Realistic and 3d Realistic Fireplace Screen Saver Software for Windows

Realistic Icons Collection
$299 - Lokas Software

In our era of visual user interfaces, icons have become an essential component of software, help files, web sites, on-line publications and more. Hiring an icon artist is not an easy task. It's not a problem if you can hire a skilled full time artist. But, unfortunately, only large IT companies can afford this. The rest of us have to rely on casual contractors.

When ordering custom icon designs from a freelancer, you never know just how "custom" the results will be. According to our experience, most freelance designers simply change a palette or a few effects to sell the same icon set again and again. At the same time, they charge you as if it were a unique icon set. Normally, you'd have to pay about a thousand dollars for the 20-30 icons that you'd need for your project.

Why pay more if you can have an all-purpose set of more than a hundred royalty-free icons for less than $300? We've tried to find the best set of stock icons available on the market today. Our criteria were:

* Windows Vista look
* Large number of different images and not variations of a few dozen basic icons
* Vector sources

After searching many specialized resources, we discovered two simple rules. Good-looking icons never come with their vector sources, and other sets of icons that sell for only $100 surely means most of the collection is missing.

Finally, we came across the Realistic icon collection from Lokas, the developers of a well-known icon editing program. They offer several icon sets but we've chosen 'Realistic' because of its Windows Vista look. These icons will look up-to-date for the next 5 years. The collection comes with full vector sources. This allows you to easily modify existing icons or construct new icons without being an artist. Their icon sets constantly grow. When you buy an icon set from them, you will receive all updates (new icons) for free!

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Realistic Virtual Piano VSTi
$35 - Syntheway

Realistic Virtual Piano is a acoustic grand piano emulation with a breathtakingly rich and realistic sound. Particular care has been taken in the reproduction of the original realism and touch response of a Kawai Grand Piano. The result is a delicacy of tone and expression that emulates the experience of playing a real acoustic grand.

Features:

- Modeled on mastered Piano samples (normalized and noise-reduced). Based on PCM recordings of a Kawai Grand Piano after it has been meticulously tuned and adjusted.
- To achieve such a remarkably authentic piano sound, has full length sustain samples, no loops (natural decay), stored in 16 bits and 44.100 KHz.
- ADSR envelope generator with Attack, Sustain, Decay and Release parameters and several modulation targets.
- Optimized CPU and memory usage. Stability: complete. Uses memory efficiently without sacrificing quality. Unlike many other piano modules and samplers, this piano will never overload CPU.
- Good live performances: never stick notes, never break the sound.
- Affordable price and user-friendly attitude are sure to attract many musicians.
- Integrated, variable room simulation. Free variation of acoustic ambience thanks to complete separation of piano and room. Small rooms can be modeled just as accurately as larger spaces. Customizable with user controls for: size room, width room, damping factor & mixer, used to create psycho-acoustic models in the DSP environment, without having to load up any other plug-ins.
- MIDI Automation: Added complete MIDI Continuous Controller.

( Syntheway RVP )

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3D Realistic Fireplace Screen Saver
$19.95 - Gelios Software

3D Realistic Fireplace Screen Saver brings the irresistible charm of an open wood
burning fire onto your Windows desktop instantly. You can now have the warmth,
ambiance and romance of a fireplace - wherever and whenever you want.

It looks better than the real video tape! The 3D accelerated video graphics deliver
genuine flame realism and bring the beauty of a wood burning fire onto your computer
monitor or widescreen TV.

You will hear the sounds of the snap, crackle, and pop of a roaring fire and in the
warm glow of the firelight, recreate the atmosphere of those memorable gatherings
around the campfire.

The screen saver comes with controls that allow you to change the types of
fireplaces and adjust the flame ambience from roaring flames to glowing embers to
suit any mood.

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NightVision
$0 - VanDerLee

NightVision is a plug-in for PhotoShop compatible plug-in hosts. It will work with applications such as PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, PhotoPaint, PhotoImpact and Picture Publisher amongst many others.

Use the NightVision plug-in to create completely realistic army night-goggle type images complete with true over lighting, scaled noise, realistic feedback and anti-aliassed interlacing.

Not only does NightVision provide a realistic looking effect, it can actually enhance and correct image intensity just like real night-vision hardware.

Besides bringing you total realism, the NightVision plug-in will also you to do non-realistic effects such as the blue scan of a bird shown here on the left.

Since any of the effects can be switched on and off, you can do a lot more than just enhance images. This image of a cowboy wearing a hat has been entirely created using NightVision, the source image was of normal color but by using a black scan color and enhancement, the over lighting feature took care of all lighting, creating a moody image. Adding noise and large feedback made it look just like a shot from a black/white surveillance camera.

You can use the NightVision plug-in for post-processing your images and (3D) animations or just for any of the separate effects it contains, in particular the interlacing feature is by far the best quality interlacing you will ever encounter and the enhancement option will allow you to look at details previously hidden in dark images.

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Living Waterfalls
$14.95 - RI Soft Systems

Living Waterfalls displays realistic animation in beautiful tropical photographic scenes - water than rushes over the falls and bubbles at the bottom, fish swimming in the water, ripples appearing on the surface of the water, tropical birds (parrots, flamingoes) flying past, all with realistic nature sounds and a beautiful musical score in the background. The full version has two additional scenes and additional animations within the free version. $14.95

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Moon 3D Space Tour
$14.95 - FP Software lab.

Pretend you're an astronaut and circle the moon from the comfort of your own desk with this realistic screensaver. Watch as the moon appears before you, complete with real craters and mountains, based on rendered topology maps. The whole thing is animated in 3D, and is astronomically accurate and photo-realistic in quality. More than 9,000 stars make up the background and each one is in its correct position and appears with realistic brightness and colour. Arbitrary camera flyby trajectory allows to admire the Planet in different perspectives and views.

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