Occasional “+” buttons to call up additional text that varies from caption- to feature-quality, sometimes filling an empty spot on the page, and at other times overlapping and obscuring the photos these buttons make complete sense on pages that were already full, but none on pages that would otherwise have large empty swaths of space. Most of the early pages are half white and half movie stills, sometimes with slight panning for the stills, with later pages moving to full screen-filling images and awkwardly split two-screen photos that can only be viewed one at a time, or held in the middle with a transition. Here, the particles are purely line based without glowing effects, so when you touch the screen with one finger, the emanating lines look like sparks two fingers create magnetism that results in line-based bouncing particles, three and four create different types of swirls, and five freeze time with the ability to swipe to shift particles in any direction you choose.Ĭinema 001 is a movie magazine that blends studio-provided photography, scant text, and intermittent voiceovers and video clips into two-dimensional layouts that make interesting but not ideal use of the iPad’s display. It’s effectively the same concept as Midnight HD, only with different particle behaviors and colors that we enjoyed, but would rank a step under Midnight’s. iLounge Rating: A-.Ĭolordodge Labs’ Uzu ($1, version 1.0.1) is also an iPad-only application with a separately sold version for the iPhone. More than any other application we’ve seen, Midnight HD makes you feel as if you’ve just developed the power to control energy with your fingers the only things we’d love to see it gain are a settings menu with even more visual effect options, and a little audio. Ten fingers activates or deactivates the particles’ glow, and other finger combinations have other effects, with a just-released point update adding a psuedo time-reversing effect that we haven’t quite been able to master. Four fingers freeze the particles and let you swipe to rotate the entire collection in 3-D, a Matrix bullet time-like effect, and five fingers creates a huge magnetic swirl that-like the two-finger magnet-can be tossed from one side of the screen to the other. Two fingers in close proximity transform you into a magnet, attracting the particles in an almost magical swirl, creating a larger vortex as you expand your fingers outwards. If Midnight did nothing more than this, it would be pretty neat.īut it does a lot more. Placing one finger on the screen creates an orange explosion of radiating particles, mildly disrupting the field until you release your finger. Left untouched, the application shows tiny white glowing lines that appear to be swimming in a completely black field, casting light in rays outwards from the center of the screen. Hyperbolic Magnetism’s Midnight HD ($1, version 1.1) is an iPad-only release-a bummer for those who might want to use it without buying a separate app for iPhones and iPod touches-but it’s one of the most impressive particle demonstrations we’ve yet seen on Apple’s tablet. Better guidance for the settings, some audio, and more visual effects could make this really cool. No sonic accompaniment, few frills, and less than intuitive settings prevent the experience of using the application from being truly engrossing, but when you learn how the settings work, Gravilux begins to generate interestingly noisy patterns that feel like a fusion of plasma balls and shakable snow domes. On both screen sizes, Gravilux presents you with a grid of dots that deform wherever you touch the screen one mode turns your fingers into magnets, and the other into repulsers, attracting or repelling the dots, while settings let you change the colors, sizes, and behaviors of the dots. The fact that Gravilux ($1, version 1.3) by Scott Snibbe is both iPhone and iPad compatible is one of its strongest attractions it is the most demo-like of all of the applications covered in this roundup. Interactive Screensavers: Gravilux, Midnight HD + Uzu
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