Monolith 2001 Screensaver v1.0

Monolith 2001 Screensaver v1.0

The program is a Windows screensaver using OpenGL to display 3D objects based on that great movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke / Stanley Kubrick.

Since it is freeware just go ahead and download the installation file using the link below. Since Microsoft´s software OpenGL implementation is slow, I suggest you only use it when you have a 3D graphics card installed !

Monolith 2001

=============

(c) 2001 by Marco Grubert

This is a free (as in free coke :-]) OpenGL screen saver inspired by the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". Enjoy and let me know if you find any bugs. Source code available upon request. ([email protected])

System requirements:

- MS Windows 95 SR1, MS Windows 98, MS Windows ME,

MS Windows NT4 SP5 or MS Windows 2000

- OpenGL accelerator highly recommended ! (The program will run without a 3D graphics card, but it´s sloooow)

- Color depth:

16-bit (High Color) or 24-bit (True Color)

8-bit (256 Colors) works but is not recommended

- 16 MB of free memory

- 2 MB of free hard disk space

- Pentium-like processor 300MHz

Options

There are a number of options available for fine-tuning program performance/quality.

Flight Pattern:

- Sideways: Objects move from left to right

- Pong : Objects bounce off screen borders

- Starfield:Objects flying towards viewer

Flight Speed: Movement speed of all objects

Resolution : Coarseness of spheres and monoliths (High=Nice and slow)

Amount : Number of objects visible at a time

Update Freq : How often the screen gets updated. If set to High it will run as fast as your CPU allows. Note that this might make movement choppy when objects appear or disappear. Keep this low if you want to run background processes (disk defragmentation, etc.).

Color Depth : Depending on your system configuration choosing one or the other might lead to better performance.

Mode : Choose one of the modes supported by your graphics card & monitor or leave at current to prevent changing the resolution.

Music : Enable to listen to Strauss´ "Also sprach Zarathustra"

Background : Enable to view Carina Nebula in the background. Disable for old graphics cards.

Spacecrafts : Disable to view only Monoliths and planets (boring)

Spheres : Disable to view only Monoliths and spaceships (boring)

Smooth : Select Smooth or Flat shading. You´ll notice the difference in quality & speed.

Shiny : Gives Monoliths this extra polished look (more CPU intense).

Textured : Show/Hide textures on all objects

OpenGL Info : This displays some data about your graphics system.

Credits

This project would not have been possible without the following contributors:

Thanks to the "2001 3D Modeling Archive" (http://www.strafe.com/2001/) for the following meshes:

Orion III (John Pfeiffer), Space Pod(Sean Kennedy),

Station V (Michael Powell), Discovery (Matt Wilson).

I have had to recreate most of them from scratch, but these templates have made it a lot easier.

Thanks to the NASA Imaging library for the Carina Nebula background.

My 3DS-CPP Converter is based on lib3ds (http://lib3ds.sourceforge.net). Thanks to J.E. Hoffmann !

Paintlib (c) Ulrich von Zadow.

OpenGL C++ screensaver template (c) by Xing Zhaohui.

2001: A Space Odyssey (c) by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, Inc. and Turner Entertainment

OpenGL (tm) Silicon Graphics, Inc.

MS Windows (tm) Microsoft Corp.