The original purpose of screensavers is to make sure that the computer monitors do not suffer from phosphor burn-in which can occur if the screen stays idle. Screensavers answer this issue by making the screen blank, or keeping it active with sign of moving animations. This drove screensaver developers to be creative through eye catching screensavers that adds entertainment on top of reducing system idleness. Those that have a good video card can also make use of the best 3-D screensavers around which are the ones below.

Owners of Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems should already have some cool 3-D screensavers to start with.  ”Mistify” classic screensaver has a new smooth 3-D movement.  ”Ribbons” screensaver has a very good display brought about by the latest graphic technologies.

Aquarium screensavers capture the hearts of many because of the “fish tank” display when it is 3-D. Though SereneScreen’s Marine Aquarium is not free, it remains to be one of the best available 3-D screensavers and their latest 3.0 versions features nice graphical improvements supporting larger widescreen displays and the use of multiple monitors. The screensaver doesn't look 3-D at first, but by pressing a hotkey, the vector wireframes can be shown clearly indicating that it is a 3-D screensaver. The way the fish swims around makes it appear to be real and calming to the senses.

SereneScreen's sister company LifeGlobe is also offering its own 3-D aquarium screensaver based on the same engines.  The first screensaver is the Goldfish Aquarium which shows a number of different goldfish species in various aquariums including a realistic fishbowl. Another one is the Sharks Terror of the Deep screensaver that displays all kinds of sharks and sting rays swimming in the deep parts of virtual ocean.

The waterfall screensaver is also known to many not only because of the flowing water display but also due to the calming sound of nature. This is the reason why waterfall screensavers are mostly seen in banner ads being displayed in different websites. The common scene puts the waterfall in the center stage and is usually situated in a forest environment to give it a more nature-like feel. The 3-D effects happens when the waterfall flows in repeated movement.

Really Slick Screensavers uses the power of 3-D OpenGL to produce some unique 3-D effects. It is a collection of screensavers that resemble visualizations found in media players. These are colorful and moving images in an abstract with a certain theme. Some of the screensavers even have some added physics to make them more attractive.

The MAC OS X operating systems of Apple starting with Tiger have their own 3-D screensavers which includes RSS screensaver as the most notable one because of it is able to fetch RSS feeds from sources that provides them. The text shows 3-D displays when going through various feeds resulting to a artistic presentation.

3-D screensavers make computer systems a lot more entertaining even when there are no games installed. As the name implies, it saves your screen and those 3-D appears to be more eye-catching.

Tags: desktop, entertainment, screensavers

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Desktop Enhancements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.