How can I get the old style static task graphics back. This new one that spins and wobbles is worthless, as I can't see any detail. It's just a bunch of jagged aliased edges. Call me weird, but I use to like to sit and watch the old graphic work. :o)

How can I get the old style static task graphics back. This new one that spins and wobbles is worthless, as I can't see any detail. It's just a bunch of jagged aliased edges. Call me weird, but I use to like to sit and watch the old graphic work. :o)

Hi Mitch,

the old screen saver was replaced by a wobbling one to prevent screen burn-ins. However... there's a way to emulate the old screen saver, see this article in the unofficial BOINC Wiki...

HTH
Andy

There is a search option, you know?
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=47309

---

There is a search option, you know?
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=47309

Yes, I do know and used it too, and got nothing usefull out of the results. Which doesn't surprise me, forum searches rarely work well.

---

There is a search option, you know?
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=47309

Yes, I do know and used it too, and got nothing usefull out of the results.

Just fill in graphics in the search box... see how many things pop up. ;-)

---

How can I get the old style static task graphics back. This new one that spins and wobbles is worthless, as I can't see any detail. It's just a bunch of jagged aliased edges. Call me weird, but I use to like to sit and watch the old graphic work. :o)

Hi Mitch,

the old screen saver was replaced by a wobbling one to prevent screen burn-ins. However... there's a way to emulate the old screen saver, see this article in the unofficial BOINC Wiki...

HTH
Andy

Andy, I had set those same settings before I posted, but it didn't help. Didn't think to exit and reopen the BOINC program. That got it, but, the graphic is a far cry from the old classic view and it's still hard to read. Ah well, just one more good thing gone up in smoke in the name of making things better.

There is a search option, you know?

Ok, is the search function useful?



;-)

Andy

Andy, I had set those same settings before I posted, but it didn't help. Didn't think to exit and reopen the BOINC program. That got it, but, the graphic is a far cry from the old classic view and it's still hard to read. Ah well, just one more good thing gone up in smoke in the name of making things better.

There's actually a reason why the graphics changed to what they are now. When SETI was closing down the old SETI operations and getting ready to port over to BOINC, they needed to write the graphics subsystem so that they could port it over to Linux and Macs as well as PCs. This obviously meant that DirectX was out since that is Microsoft OSes only. OpenGL is the only standard that is supported across all three platforms. As said earlier, the screen saver was also made to spin due to complaints of screen burn-in on many monitors, causing lots of participants to leave the project complaining "What good is a screen saver that doesn't actually save the screen from burn-in?"

There seems to be no balance between people who complain about the burn-in and the people who want the old non-spinning image. I've made the suggestion before to allow the user to customize the screen saver as they see fit: one with the old look and feel and one with the new spinning effect. Maybe it'll be offered when the new app comes out for BOINC 6.

IMO, when I see the text on the new screen saver, it looks fine to me. I can see all the info I need to. Sure, it is a little blocky when spinning, but I can still make out the details just fine, and my eyes aren't the greatest. Sometimes I think we just have a hard time letting go of old things.

---

I've made the suggestion before to allow the user to customize the screen saver as they see fit: one with the old look and feel and one with the new spinning effect.

That would be great. I did not use either as an actual screensaver. I just have my monitor turn off after 5 minutes, so it would never burn in anyway. In this day and age, I would think everyone and their 5 year old nephew would know how to prevent screen burn. :)

So, this is what I see now, and, it's really not even worth looking at. Any vote to have the choise gets my vote. :)

http://www.picturelacrosse.com/test/seti.jpg

That would be great. I did not use either as an actual screensaver. I just have my monitor turn off after 5 minutes, so it would never burn in anyway. In this day and age, I would think everyone and their 5 year old nephew would know how to prevent screen burn. :)

I run a part-time computer repair business locally helping people with computer problems. There is no shortage of people out there who do not know what they're doing in just about anything computer related. So many of them visit MySpace and FaceBook, do some IM (AIM or MSN usually) and email. They haven't a clue about anything beyond that, let alone screen burn.

So, this is what I see now, and, it's really not even worth looking at. Any vote to have the choise gets my vote. :)

http://www.picturelacrosse.com/test/seti.jpg

That's about what I see. Its not so bad. I've seen much worse. The text is still legible.

I'm just spoiled. I really do prefer the old one. It was nice and clean looking, and didn't jump around when refreshing itself like this one does, and that was on a processor with 1/3 the speed and no hyperthreading. :o)

---

I'm just spoiled. I really do prefer the old one. It was nice and clean looking, and didn't jump around when refreshing itself like this one does, and that was on a processor with 1/3 the speed and no hyperthreading. :o)

Hmmm... mine doesn't jump around when refreshing. Only my older systems with not-so-great graphics cards do that (or machines with onboard graphics).

The mouse pointer flickers and when I move it, it jumps from spot to spot, not smooth like it should. I have a number of graphic intensive programs, CS3 supposedly the worst, as it has a well known built in memory leak, and I use Flash 8, neither of which have this effect on my graphics card, which is capable of OpenGL. Either way, I am not going to upgrade my card for this. :o)

I'm just spoiled. I really do prefer the old one. It was nice and clean looking, and didn't jump around when refreshing itself like this one does, and that was on a processor with 1/3 the speed and no hyperthreading. :o)

Hmmm... mine doesn't jump around when refreshing. Only my older systems with not-so-great graphics cards do that (or machines with onboard graphics).

---

The mouse pointer flickers and when I move it, it jumps from spot to spot, not smooth like it should. I have a number of graphic intensive programs, CS3 supposedly the worst, as it has a well known built in memory leak, and I use Flash 8, neither of which have this effect on my graphics card, which is capable of OpenGL. Either way, I am not going to upgrade my card for this. :o)

I don't blame you, and I don't know what to tell you. Flash isn't all that graphics intensive, so that doesn't mean much. I have no experience with CS3 so I don't know if it requires more power than the SETI app or not (my guess is that it is more intensive than the SETI app).

What graphics chip are you using? I have an ATI Radeon HD 3870 in my main system. Another system uses an ATI Radeon X1950. Both those don't glitch. I also have integrated Intel graphics on my laptop and it glitches with the screen saver.

The video card is a Matrox Millenium G450 Dual Head. Nothing fancy, not onboard though. It shouldn't take anything fancy to run this graphic, the whole BOINC program is meant to run in the background, not devour all my resources. :o)

The video card is a Matrox Millenium G450 Dual Head. Nothing fancy, not onboard though. It shouldn't take anything fancy to run this graphic, the whole BOINC program is meant to run in the background, not devour all my resources. :o)

Yeah, that card doesn't do OpenGL very well, and I think it does older OpenGL 1.2 and not the newer OpenGL 2.0.

BOINC does run in the background and doesn't chews up very little resources. The science application (in this case SETI@Home) is what uses up CPU resources. The graphics are just there to be pretty (I like them too), but unfortunately, as newer things come out, older hardware starts showing its age. SETI itself already has a small RAM footprint for older systems, but there's only so much the programmers can do for older systems while maintaining cross-platform compatibility.

Oh, and I checked out Adobe CS3 and it's not very graphics intensive either. Both CS3 and Flash are very low resource compared to the SETI screen saver and all that it does.

I have older graphics cards that then Matrox 450 such as an old Diamond SpeedStar A55 that is very choppy too (running on an AMD K6-II 500MHz CPU). I also have an older ATI Xpert 2000 that displays the screen saver choppy too.

If you're more interested in the science, you can always run without the screen saver and still contribute to the project. But its very hard to make things low intensity for older hardware considering all the new hardware (and the low prices of said hardware) coming out. It was only recently that Windows 95/NT 4.0 was dropped from support in the BOINC client, so they do try to give as much compatibility as they can, but one must expect that older hardware is just going to run newer software poorly.

The video card is a Matrox Millenium G450 Dual Head. Nothing fancy, not onboard though. It shouldn't take anything fancy to run this graphic, the whole BOINC program is meant to run in the background, not devour all my resources. :o)

Yeah, that card doesn't do OpenGL very well, and I think it does older OpenGL 1.2 and not the newer OpenGL 2.0.

On the contrary, it does do OpenGL very well and as one of the few cards out there, does it on two monitors at the same time, due to it having two RAMDACs. It is OpenGL1.2, but that's fine as the graphics in the science applications are all OpenGL1.0-1.2, even those in the newer BOINC 6 compliant applications (backward compatibility).

The G450 just has a slower memory throughput than the G400, for instance. So it's slower in games.

(I've run with G200, G400 Max and G450)

---

On the contrary, it does do OpenGL very well

I used to sell that card a lot when it was new in 2001. Believe me, compared to many cards such as the Voodoo series (now bought by nVidia), and nVidia (since they purchased 3DFX), the Matrox series isn't all that great. They do 'ok' in the OpenGL department but they never won any awards for speed (even the G400).

We can go fight about what is conceived as very well or not, but I know I never had any problems with any of the OpenGL stuff at the time of running the G200, later the G400 Max and for a short time the G450. The G450 is based on the G400, just with a smaller die and some slower memory throughput (it also didn't overclock as high as the G400), but if you set up your monitor correctly it does what it says on the tin.

Of course, trying to run everything in 1600x1200 isn't going to work on that card, but it was never made for that either.

---

We can go fight about what is conceived as very well or not, but I know I never had any problems with any of the OpenGL stuff at the time of running the G200, later the G400 Max and for a short time the G450.

I'm sure you didn't have any problems at the time. Its not that there's anything wrong with the cards, its just that they weren't speed demons compared to many other cards out there. Their efficiency at handling OpenGL, while back in the day was 'ok', by today's standards they show their age. Even my Voodoo3 3000 AGP 2x card that I have in my Pentium II 333MHz system, which was far better at OpenGL than the Matrox cards were, has problems with the SETI screen saver. They're just old and showing age running today's software. One can't expect software to remain as it was when their hardware was brand new and that their card will run software 7 years later just as well as it did then.