Holding Pattern

April 25, 2004 6:16 AM

Holding Pattern is a screensaver for Mac OS X that generates photo-realistic simulations of the view from a flying airplane window.
posted by Mwongozi (17 comments total)

OS X users can also run this screensaver, and any other screensaver, as their wallpaper using BackLight
posted by Mwongozi at 6:19 AM on April 25, 2004

Nice! But note that it is available for Windows, too.
posted by stonerose at 6:37 AM on April 25, 2004

Cool! I like this a lot. Can anyone else recommend good screensavers for OS X?
posted by atom128 at 8:03 AM on April 25, 2004

I thought this was nice, but then ZoneAlarm asked me if I wanted to allow Holding Pattern.scr to access the Internet.

Hmmm.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 9:37 AM on April 25, 2004

This is a little fishy...it's obviously not rendering the views a frame at a time on my machine (and yes, it does phone home). Looking closer, I suspect it's just showing a [possibly rendered] background scrolling past some fixed airplane-hardware. I like looking out plane windows as much as the next engineer-turned-lawyer, but I don't think I'll be using this as a screensaver.
posted by spacewrench at 9:43 AM on April 25, 2004

It's not rendering anything other than skewing the photo to give a little perspective as it scrolls. It looks pretty crappy at high resolutions. Cool idea, though.
posted by ulotrichous at 11:22 AM on April 25, 2004

So did anyone land anywhere yet?
posted by carter at 1:31 PM on April 25, 2004

What exactly is it passing on in the 'phone home'... anyone know? I'm hesitant to try it before knowing that.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 1:59 PM on April 25, 2004

I don't like to host programs on my computer which autonomously connect to the net without my knowledge.
posted by troutfishing at 2:28 PM on April 25, 2004

Some good OS X screen savers:
Fluid - A large program with many customization options.
Foam - Simple, but well done.
Helios
posted by D.C. at 6:32 PM on April 25, 2004

Can anyone else recommend good screensavers for OS X?

I did the graphics for mathews' SnowSaver. It was modeled after a looping QuickTime movie of snow flakes playing on the Macs at the Apple retail stores. Nice year round, especially if you live someplace hot like I do.
posted by Scoo at 7:09 PM on April 25, 2004

Isn't the point of a screensaver to save your screen from burn-in? If that's so, then having the same image on parts of the screen (like the image of the seat and the airplane window, or the wing, or the engines) seems to defeat the whole purpose...
posted by crunchland at 7:14 PM on April 25, 2004

Oh, and if you use zonealarm, and it tells you the program is trying to phone home, why worry? just say no.
posted by crunchland at 7:22 PM on April 25, 2004

Screen burn-in is a relic of old CRTs, crunchland. Really, when was the last time you saw a GUI-based PC's monitor with a burnt-in screen? As long as you regularly put a display to sleep when not using it, a screensaver serves only as a novelty.

Nothing wrong with that, though. I love novelties.
posted by Down10 at 12:37 AM on April 26, 2004

I love this!
posted by Meridian at 4:14 AM on April 26, 2004

I like electric sheep. It is available for OS X, Windows and Linux.
posted by the biscuit man at 11:46 AM on April 26, 2004

I just got an e-mail from the author of Holding Pattern, which I will paste here:

Thanks for linking my screen saver on Metafilter.
I read the discussion and was shocked to see that my screen saver (PC version only) was making a TCP/IP request - this wasn't part of its design and there's no functional necessity for this. (also, I develop primarily on a Mac, so it's harder for me to detect PC bugs)

Anyway, I am working with technical support for my screen saver development software to try and figure out what's causing it -
I hope to have this resolved soon.
posted by Mwongozi at 9:59 AM on April 27, 2004