Developed by Computer Artworks and published by Mindscape, Organic Art Deluxe is the enhanced successor to the hugely popular Organic Art package. With the original version still regarded as featuring the world's best screen saver, Organic Art Deluxe again redefines the boundaries of real-time 3D on the PC.
Based on the hypnotic art of renowned computer artist William Latham, Organic Art Deluxe is both a powerful framework for you to design 3D living sculptures, and an infinitely varying display of leading-edge computer graphics.
(note: screen shots require a 16-bit or true colour mode to display properly!)
The demo is a version of the Organic Art screen-saver module - it will cycle through 12 Organic Art Deluxe scenes (hit any key or a mouse button to exit). Six of the scenes are designed to run on any PC, while the other six are high-end only. The high-end scenes require at least a PII/266 and a second-generation 3D accelerator to run, otherwise you'll just see the six software scenes.
The high-end scenes showcase the more impressive special effects. For the very best results we recommend you run the demo on a top-end 'power-user' system, and set the resolution to at least 1024x768x32 via the configuration box.
The demo does not include the interactive Organic Designer - see the screenshots above for a taster. Also note that it cannot be used as a regular screen saver. These features and many more are in the full retail version.
You can change the demo's settings from its configuration box. You can run this from the Start menu, under Organic Art Deluxe demo, "Configure Organic Art Deluxe demo", or click here (choose "Run this program from its current location" if prompted).
For help, click the "?" icon in the corner, then click on a control.
Here's what the press said about the original version of Organic Art:
PC FORMAT - August 1996 - PC Format Silver Award
"Organic Art is one of the most original and absorbing pieces of PC creativity software that we've seen in a very long time. If you dismiss it, you'll miss out on a program that is nothing short of a milestone in PC art"
WIRED USA - December 1995
"A screen saver with love, sex and intelligence."
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH - April 1996
"Organic Art is surely destined to find its way to millions of desktops"
William Latham, Creative Director
William was a student at Oxford University and at the Royal College of Art, before becoming a research fellow at the IBM UK Scientific Centre. Between 1987-1994 at IBM, Latham established his characteristic artistic style, and began working with IBM mathematician Stephen Todd. IBM's sponsorship of this groundbreaking work lead to Todd developing the "FormGrow" geometry system, which was designed to create the weird organic forms the artist envisaged. The fruits of this graphic and animation work is known throughout the world, and has been featured in numerous newspapers and magazines.
Mark Atkinson, Technical Director
Mark has been designing and writing software for 20 years, starting out in 6502 machine
code aged 11, and graduating with a first in Computing Science at age 20. After
specialising in advanced AI and evolutionary algorithms in industry, he co-founded
Computer Artworks with Latham, abandoning the idea of having a 'proper job' forever.
To this end he designed and wrote the cult Organic Art series, and designed
'Evolva', Computer Artworks first game. Mark is now working on the design and
technology for Evolva, Organic Art 2, and other future projects.
If you have a 3D accelerator but when you run the demo it
locks up, textures are missing or corrupted, or there is some other serious failure, it's
most likely to be a bug in the display driver. Try upgrading the driver either by
downloading a newer one from the manufacturer's web site (see below), or by using Windows
Update (in Start Menu, Settings).
To confirm this is the problem, open the configuration box and
uncheck "Use hardware acceleration" to see if it runs ok in software (remember
to re-enable 3D hardware after upgrading the display driver).
If this demo runs slowly and you have a 3D accelerator card installed. Open the configuration box and make sure hardware acceleration is enabled.
If the installation program gives an error regarding self-registering components, the scene backdrops don't appear (everything is on black) or "elasticity" doesn't seem to be working. This could be a problem with Windows 95 - uninstall Organic Art Deluxe demo, install Internet Explorer 4 or above (available from www.microsoft.com), Windows 98 or Windows 2000 and re-install the Organic Art Deluxe demo.
This Organic Art Deluxe demo will not run on Windows NT 4. Unfortunately this version of the Organic Art Deluxe demo does not support NT 4, as it requires DirectX 6.1 and NT4 only has DirectX 3. A service Pack is required to upgrade a version of DirectX on an NT machine.
Problems on Windows 2000. We have tested the Organic Art Deluxe demo on Windows 2000 Beta 3, which is the latest version at the time of release, and no problems have been found. However, we cannot guarantee there will not be issues with future versions of Windows 2000.
Power saving. On Windows 95 if you have enabled monitor standby, the monitor may not power itself off while the demo is running. On Windows 98, monitor power saving is as normal, but a full system sleep mode may not activate while the demo is running.
On exit, the demo asks for a password (Windows 95/98 only). The demo is actually a stand-alone version of the screen saver - enter your normal Windows screen saver password.
The screen flashes white on scenes with motion blur on the Matrox G200. This is a driver bug on the G200 - try upgrading the driver as above.
The backdrops look blurry on Voodoo cards. The Voodoo 1, 2 & 3 are limited to 256x256 resolution for the backdrops. Other cards don’t have this restriction and the backdrops will look sharper.
The demo doesn't start, takes a very long time to start, or objects don't move smoothly. There may be a clash with the CDROM drive - try unchecking "Play CD audio" in the config box if you have enabled it.
Objects don't move smoothly and stutter/pause frequently. This is most likely caused by an application currently running on the desktop, or a traybar applet. Either the application is using excess CPU time even when inactive, or is broadcasting system messages periodically, which causes the screen saver to pause briefly. To cure this probelm try closing all other appslications and try running the Organic Art Deluxe demo again.
For problems not covered in the troubleshooting guide, there are more hints plus technical support contact infomation in the Mindscape Technical Support help file. This can be found in the Organic Art Deluxe demo from the start menu, or by clicking here (choose "Open this file from its current location" if prompted).
Matrox (Millennium II, Mystique, G200, G400)
ATI (Rage 128, Rage II, Rage Pro, XPERT@WORK, XPERT@PLAY, 3D XPRESSION, Mach64)
Diamond (Monster 3D, FireGL, FireGL Pro)
S3 (Savage 3D, ViRGE, Trio)
Orchid (Righteous 3D, Righteous 3D II)
STB (Velocity 128, Velocity 4400)
ELSA (Gloria, Erazer II)
3Dfx (Voodoo/2/3)
NVidia (RIVA128, RIVA TNT, TNT2)
3DLabs (Permedia 1/2/3)
Intel (i740, ASUS V2740, Real3D Starfighter)
Rendition (Verite V1000/2100/2200)
Public Relations
Paul Kluge
Tel: +44 (0)1293 651 330
e-mail: pkluge@mindscape.com
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