It didn't help that the official Windows screensaver API made it difficult to write a screen saver using Direct3D. There were at least some third-party screensavers that used Direct3D, but they were very uncommon. You can only use it if you have the DirectX SDK installed. There was a painfully slow reference rasterizer before that, but it has never been part of Windows or the DirectX end-user installs. Direct3D never got a practical software renderer that you could use in production applications until Windows 7. While DirectX became a standard part of Windows with Windows 95 OSR2, by the time you could pretty much always depend on 3D hardware support (some time during the Windows XP era), these screensavers were no longer being included with Windows. MSN Halloween 2,316x Free, for Windows, Mac. 3D Falling Leaves 3,116x Free, for Windows. Dream Aquarium 52,142x 19.95 USD, for Windows, Mac. In theory, these screensavers could have been rewritten to use Direct3D in later releases of Windows, but that never happened. Showing 1-24 of 305 screensavers ( clear filters) 3D Pipes 93,423x Free, for Windows. (In fact, I'm not sure there was any hardware support for OpenGL on Windows 95 when it first came out.)Īt least some of these 3D screensavers-in particular, 3D Pipes-were actually introduced in Windows NT 3.5, a year before Windows 95 came out. On the other hand, OpenGL could fall back to software rending if hardware acceleration wasn't available. This was a virtual necessity for two reasons: (1) the original version of Windows 95 didn't ship with any version of DirectX, and (2) the Direct3D API required hardware acceleration that most PCs of the time wouldn't have had. This page last modified on 26 March 2021.All of the classic 3D screensavers (3D Maze, 3D Pipes, 3D Flying Objects, 3D Text, and 3D Flower Box) used OpenGL instead of DirectX. I largely forgot about it for more than decade, until the mid-2010s, when I was reminded of it and then proceeded to download it and set it as my computer's screensaver even today, when I was writing this page, it is still the screensaver that I use, with all settings left at the defaults.Īll written materials on this Web site are my own, and all are released under the Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License Version 2. When I upgraded to Windows XP, I was slightly disappointed to learn that 3D Maze had been removed from the set of screensavers included with the OS. Although I am aware that it is possible to alter some settings of the maze (e.g., the textures of the walls, floor, and ceiling), back then I didn't know of this, and so I would always witness the maze at its default settings-the red brick walls in particular I remember very clearly. ![]() There were even a few instances in which I set the screensaver to 3D Maze (if it wasn't already set to it), reduced the wait time before the screensaver should appear to the shortest possible value (which was one minute), and then waited for it to appear simply so I could watch it. the ceiling becomes the floor, and vice versa). The maze also had objects randomly scattered throughout which made the whole thing more interesting, including gray-colored polyhedra that, when touched, flipped the entire maze upside down (i.e. ![]() I can still remember, as a little kid, being completely captivated whenever this screensaver appeared on my CRT monitor, and thinking it somehow magical that my computer seemed to be playing a game by itself, and exploring a virtual maze without any input from me. It was included with the first two desktop computers I ever had, the first of which ran Windows 95, the second of which ran Windows Millennium Edition, and both of which I used regularly until 2003, when I acquired my first desktop computer that had Windows XP installed it thus forms a part of my earliest memories of Windows, and of computers in general. This is, in my opinion, the coolest screensaver found in any version of Microsoft Windows. Home > Computers, Technology, and Internet > Microsoft > The 3D Maze Screensaver The 3D Maze Screensaver - Microsoft - Computers, Technology, and Internet - lolwut? lolwut's Web Site
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