Recreating macOS’s Drift Screensaver with Rust and WASM

  • Browser demo: https://flux.sandydoo.me/

  • Are these screensavers designed to be impressive and fun while also requiring minimal processor (battery)?

    I always assumed the screensavers that ship with the Mac are carefully designed not to unnecessarily drain the battery, but I realised just now that’s just an assumption.

  • It's taxing on CPU and GPU:

        normal    |    running screensaver in browser
        CPU: 5%   |    15%
        GPU: 10%  |    45%

  • Drift is beautiful, but for some reason, it makes me anxious when watching it - uneasy - and I have no idea why. Anyone else?

  • Why did screensavers ever do anything besides just blanking the screen?

  • "it might stand to dethrone the venerable Flurry screensaver" - You are absolutely right. The first time I saw the screensaver, I was completely mesmerized and watched it for a few minutes before getting back to work.

    Out of curiosity, why Rust? Not saying anything against it, just looking to understand your take on it.

  • I want the original text-mode (or, perhaps even better, imitated text mode over the full-resolution graphics mode) starry night sky from the Norton Commander :-)

  • What's the gist behind how the flow lines are generated? It looks sort of like the vector field for a differential equation, can we plug in our own values?

  • Looks similiar but the colors are significantly subdued compared to the native macOS version. I guess they're only using a more limited color pallete than what MacOS uses?

  • Has anyone else seen the macOS version of this bug out and look like fast moving fireworks for a moment when launching when the system is under high load?

  • What's the missing secret sauce that the anonymous apple employee alludes to? Any guesses?

  • I guess a screensaver is only useful if the screen startup is slow.

  • Was hoping someone had remade this for windows, great work!

  • Holy... looking at this screensaver, this triggers some new phobia in me, I didn't know I have. Thx