Author Topic: IDEA Random walk over desktop image (Read 17960 times)

igors · « **on:** January 16, 2007, 04:27 AM »

I'd like a background desktop that slowly randomly walks around a (large) image. Specificly I envision something like a MrSid image of a few thousand square kilometers of Sahara desert. The app would zoom in on a section and slowly randomly walk all over!

jgpaiva · « **Reply #1 on:** January 16, 2007, 04:35 AM »

You mean like an animated background?
If if was made out of several images, that'd already exist. There are several programs that allow you to change your background in intervals of time.
But i think you mean having a large horizontal image and have that program scrolling throough it, right?

I know no app that would allow me to change the image position in the background of the screen by command line, but if anybody knows one, maybe i could automate it!

mouser · « **Reply #2 on:** January 16, 2007, 04:40 AM »

i like the idea of not animated but a screensaver that could take a huge image like that recent super giga boston image, and every hour or so zoom in on a random part of it and set it as wallpaper.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #3 on:** January 16, 2007, 04:54 AM »

Unfortunatelly, i think that's be yet another problem: finding a site with such images.

Perry Mowbray · « **Reply #4 on:** January 16, 2007, 04:57 AM »

Has anyone done something like that with Google Maps? That would be interesting... I was looking at Google Sightseeing the otherday, which was pretty neat.

I have not played with Google Earth, but I was told that you could record 'animations' of movement through satelite images and replay and send them to others to play. Wouldn't it be neat to play them as your desktop image??

igors · « **Reply #5 on:** January 16, 2007, 05:17 AM »

Finding images is not a problem
https://zulu.ssc.nasa.gov/mrsid/mrsid.pl
has the entire earth at suitable detail, Worldwind (if you could cash the images...)
Zooming in and out is of course a desirable feature.
Being able to get an image from the web would be interesting. I thought first that retreiving the image from a CD/DVD or hard drive would suffice.

igors · « **Reply #6 on:** January 16, 2007, 05:25 AM »

Could be a screen saver too...

igors · « **Reply #7 on:** January 16, 2007, 06:46 AM »

ExpressView Browser from Lizardtech:
http://www.lizardtec...gin&platform=win
will plug into a browser and allow navigation through MrSid and JPEG2000 images...
Lizardtech has a GeoViewer too that might be command line controlable.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #8 on:** January 17, 2007, 12:44 PM »

I've been thinking about this, and i can't find a way to do it.
I thought that active desktop could be a good solution, but i can't find any sites with animations worth being part of a desktop. Also, for those to have enough quality, most probably they'd be too comsuming in terms of bandwidth

jgpaiva · « **Reply #9 on:** January 17, 2007, 12:47 PM »

ExpressView Browser from Lizardtech:
http://www.lizardtec...gin&platform=win
will plug into a browser and allow navigation through MrSid and JPEG2000 images...
Lizardtech has a GeoViewer too that might be command line controlable.
-igors (January 16, 2007, 06:46 AM)

Unfortunatelly, all that looks like paid software, and i'm not exactly sure how it could help, since it wouldn't integrate neither with the background nor with the screensaver.

igors · « **Reply #10 on:** January 17, 2007, 12:58 PM »

Also, for those to have enough quality, most probably they'd be too comsuming in terms of bandwidth
-jgpaiva (January 17, 2007, 12:44 PM)

Thats why I expect to download one or more of the 200+Mb images ( I already have dozens of NASA/LANDSAT images from pre Google Earth days) and have tham on my hard drive or a CD/DVD and walk all over them from there...

jgpaiva · « **Reply #11 on:** January 17, 2007, 01:01 PM »

Oh, there are such images? Could you tell me where? i'd love to take a look!

Deozaan · « **Reply #12 on:** January 18, 2007, 02:38 AM »

i like the idea of not animated but a screensaver that could take a huge image like that recent super giga boston image, and every hour or so zoom in on a random part of it and set it as wallpaper.
-mouser (January 16, 2007, 04:40 AM)

Flash could do that.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #13 on:** January 18, 2007, 04:51 AM »

Flash could do that.
-Deozaan (January 18, 2007, 02:38 AM)

Then, maybe it could be used combined with active desktop, to fufill the original request. You think it's possible, deozaan? (and it wouldn't take too much memory while at it?)

Deozaan · « **Reply #14 on:** January 18, 2007, 05:50 AM »

Flash could do that.
-Deozaan (January 18, 2007, 02:38 AM)
Then, maybe it could be used combined with active desktop, to fufill the original request. You think it's possible, deozaan? (and it wouldn't take too much memory while at it?)
-jgpaiva (January 18, 2007, 04:51 AM)

I know that swf files can be made into screensavers. Maybe make an option where you can put your own images into a certain directory and it will load the images from that directory and randomly zoom in/walk around, etc. Maybe even put a little stick-man animated running around. Or Cody flying around.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #15 on:** January 20, 2007, 05:23 AM »

Here's a little something to help the solution:
I just found at snapfiles this: Flash Wallpaper. This program allows you to use a .swf file as wallpaper.
Now, all we need is a flash file that looks good as a wallpaper!

jgpaiva · « **Reply #16 on:** January 20, 2007, 05:25 AM »

An here's yet another option!
EarthWatcher

EarthWatcher uses two satellite images to create a map of the Earth on your desktop, that displays the areas of the globe where the sun is shining. You can set the interval to update the image, have it display the sun at zenith, save the image to a file and more. Makes a nice, dynamic wallpaper.
-http://www.snapfiles.com/get/earthwatcher.html

jsmallberry · « **Reply #17 on:** January 21, 2007, 12:18 PM »

I had a similar idea, although too complex for Coding Snacks, related none the less. The idea is to use DirectX (or OpenGL) to “walk through” a 3D scene such as a stylized city. And this would be the desktop background. The camera would slowly move throughout the city (or any 3D scene), maybe around the equivalent of 0.5 to 1 mile an hour, slightly slower than walking speed, so as not to distract you from doing your work on the computer, but over time, gives you a sense of movement. The problem is, who wants to devote all the CPU/GPU time and memory for this? Well, I though of using a second computer with video out and a video input card, such as the ATI AIW on the main computer. The ATI software, can display the video image as the desktop background, without taking any CPU/GPU or memory (it’s just a video overlay), I guess other video hardware/software can do the same. The second computer generates the 3D imagery and sends it to its video out to the video in of the main computer. Maybe too, it’s possible to use a 3D rendering software, like 3DS Max or Maya, to generate nice final rendering images, instead of using DirectX. With the low resolution of video composite (640x480) and the slow moving nature of the 3D scene, the final rendering software may be able to serve it fast enough.

Just thought I would share the idea.

--
Similar applications:
(Use at your own risk)
There's

http://vital-desktop.sourceforge.net/

and

WallsMedia Desktop Wallpaper Player http://wallsmedia.narod.ru/

f0dder · « **Reply #18 on:** January 21, 2007, 02:52 PM »

Flash for ActiveDesktop sounds like a very bad idea, considering how flash tends to hog your CPU. Might be a solution for a screensaver, though.

jsmallberry: walking around a not-too-complex scene without super-highres textures and too many shader effects shouldn't eat up too much ram or CPU processing time, so it should be doable.

I've never really messed with ActiveDesktop, so I don't know if need to do a ActiveX control or whatever - or a html page loading a java applet

. But ActiveDesktop is one solution - another would be setting desktop background to some very specific color (ugly pink is usually used), then render to a video overlay with the desktop background color as colorkey.

I've even gotten videos to "play in mIRC" this way

igors · « **Reply #19 on:** January 21, 2007, 03:00 PM »

The images I got (months ago) were from https://zulu.ssc.nasa.gov/mrsid but tonight I can't seem to get to them

SleepingWolf · « **Reply #20 on:** December 04, 2008, 02:56 PM »

Stupid Question alert!!! Would a game demo do? It sounds like you're looking for a first-person shooter-type game demo. Maybe a games designer application/ SDK could be co-opted for this if you're not just looking for a good screensaver. Out of my league though.