from Hacker News

Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

by Whitespace on 10/6/22, 11:44 PM with 46 comments

  • by lioeters on 10/7/22, 12:05 AM

  • by Waterluvian on 10/7/22, 3:15 AM

    Are these screensavers designed to be impressive and fun while also requiring minimal processor (battery)?

    I always assumed the screensavers that ship with the Mac are carefully designed not to unnecessarily drain the battery, but I realised just now that’s just an assumption.

  • by behnamoh on 10/7/22, 4:33 AM

    It's taxing on CPU and GPU:

        normal    |    running screensaver in browser
        CPU: 5%   |    15%
        GPU: 10%  |    45%
  • by Angostura on 10/7/22, 12:39 PM

    Drift is beautiful, but for some reason, it makes me anxious when watching it - uneasy - and I have no idea why. Anyone else?
  • by nsxwolf on 10/7/22, 7:19 AM

    Why did screensavers ever do anything besides just blanking the screen?
  • by spk_ on 10/7/22, 7:58 AM

    "it might stand to dethrone the venerable Flurry screensaver" - You are absolutely right. The first time I saw the screensaver, I was completely mesmerized and watched it for a few minutes before getting back to work.

    Out of curiosity, why Rust? Not saying anything against it, just looking to understand your take on it.

  • by qwerty456127 on 10/7/22, 8:47 AM

    I want the original text-mode (or, perhaps even better, imitated text mode over the full-resolution graphics mode) starry night sky from the Norton Commander :-)
  • by krackers on 10/7/22, 1:31 AM

    What's the gist behind how the flow lines are generated? It looks sort of like the vector field for a differential equation, can we plug in our own values?
  • by mlindner on 10/11/22, 11:48 PM

    Looks similiar but the colors are significantly subdued compared to the native macOS version. I guess they're only using a more limited color pallete than what MacOS uses?
  • by totetsu on 10/10/22, 1:55 PM

    Has anyone else seen the macOS version of this bug out and look like fast moving fireworks for a moment when launching when the system is under high load?
  • by etaioinshrdlu on 10/7/22, 7:31 AM

    What's the missing secret sauce that the anonymous apple employee alludes to? Any guesses?
  • by infogulch on 10/7/22, 6:50 AM

    I guess a screensaver is only useful if the screen startup is slow.
  • by ben_ on 10/7/22, 9:05 AM

    Was hoping someone had remade this for windows, great work!
  • by RektBoy on 10/7/22, 8:59 AM

    Holy... looking at this screensaver, this triggers some new phobia in me, I didn't know I have. Thx