Translations by Roberto Inzerillo

MoebiusGears

Peaks

Draws different shapes composed of nervously vibrating squiggles, as if seen through a camera operated by a monkey on crack. Written by Dan Bornstein; 2000.

Draws some rotatey patterns, using OpenGL. Written by Bill Torzewski; 2004.

A little man with a big nose wanders around your screen saying things. Written by Dan Heller and Jamie Zawinski; 1992.

This is sort of a combination spirograph/string-art. It generates a large, complex polygon, and renders it by filling using an even/odd winding rule. Written by Dale Moore; 1995.

This simulates colonies of mold growing in a petri dish. Growing colored circles overlap and leave spiral interference in their wake. Written by Dan Bornstein; 1999.

This draws a bunch of moving circles which switch from visibility to invisibility at intersection points. Written by Geoffrey Irving; 2003.

A growing plumbing system, with bolts and valves. Written by Marcelo Vianna; 1997.

Clock mode

Crisp

Noise

Noisy

This draws a pop-art-ish looking grid of pulsing colors. Written by Levi Burton; 2003.

Draws some intersecting planes, making use of alpha blending, fog, textures, and mipmaps. Written by David Konerding; 1999.

This draws an animation of flight through an asteroid field, with changes in rotation and direction. Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1992.

Creates a collage of rotated and scaled portions of the screen. Written by Claudio Matsuoka; 2001.

Draws an animation of textured balls spinning like crazy. Written by Eric Lassauge; 2002.

Ping known SSH hosts

Simulates speeding down a rocky mineshaft, or a funky dancing worm. Written by Conrad Parker; 2001.

Tunnel

Draws a spotlight scanning across a black screen, illuminating the underlying desktop (or a picture) when it passes. Written by Rick Schultz and Jamie Zawinski; 1999.

Draws a set of interacting, square-spiral-producing automata. The spirals grow outward until they hit something, then they go around it. Written by Jeff Epler; 1999.

This generates a sequence of undulating, throbbing, star-like patterns which pulsate, rotate, and turn inside out. Another display mode uses these shapes to lay down a field of colors, which are then cycled. The motion is very organic. Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1997.

Morphing 3D shapes. Written by Ed Mackey; 1987, 1997.

Flowing, swirly patterns. Written by M. Dobie and R. Taylor; 1997.

Displays a view of the "Bird in a Thornbush" fractal. Written by Tim Auckland; 2002.

Draws an animation similar to the opening and closing effects on the Dr. Who TV show. Written by Sean P. Brennan; 2005.

Blob mode

Carpet

Creates a 3D world with dropping blocks that build up and up. Written by rednuht; 2006.

Follow

Nipples

Tunnel mode

Generates random mountain ranges using iterative subdivision of triangles. Written by Tobias Gloth; 1997.

Divides the screen into a grid, and plucks them. Written by Dan Bornstein; 2002.

Draws squiggly worm-like paths. Written by Tyler Pierce; 2001.

2 seconds

This is a shell script that grabs a frame of video from the system's video input, and then uses some PBM filters (chosen at random) to manipulate and recombine the video frame in various ways (edge detection, subtracting the image from a rotated version of itself, etc.) Then it displays that image for a few seconds, and does it again. This works really well if you just feed broadcast television into it. Written by Jamie Zawinski; 1998.

50 pixels

Voronoi

Floating stars are acted upon by a mixture of simple 2D forcefields. The strength of each forcefield changes continuously, and it is also switched on and off at random. Written by Paul 'Joey' Clark; 2001.

Flying through a colored wormhole in space. Written by Jon Rafkind; 2004.

XAnalogTV shows a detailed simulation of an old TV set showing various test patterns, with various picture artifacts like snow, bloom, distortion, ghosting, and hash noise. It also simulates the TV warming up. It will cycle through 12 channels, some with images you give it, and some with color bars or nothing but static. Written by Trevor Blackwell; 2003.

Draws a simulation of pulsing fire. It can also take an arbitrary image and set it on fire too. Written by Carsten Haitzler and many others; 1999.

XMatrix

Draws a few swarms of critters flying around the screen, with faded color trails behind them. Written by Chris Leger; 2000.

Zooms in on a part of the screen and then moves around. With the "Lenses" option, the result is like looking through many overlapping lenses rather than just a simple zoom. Written by James Macnicol; 2001.