Simon Heys
Screensavr
So here it is, one month on: the first Mac-native Cocoa version. Built on ObjectiveFlickr.
4 March 2007 in Cocoa, Screensaver
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So here it is, one month on: the first Mac-native Cocoa version. Built on ObjectiveFlickr.
Previous: Word Clock: update / Next: Gravity
Hey mate, it runs great, but on 2 screens, i’m getting weird occurrences where the same image will show twice, even three times in a row.
Performance is great though, running on 2 monitors with high quality images, it’s as smooth as a pedo in a chat room.
Great idéa! But the performance is really bad (low framerate and high CPU load)
Ive had some (alot) experience with 2D pixel pushin on the mac os. Take a look at this (unfortunately dead) project; http://trac.hunch.se/PhotoFeeder , where we had to do alot of performance tweeking. You will want to have a look at this in particular: http://trac.hunch.se/PhotoFeeder/browser/trunk/Core/PFMain.m#L637
Using Quartz Composer was actually the best alternative, both considering performance and ease of use. We met one of Apples 2D/3D developers actually, and he also recommended using QC before implementing everything yourself in OpenGL (as we did earlier).
And! Have a look at “Display Links” - very good for rendering synchronized with display hardware.
Hi Rasmus - thanks for your comments and example code. Your screensaver is far more advanced than mine! Love the ‘providers’ idea, makes a lot of sense and something I could easily implement as I have a similar mechanism already.
I am just learning Objective C, this is really my first effort. I have talked to other programmers about using Core Graphics - at the moment I’m just using NSImage as my way of ‘getting it to work’… I wouldn’t dare show you the source…
Also interesting that you mention Quartz Composer; I hadn’t seriously thought it could so something like this but might be worth giving it a go. If you know of any good online Quartz Composer learning resources I’d love to know.
Thanks again.