Electric Sheep (electricsheep.org) social screen saver (open source)

[Gamester17]

Electric Sheep distributed screen saver is a free, cross-platform, open source (GPL and C/C++) OpenGL screen saver.
http://www.electricsheep.org
http://sourceforge.net/projects/electricsheep/

Electric Sheep screen saver is used by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on Linux, Mac, and Windows computers. When these computers "sleep", the screensaver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep". The result is a collective "android dream", an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard (or in Boxee's case the remote or mouse). The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience. You can also design your own sheep and submit them to the gene pool.

Here are a couple of must see videos:
http://blip.tv/file/182085/ <= video of the Electric Sheep screen saver in action
http://blip.tv/file/1233576/ <= Electric Sheep documentary as told by Scott Draves (the creator of Electric Sheep)


How Electric Sheep works:

When your computer is idle, the screen saver (the client software) is activated and an animated fractal 'sheep' appears. Behind the scenes, the screen-saver contacts a server and joins the parallel computation of thousands of internet computers in the generation of new sheep.

It is a "distributed" program in that there is a server and a client component. the client is a screen saver program that does two things:

1) creates (renders) a single frame of a new sheep animation and then uploads it to the server once complete.

2) The screensaver will also download a cache of animated sheep for playback on your computer while it is busy rendering.

The server does three things:

1) Serves as a web interface for users to monitor the flock's progress

2) Collects frames rendered by the clients and creates animated sheep

3) Stores the most recent members of the flock for distribution back out to the clients.

Every five minutes 24x7x365 a new sheep is born on the server and is distributed to all clients for display. Each sheep is an animated fractal flame that is generally a beautiful and hypnotic display. The screen saver will display the sheep one after another in a continuous, ever-changing sequence. one sheep morphs into another and so it goes, on and on, and on...


Now how cool would it not be if Electric Sheep was a screen saver that would come with Boxee :cool:

[dustyny]

I'd love to see electric sheep as a screen saver thats some trippy sh#t.. Don't know if I'm missing a config but as a screensaver it looks terrible on my 50 inch 720p plasma. The rendering resolution is just to small and it gets pixelated to death when stretched to my tv rez..

So my vote is YES if the resolution can be bumped up so that it looks really nice at 720p rez. If not maybe there are better visualizers out there to incorporate.. Maybe some folding@home stuff..

[tsella]

+1 from me

[isabelh]

Hi, I'm the business manager for the software artist Scott Draves, creator of the Electric Sheep Project.

High-resolution Electric Sheep do in fact exist, and they are sold to support the artist and to pay for the free work that he does. Most of the software Spot makes is open source and the design products are creative commons licensed. His high-resolution work is the exception that is intended to support the open system, symbiotically.

Perhaps you are one of the lucky few who can afford to purchase Dreams in High Fidelity, a limited-edition work for art collectors (and priced accordingly). See it in the Google lobby in Mountain View and at Willow Garage in Menlo Park. For more information, please contact isabel at spotworks dotcom. There are versions in 720p and 1080p.

We are also planning a couple of more affordable fine art options, including a blu-ray disc and framed video art for your wall. And watch as the new beta versions of the screensaver come out for your operating system. Their resolution is better. If you're interested in following the news about the Electric Sheep, Scott Draves and Spotworks, sign up for an announce list here: http://draves.org/lists?flock=1

Hope this was helpful,
Isabel

[agentlame]

+2 [This space intentionally left blank, do not write here.]

[kiwibird]

+1, Electric Sheep are cool.

[DGMurdockIII]

this would be cool

[ahreno]

I agree... though i might never turn my projector off!

[arakcheev]

Sorry to bump this thread, but I didn't feel right posting a new one.

The only reason I ever turn Boxee off is to let electric sheep run. This, of course, presents problems with Boxee finding and cataloging my media. Could we get a feature that would allow you to use your OS screen saver (mine is currently electric sheep) as the Boxee screen saver?

It would be sort of a best of both worlds kind of thing.


Thanks!