14 DAY TRIAL // Via the Windows Vista Psychedelia Visualization pack you too will be able to translate the music playing in Windows Media Player into colors, shapes and motion. The Visualizations pack was put together by two Microsoft employees, Tim Cowley, a member of the Office Team and Stephen Coy from the User Interface Strategy Team. "A project that I've been keeping under wraps for two years has finally completed. Two years ago, a fellow graphics hacker coworker mentioned how he was doing the screensavers for Vista, since the official ones had gotten cut. This made me jealous, and I wanted in. It was too late to do more screensavers, but the windows media people, seeing how nice the screensavers were, had asked for visualizations that matched. So I got in on that," revealed Cowley.
The Psychedelia Visualization pack contains no less than seven items that will bring your Windows Media Player to the next level. A psychedelic level of course. Users will be able to enjoy Album Art 3D, Bubbles, Distortion, Gigertron 3D, Hypnobloom, Ribbons and UpCuber. "I took the WM vis framework and got a direct3D render context into it. Steve (the coworker) fixed some bugs in it and added some awesome post-processing filters. In lay-speak, we made music vizzes that could use a fancy gaming graphics card to do interesting things with music. I spent about 8 months of free time tinkering with this, and then spent a year in delays (mostly) and then certifications and requirements and checks and UGH man, what a hassle. The entire, official, Microsoft release process," Cowley added.
The Psychedelia Visualization pack is designed to integrate seamlessly with both Windows Vista and Windows XP. Users will need a 3D video graphics card complete with support for shader model 2.0 and above, but that is pretty standard at this time. "Hypnobloom, Gigertron, Upcuber, and Distortion are my attempt to realise synaesthesia through graphics hardware. They fall quite short of a complete translation of auditory to visual sensation, but for certain types of music, music with a clean seperation of sound, they achieve it. Funk, talk radio, and minimalist techno look great. Fischerspooner, Macy Grey, and Aphex Twin are the best," Cowley additionally said.