I'm on a single monitor , 3.4 dual core + a 512mb card w\ 2G of Ram and it hogs mine too. You definately need a fast fast machine \ card to run Dreams without noticable CPU spike.

Wow Loth.  Meds run out? 

What Meds?

Seriously though.... as far as it being a video memory hog... I'm not referring to system memory or spikes or anything..

It simply refuses to display DeskScapes at ALL unless I disable my second monitor.

Let's give the MS product and Stardock's extension to it some time to shake out.

I believe.  Do you?  

I do..and Im in no hurry either.. Just like to vent about Vista occasionally

Looking at the actual error in further detail, I get the idea there won't be a fix.

It has to do with video card maximum texture size - Apparently all ATI cards below the x1800 (I have an x850xt) have a max texture size of 2k. In testing, not even a 1024x768 dual configuration would run dreamscene - I get the max texture size too small error. Running a SINGLE screen, of course, I'm below that (even at 1600x1200)...

Which makes me wonder ... why are they running BOTH screens as a SINGLE texture in DreamScene? Seems rather stupid, since it only needs processed for the size of a single screen then duplicated for the other screen. If the argument goes that DWM is 3d rendered, thus limited by texture size, that however is invalid. If the whole desktop HAS to be processed as a single texture, then I shouldn't be able to run dual monitors with Aero at all - yet I am able to.

Obviously, somebody took a shortcut and decided to use a SINGLE texture for both monitors when doing dreamscene - which doubles the processing needlessly, as well as makes it so anyone with an ATI card older than x1800 will be unable to run dual screens with dreamscene. (Apparently nVidia has been able to do 4k pixels for a bit longer, although I wouldn't want to submit myself to their lousy vista drivers)..

sucks to see peeps having probs im running a dual core intel with a nvidia 8800 gts and it runs dreams just fine on both monitors. if you can try getting a hold of a nvidia card to see if that improves your performance. i wouldnt recomend anything lower than a 7900 tho with vista.

Oh yeah.. funny - nvidia card to improve my performance in Vista!!

And then have bad performance in games.

No, I don't have ANY performance issues with my x850xt. "I wouldn't recommend anything lower than a 7900 tho with Vista." - apparently you don't know much about either video cards OR Vista's requirements.

And spending $400+ (8800 series) on a video card JUST to have a little movement on my desktop that is covered by windows 98% of the time seems just a little bit on the absurd side to me.

As far as the x850, it pretty much comes down to a design decision made by MS to run the ENTIRE desktop for BOTH screens on a single texture, which is pretty much indicative that they didn't give any consideration at all to dual monitor performance. Honestly, even video cards that do handle textures that large are going to have problems in that case, since instead of mirroring the texture from one screen to the other, they chose to simply render double the amount of pixels for dual screens.

I need to point out (again) that deskscapes dynamic content does not have this limitation.  The resolution limitation is a design decision in the Microsoft dreamscene video engine.

Personally I think Microsoft may have underestimated the number of older ATI PS2.x supporting video cards out there.

So any deskscape dynamic dreams will work fine on your hardware, but you will be unable to play video based dreams until either Microsoft alter their video support, or we enable our own video engine which does not suffer from this problem.

Most probably a DXVA 2.0 coding problem. You either get a patch, or a workaround for good cards (I don't consider an X1600 good for 2 screens) rendering the goods.

At the same time still, there's no real dreams supporting 2 monitors yet. Anything that reaches the edges can't be used. You COULD try resizing a lower-res black B/G dream and center it. Might get 2 motions.

Neil: Thanks. You are -mostly- correct. Turns out SOME of the DeskScapes work, but not all. Bouncing Box and Desktop Earth work. However, Exotic Plasma fails with the texture size error.

NGTV: resizing doesn't work. DreamScene still requires a single texture the size of both monitors, even if you're only rendering a postage stamp sized image.

I guess for now I'm just going to have to use whichever of the dynamic deskscapes work. Some seem to, but others don't. I'm not sure what the differences are, for example, between Exotic Plasma and the other two.

Are there any other DeskScapes besides these two that will work? I could've sworn I read that Nebula was dynamic - but it won't work either. I've downloaded several others out of the gallery that looked like they might be dynamic (by stardock design even), and NONE of them will work except for Desktop Earth and Bouncing Box.

I'm running a Radeon X300 128mb vid card (without any driver updates)at 1280x1024 res. Vista Ultimate gives me an over all rating of 2.2. I have no problem running any DreamScape. The most cpu usage is about 25% that's with a Pentium D 2.8GHz with 3gigs of ram. Just something to compare vid cards to.

Lotherius: Plasma is a video as is Nebula.

The only 2 released dynamic dreams are Desktop Earth & the Bouncing Box.  There are others in existance such as the 3d photo one which has been shown in many screenshots, but those have not been released yet.

Let's be clear:

DeskScapes runs the video .Dream files using Microsoft's DreamScene engine. 

But it runs the Dynamic .Dream files using Stardock's engine.

DreamScene's video engine has the limitation you describe but our dynamic engine does not.

The only two dynamic dreams available so far are the Desktop Earth and the Stardock cube.

 

Question: How come people with high end video cards have so much trouble running Dreamscenes and Dreamscapes and me with a 128mb vid card have no problem at all?

I'm just curious. I was going to get a larger card but I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it.