Particle Systems FAQ

Q : "The screen saver is too slow. What can I do?"

Try one or more of the following...

  • Try a lower resolution 640x480 with at least 16 bit color depth (thousands ore more colors). You can to this in the savers settings dialog in the general tab.
  • Make the drawing area smaller. The drawing area has a significant effect on the speed. Choose a 60% height for example to create a letter-box effect and increase the speed.
  • Decrease the number of particles. Most systems do use around 4000 particles. The more you choose the slower the speed. Try to use a higher "motion blur" value to virtually simulate more particles.
  • The "use smoothing" checkbox enables a very nice but also CPU intense display filter. Try to deactivate to gain more speed
  • Image transformation is also very CPU intense but cool :) . Make sure that you deactivate image transformation (Transform tab in the Wave settings) if you have a value of zero in all of the transformation parameters.
  • Last but not least! Watch for background applications! If they work the safer stops. This is a feature not a bug :) . So if you render some ray tracing pics in the background the saver will not prevent them of beeing finished as like many other screen savers do.
  • You can also set a higher process priority for the saver (the saver consumes more CPU time). Do this within the general tab of the configuration dialog.

Q : "Why does PSSS not use the whole screen?"

Each saved wave preset in the gallery has its own defined drawing area. If the screen saver is in random mode the saver chooses always a different wave system and also a different drawing area.

The version 1.2 allows no to set the drawing area for all presets. Go to the General Tab within the screen saver confguration and activate "Override preset size". Enter the desired "Width" and "Height" in percent. The new option "Stretch to fullscreen"effect that the whole screen is used even if the drawing area is smaller. But in this case the effective resolution will be reduced.

Q : "Why does the animation stop after a while and I only see a black screen?"

Look at your power safe configuration. Some computers are configured to turn off unused hardware after a certain period when the computer is not used. Also the display will be turned off after a certain period.

Go to Sart Menu->Settings->Control Panel->Energy Options (hope this is right for a english Windows) and check your configuration. But it is a very resonable setting to allow your computer to safe energy, so please don't take this screensaver as a reason to change this behaviour.

Q : "Why is it not possible to change the color of the text in the text system?"

This is a strange issue with the color dialog. If you choose one of the predefined colors to the left - it should work. If you choose a color "created" by your own, you have to press the button "add color" (hope this is the right caption in english) and you will see your color on the left in the boxes of "custom colors" (or similar caption) - if the color is there you can choose it and it should work after pressing the ok-button.