Get Your Origin FX Fix (March 27, 2023)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
I couldn't find a legible scan of the Origin FX box online, so here's a quick one:





Beautiful Kamekh render, though!





Does Origin FX even have a Kamekh in it? Technically yes, since it includes a copy of Wing Commander II's post-credits cutscene and that is indeed a closeup of a Kamekh's hull:





Learn all about the Origin FX screensaver/theater at our newly expanded and upgraded wiki page here!





Origin FX is a 1993 screensaver package developed by Origin Systems and published by Electronic Arts. Origin FX comes with 26 different 'movies', the term it uses for screensavers. Several of the movies include elements from the Wing Commander Universe including an air show which has jets and spaceships zoom around your desktop and an asteroid field that soars through familiar Wing Commander space debris. The movies are all customizeable. Origin FX also includes an slideshow option which plays bitmap files; two renderings from Privateer are included with the stock bitmaps.

Origin FX was released nine months before Wing Commander Privateer and offered one of the first looks at the game's ships. The T.C.S. Paradigm movie includes unique Wing Commander lore. The package is named after the Origin FX gameflow system used in games like Ultima VI and Wing Commander. Origin FX was designed to be modular with future Origin games adding additional movies that would utilize to their resources. Strike Commander was the only Origin title released with such an option.

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ORIGIN FX™ SCREEN SAVER is more than just a Windows utility that protects your mointor from burn-in. At the same time, it delivers enough entertainment to keep you enthralled fo hours. These modules reflect the creativity and technical ingenuity that have taken the WING COMMANDER and ULTIMA series to the top of the charts. ORIGIN FX is as versatile and exciting as it is useful; a modular screen saver with the graphics, sound and imagination that have made ORIGIN a favorite of computer gamers throughout the world.

ORIGIN FX incorporates images and characters familiar to fans of ORIGIN game worlds, as well as novel imagery created especially for this unique package. Unlike screen savers which use limited colors against a black background, ORIGIN FX brings the hottest color graphics in the entertainment industry to your Windows environment.

Features
  • More than 20 unique modules, with a selection of both algorithmic and graphics-based screen savers.
  • Award-winning ORIGIN music and sound effects.
  • Engage and hot key combinations to activate the screen saver at any time.
  • Customizing options -- you set speed, color, sound and other options.
  • Slide Show module allows you to cycle through bitmapped images from any directory, in any order, and for as long as you wish.
  • As a special feature for owners of WING COMMANDER II, ORIGIN FX offers a module that plays the cinematic sequences when Wing II is installed on your hard drive.
  • Players of the Ultima and Wing Commander games will recognize their favorite characters and space ships as they interact with your desktop.
  • Those new to ORIGIN's world will be introduced to the high quality graphics that made these games industry favorites.

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Original update published on March 27, 2023
 
It just occurred to me that the concept of screen savers is very much a product of the era. With the transition away from CRT monitors they are not needed as much, plus it seems most set-ups nowadays go to power-saving mode on idle instead of displaying animations. I have a feeling the younger generation might not necessarily know or recognise a screen saver.
 
Well, they weren't really needed even in the 90s - to burn in an image would take months of displaying the same image constantly and people were generally good at turning off their monitors at the end of the day. The only burned in monitor I ever saw was one where someone was basically working remote for a year, and whose PC had the Windows 2000 login screen on the whole time to the point where you could actually tell it was off.

Even computer labs full of NT 4 machines didn't have burn in despite displaying the NT4 login screen for a few hours a day.

Screen savers were at best of dubious value even when they first came out in the early 90s, generally regarded as cheap entertainment software meant to display pretty things and make sounds to amuse when you weren't using the computer. If they really wanted to save the screen, they'd just display an all-black screen (blank the screen) which takes no processor time to do. But they were fun and people liked them for that, which was why they took off - a bit of amusement in even the most stoic of offices.

And these days, with OLEDs being a thing, they actually do suffer from burn in. But like plasma TVs, we have generally effective countermeasures. In fact, both plasma TVs and OLEDs are more vulnerable to burn-in than CRTs ever were - you don't generally hear of CRT TVs having burn in because of those TV "screen bugs" (the little logo in the corner), while on plasma TVs and OLEDs they are a bigger problem. And OLED monitors for computers are becoming popular, so we may see a return to screensavers. Through granted, those TVs that had like CNN on for years eventually did burn in, as did old-school ATMs that displayed "Welcome to your bank" 24/7 for years, but like I said, it took years.
 
It just occurred to me that the concept of screen savers is very much a product of the era. With the transition away from CRT monitors they are not needed as much, plus it seems most set-ups nowadays go to power-saving mode on idle instead of displaying animations. I have a feeling the younger generation might not necessarily know or recognise a screen saver.
Yes, you're absolutely right. But it widely became superseded by the trend to annimate desktop backgrounds instead. Which is quite nice.
 
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