and its second Plus! Pack for Windows 98, in particular-- is their frugality. They don't hog memory or get in the way.
   Be sure your display is set up properly before you check out these screen savers. Both need a lot of colors, so if your Windows PC is running with only 256 colors you'll want to change the so-called color depth. This is done by right-clicking on a blank area of the desktop and choosing Properties, then following the prompts.
   Screen savers aren't actually needed these days -- monitors can run for months with the same image displayed without a problem -- so they're just for entertainment. If you do want your monitor to shut down after an hour or so, use the power-saving controls built into Windows. You'll find them where you adjust the screen saver. (They're usually under "Advanced.")