t3d(1)

NAME
t3d - clock using flying balls to display the time

SYNOPSIS
t3d [ options ]...

DESCRIPTION

Time 3D is a clock. It uses flying balls to display the time. This balls move and wobble around to give you the impression your graphic workstation with its many XStones is doing something.

t3d uses mouse and keyboard to let you fly through the balls. Hit S to speed up, A to slow down, Z to zoom in and X to zoom out. Use the left mouse button to rotate to the left and the right mouse button to rotate the view to the right. Use the middle mouse button to change the optical axis and the moving direction. 0 (zero) will stop you. Q quits.

OPTIONS

-move factor
    Modifies the direction move of t3d. The clock looks 30 degrees* factor to the left and to the right periodically.

-wobble factor
    Modifies the wobbling (sounds nice :-) of t3d by multiplying the default deformation of the clock with factor.

-minutes
    Shows one small ball for every minute, instead of one for every 2.5 minutes.

-mag factor
    Changes the magnification of t3d. By default, t3d draws a 200x200 image. A .I factor of 2 means, it will use a 400x400 image.

-cycle period
    Sets the moving cycle to period seconds. By default, this value is 10 seconds.

-wait microsec
    Inserts a wait after drawing one view of the clock. By default, t3d waits 40 ms after each drawing. This helps you to keep the performance loss small.

-fast precalc_radius
    t3d uses bitmap copy to draw precalculated balls. You can specify the radius in pixels up to which t3d should precalculate balls. t3d will set a useful range by itself using the magnification when it is started.

-colcycle
    Draws cyclic the color scale used for the balls in the background instead of the normal black.

-rgb red green blue
    Selects the color in RGB color space of the lightning spot on the balls. All the other colors used for balls or -colcycle are less intensive colors of the same hue and saturation. All values in range of 0 to 1.

-hsv hue saturation value
    Selects the color in HSV color space. hue is in degrees from 0 to 360, all other values in range from 0 to 1. It gives nice but rather unpredictable results, if you use a saturation of e.g. 2. Try it at your own risk.

-hsvcycle speed
    Rotates the hue axis every 10 seconds* speed.

-help
    Prints a short usage message.

AUTHOR

Bernd Paysan Email: bernd.paysan@gmx.de Hacked on by jwz@jwz.org for xscreensaver.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Acknowledgement to Georg Acher, who wrote the initial program displaying balls.

COPYING

Copy, modify, and distribute T3D either under GPL version 2 or newer, or under the standard MIT/X license notice.

DISCLAIMER

T3D is not related to T3D(tm), the massive parallel Alpha--based supercomputer from Cray Research. T3D's name was invented in 1991, years before the project at Cray Research started. There is no relation from T3D to Cray's T3D, even the balls surrounding T3D on some posters weren't an inspiration for T3D. I don't know anything about the other way round. The programming style of T3D isn't intented as example of good style, but as example of how a fast prototyped demo may look like. T3D wasn't created to be useful, it was created to be nice.

KNOWN BUGS

There are no known bugs in T3D. Maybe there are bugs in X. Slight changes in the T3D sources are known to show these bugs, e.g. if you remove the (int) casting at the XFillArc x,y,w,h-coordinates...