Microsoft's '3D Pipes' Screensaver The Story Behind It

TapTechNews June 13th news, Raymond Chen, a Windows NT 3.5 programmer, published a retrospective article sharing the behind-the-scenes story of Microsoft's iconic '3D Pipes' (3D Pipes) screensaver.

Why a screensaver is needed

TapTechNews briefly introduces why a screensaver is needed. This is because CRT monitors will permanently damage the screen when they are in a static image for a long time. So developers designed a screensaver to prevent 'burn-in' and provide animated effects when the monitor is inactive, thus protecting the screen and extending its lifespan.

The story begins in the mid-1990s

The story begins with Raymond's colleague. In the mid-1990s, he was working in the OpenGL graphics programming interface team at Microsoft.

Raymond and his colleagues implemented OpenGL hardware acceleration for Windows NT 3.5, which had not yet been released, but had no way to show advanced 3D rendering capabilities to end users.

Choosing a screensaver to showcase OpenGL hardware acceleration

His colleague proposed to hold a screensaver design competition within the Windows team. The screen saver is a perfect low-risk attempt, and if there are any problems, users can be advised not to use it.

The competition rules were simple: Each group made the coolest 3D screen saver, and the winner was decided by a company-wide vote. The winning screen saver would be integrated into the Windows NT finished product.

The OpenGL team went all out, creating 3D text, 3D mazes, and 3D flying objects and other 3D animations, but their masterpiece was the puzzling 3D Pipes.

The marketing department takes it all

After collecting all the entries, the team sent installation instructions and voting links to their Windows NT colleagues. Just as the judges were about to count the votes, a colleague from the marketing department announced that all the works were worthy of being used in Windows NT.

This colleague tried these screen savers and said that he liked them very much and replied, 'You can cancel the voting. We will add all of them to the product.'

So after this email, 3D Pipes and other screen savers moved out of the underground experiment and into thousands of desktops.