You will have an OS X/Universal version, correct?

Thank You!

Live long and prosper, and may the Great Bird of the Galaxy bless your planet!

— The Phoenix

Fleet Commander [Name Classified]
USS Vanguard • NX-136000, Commanding
1st Expeditionary Defense Fleet
Starfleet • United Federation of Planets

I like #2, best of both worlds. It will be cool to see the wedge up close, but it will be nice to see it in the larger context. For me even the sugariest eye candy still has to convey some sort of information.

Of course they'll make the screensaver opt-out.

i would like to see option #2 ;]

This is just a post to let everyone know that this visualization project is still ongoing. In truth, I haven't started on it beyond this initial design phase, as I've been working on something else that you'll hear about at some point. That's very vague, but I don't want to give a time estimate or any details since I can't guarantee much accuracy on either front.

Stay tuned.

-Eric

Idea number 2 is the best in my opinion too :)

And the Star Trek style, something like that could be amazing, keep the hard work :)

I prefer Idea 2 switching between the zoom in / zoom out views at the same interval as the BOINC screensaver.
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Hi Eric!

I like the zoom-in / zoom-out intervals idea presented in option #2.

A couple things to add:
I strongly support the addition of a graphical screen-saver;
the interval between view changes should be user configurable;
the interface should NOT be modeled after LCARS--LCARS was designed to look static & unexciting, and there are many Fictional User Interfaces available for use as inspiration;
the best-current galaxy model used in the zoom-out mode should be displayed in much the same statistical-color code fashion as the wedges;
the screen-saver should definitely show current, previous, and available work in near-real time;
and it might be nice to have an extreme-zoom-in mode as well, showing only the objects within ~500 ly of Terra.

That last is much less relevant to the project, I know. Sorry. But it seems likely that at least a few of the objects in the SDSS will fall into that range, and a good 3-D local map would be a very interesting recruiting piece.

Idea number 2 is the best in my opinion.

Hey Eric!

How's the screensaver work going? Any progress?

I'd give a lot more time to this project if it had a decent screen saver. Saw your notice a couple of months ago and am eagerly awaiting what you come up with.

Thanks for your work.

Hey,

I'm sorry to say that the screensaver work is stalled currently, but I can tell you why.

Lately, we've been putting a lot of time into getting some n-body simulation code running on BOINC. You'll hear about it when it's finished. This has proven non-trivial, since the code base we have to use (the NEMO Stellar Dynamics Toolbox) is very linux specific but needs to be ported to run on the many architectures that BOINC supports. Even if we were to only run it on linux, it's proving more and more complicated as we discover some interesting things, e.g. it compiles and runs things using system("make whatever whatever") during program execution. It's pretty hairy at some spots.

Travis, as you can tell, has been very busy for awhile, so when this came up (a week after the screensaver idea did), we decided I should take on this project since he's pretty busy balancing the world on his shoulders :)

We didn't mean to mislead anyone or create a little instant hype with this post a few months back, and if you feel that way we apologize. We've just reallocated resources given a change in goals and this n-body stuff has taken much longer than expected. The complexity of the code base is greater than average and thus greater than I expected.

I'm leaving when the summer starts for a software gig in Boston, but as I understand another student will be hired full time. I can't promise that he'll be working on the screensaver, but from my understanding once this n-body stuff is finished, the screensaver will once again be a top priority. I'm not in a position to guarantee that that's the next step in the course of the project, though.

I hope that clarifies things well for you - I appreciate your interest in the project, and we're doing our best with the man-hours we have.

-Eric

I like the idea of option #2, with some of the #3 elements if not too hard to add - hard to visualise what I'm contributing to. While I have MWay running on GPU, I still have CPU cycles that run it as well. Plus, if a screensaver came up that used Gflops of resources, that would kind of detract from doing the science piece.

OK thanks Eric....Looks like the screensaver project is dead in the water again.

This won't be the first time Milkyway has mentioned doing this and it doesn't happen. I realize you folks have bigger fish to fry but it always seems this gets put off. Then months later it's mentioned as being started again only to be put off again. That's the problem of not having enough people to manage the project properly. Most projects wouldn't be allowed to run with such a minimal staff in the business world but it seems all too common on BOINC. (Not your fault, though.)

But in the meantime I'll crunch some of the other projects that do reward their users with a nice looking screensaver that show the stats and entertains a bit. No boring blank desktops for me. Having one included gives all the people the option of choosing whether to run it or not. Not having it forces all running projects using BOINC screensavers to go blank during the time the non-screensaver WU is running. That's unfortunately a BOINC manager failure not yours. They should skip the non-screensaver projects from displaying instead of blanking the screen.

Thanks for the info though, rather than just leaving us hanging. It's appreciated. Communications is important with the users even if the news is bad news for some. It's good you're keeping us up to date and are honest about it instead of stringing us along.

In response to the "Don't screensavers slow down the processing?" type of questions earlier....

If crunching the most possible or racking up points the fastest is important to you in BOINC projects just don't use the windows screensaver or click the graphics button. It's that simple.

No processing time will be taken from the BOINC work if you don't run the screensaver or use your PC for anything other than BOINC. Screensavers don't use any crunching time if you don't run the screensaver.

The power crunchers who want everyone to run all their CPUs 100% of the time on BOINC and to continously upgrade to faster machines seem to forget that BOINC is not the main reason most people use their PC. Many of us aren't in for the points or the scores. It's just nice doing some science work while our PCs are otherwise IDLE. Most people run screensavers when their PC is idle whether thats a BOINC one or not. The power crunchers would have you believe you are doing some great injustice to the system by not dedicating your PC to BOINC. It's not the way most people use their PCs nor is it the main purpose of BOINC to run your PCs on it all the time. It's great that those persons contribute so much, but they often have no understanding of those of us who have other interests.

Also screensavers do immense good work at getting non BOINC people to sign up to a project and get more crunchers. Look at a blank screen. Would you ask what the person is running? Probably not. Look at an active screensaver with status remarks and people want to know what you are doing and how to also get started crunching too.

There is some slowdown in the work if you use the non-GPU versions of the apps with the screensaver turned on in Windows. That's any screensaver not just BOINc's. You'll see a big reduction in processing if you are using the GPU apps with the screensaver turned on. But the point is still the same. If you want the most processing, don't run a Windows screensaver or click on the graphics button in the BOINC manager. But if you aren't as concerned about whether you finish a project in 6 CPU hours or 8 CPU hours then you might want to use a screen saver to make your PC look nicer.

It's all personal choice when the project developers give you a screensaver option. Having that option does nothing to deter from the processing. If you don't want to use it just don't turn on the Windows Screensavers.

That was certainly true of the early SEI Classic WUs. Not using the screen saver, when crunching on CPUs increased the overall WU crunching speed by between 40% and 50%.

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Go away, I was asleep

Yes Classic SETI was a unique beast. It was almost entirely designed to use graphics and was the first of its kind that got me started with grid computing. I've come and gone to doing work on BOINC and in sone ways I miss the old classic SETI. But at least since they've gone to BOINC more options are now available and a wide variety of projects allows me to hop around to others when one goes off-line or isn't quite what I want.

The BOINC world has become a very unique (and sometimes frustrating) place.

I got onto the old seti almost the day it started. once it went to BIONC I stopped since I hated the way it looked, I missed the cool screen saver. I just restarted doing seti about a year ago. I hope they get something to look at on Milkyway asap.

I hope that also they can get some kind of cool images to use as the their BOINC icon rather than just the big boring 'B'. And some cool images to go by in the BOINC window like the Help Fund Childhood Cancer project does.

Why has this not been done a long time ago?

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32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR Memory

Another vote for this one! Option #2

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32bit Windows XP Home
AMD Opteron 180
ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard
Nvidia 450GTS GPU
4GB DDR Memory

Hi All,

You'll forgive my resurrecting this thread from the dust bin, but being a newcomer around these parts I have been taking some time to get familiar with things around here and seeing what folks have talking about.

From the looks of things the whole screensaver/visualization project appears to be on indefinite hold as of now. Hopefully the kind folks here at MWAH will reconsider this–resources allowing–as I'd like to put my vote towards having such such a nicety. Count me in with the camp of folks that like to get some visual feedback as to what the work is all about!

I'd like to touch on a few items being discussed here using DGG's earlier post as a sounding board...

In response to the "Don't screensavers slow down the processing?" type of questions earlier....

If crunching the most possible or racking up points the fastest is important to you in BOINC projects just don't use the windows screensaver or click the graphics button. It's that simple.

No processing time will be taken from the BOINC work if you don't run the screensaver or use your PC for anything other than BOINC. Screensavers don't use any crunching time if you don't run the screensaver.

I agree with this...as it currently is with the two other projects I am running (SETI and CPDN) there is no GPU penalty being paid for not using either the Show Graphics Daemon or the screensaver. (More on this further down...)

The power crunchers who want everyone to run all their CPUs 100% of the time on BOINC and to continously upgrade to faster machines seem to forget that BOINC is not the main reason most people use their PC. Many of us aren't in for the points or the scores. It's just nice doing some science work while our PCs are otherwise IDLE. Most people run screensavers when their PC is idle whether thats a BOINC one or not. The power crunchers would have you believe you are doing some great injustice to the system by not dedicating your PC to BOINC. It's not the way most people use their PCs nor is it the main purpose of BOINC to run your PCs on it all the time. It's great that those persons contribute so much, but they often have no understanding of those of us who have other interests.

Not to stir the pot here, but I am in agreement with these points as well...I'm running my BOINC projects on an iMac i7 @ 3.4GHz 16GB w/ AMD Radeon HD6970M 2GB and the powers-that-be have yet to write a GPU client for me (and my Mac kinfolk). And, I've got to tell you, I'm pleased as peach to be cranking out in a day what it took my old iMac G5 to produce in a few months! I'm liking my watts/WU ratio much better these days.

But to put things in perspective here, I recently commented over at the BOINC board about one of my SETI WUs taking 15,861.08 seconds while another user–using a nearly identical i7 3.4GHz machine, but, who could utilize their GPU for processing–came in with a 140.49 seconds speed! Well, ahem, really now...but you'll have to kindly forgive my lack of compassion here towards any GPU-cruncher who might be concerned with ruining a score like that by a second or two because they had their screensaver on!

Also screensavers do immense good work at getting non BOINC people to sign up to a project and get more crunchers. Look at a blank screen. Would you ask what the person is running? Probably not. Look at an active screensaver with status remarks and people want to know what you are doing and how to also get started crunching too.

The global climate modeling of the CPDN graphics is immensely satisfying to watch...more so than are the SETI graphics (perhaps they can add the slice of sky we're crunching to their graphics, that'd be cool!). I can't help but think how cool some sort of 3D star plot might look for MWAH!

There is some slowdown in the work if you use the non-GPU versions of the apps with the screensaver turned on in Windows. That's any screensaver not just BOINc's. You'll see a big reduction in processing if you are using the GPU apps with the screensaver turned on. But the point is still the same. If you want the most processing, don't run a Windows screensaver or click on the graphics button in the BOINC manager. But if you aren't as concerned about whether you finish a project in 6 CPU hours or 8 CPU hours then you might want to use a screen saver to make your PC look nicer.

I decided to put this whole notion of screensaver/visualization GPU resource hogging to the test and here's what I came up with...

Using OpenGL Drive Monitor from the OSX Developer Tools I observed the memory load on my AMD Radeon HD 6970M (2GB) both using some of the BOINC Manager project graphics and then with out. Then to put some perspective to this I also fired up Firefox in a normal (for me) webpage usage just for comparison. Here were my results...

CPDN Graphics ON
~32.7 MB VRAM
~1.6% of Total VRAM

SETI Graphics ON
~17.4 MB VRAM
~0.8% of Total VRAM

Firefox Running
~140.9 MB VRAM
~19.6% of Total VRAM

A simplistic look, granted, but it is clear that GPU-crunchers are slowing their results down more by coming on these boards to voice their concerns than had they just sat back and enjoyed some cool graphics! :)

While it was true, back in the days ('90s) of SETI crunching with 100MHz machines with 32MB of VRAM, that screensaver/visualizations slowed things down immensely, I'm thinking that we can put that old-and-tired internet meme to rest finally.

It's all personal choice when the project developers give you a screensaver option. Having that option does nothing to deter from the processing. If you don't want to use it just don't turn on the Windows Screensavers.

As I said...I'm a +1 on showing the science going on!

Best to you all, :)
Jimmy G

You'll forgive my resurrecting this thread from the dust bin, but being a newcomer around these parts I have been taking some time to get familiar with things around here and seeing what folks have talking about.

From the looks of things the whole screensaver/visualization project appears to be on indefinite hold as of now. Hopefully the kind folks here at MWAH will reconsider this–resources allowing–as I'd like to put my vote towards having such such a nicety. Count me in with the camp of folks that like to get some visual feedback as to what the work is all about!

I think your thoughtful assessment is spot on. Alas, there are bigger fish to fry right now, but this is high on my wishlist also. I wonder if community coders could contribute significantly to this? (I'm primarily a Java programmer, but could work with C++ if needed) I don't know if there's a framework/api for the BOINC screensavers; this might be an interesting topic to look into.

Fwiw, I would vote for option #3. It should be total eye-candy - certainly something that shows large scale structure to give the work units some context, and possibly some sense of global progress.

Crunch on!