Dynamic desktop backround with Xplanet
June 3 Elad Yarom
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Bored of your plain old windows desktop?
Here’s how to get a awesome dynamic background of the sun’s light over the earth. it can also be used to display other planets and moons.
You’ll need these two programs, both of which are free for non-commercial purposes: Xplanet for windows and Xplanet control.
Do not install this software on anything older than windows 2000, as it will break your system. I have tested this with Windows XP with no problems. Here’s how it’s done:
Install Xplanet control first, it will install by default into C:\Program Files\XplanetControl\
Now that you have Xplanet control installed, you need to install Xplanet. Simply extract
the xplanet zip file into C:\Program Files\xPlanetControl\
configuring Xplanet control:
run the configuration wizard(file -> run wizard).
Step 1: browse to the directory were you unpacked Xplanet, and choose Xplanet.exe
Step 2: leave the boxes check marked, if you want clouds.
Step 3: you can choose to have Xplanet show active volcanoes, earthquakes and storms. I prefer to turn these options off, it gives a cleaner image.
Step 4: unless you have configured Xplanet to your likening before and saved the config file, just skip over this step. Otherwise browse to the location of your saved config file.
Step 5: once the automatic process is finished, click finish
Step 6 (optional): I prefer to set the resolution to 1440×900, my screen’s native resolution. Set it to you screen’s native resolution for best results
Step 7 (optional): set the target. the default is earth but it can be set to any one of the solar systems major planets and satellites or even set as random
Step 8 (optional, best used for earth): setting projection type. for earth I prefer a world clock type view, so I chose to use rectangular. it works pretty good on my 19″ wide screen
Click on the stop button
Click on the start button
Go to options and check: “autostart xplanet” and “start xPlanetControl with windows”
Click on the save icon (the diskette)
Minimize to tray
And the result:
Filed under: PC Software
Tags: Vista
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