Have you ever wondered where Windows' classic 3D Pipes screensaver (or 3D Maze) originated? On June 11, Microsoft developer Raymond Chen dropped a dev blog detailing how the 3D Pipes screensaver ...

Archaeologic Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen has shared the origin story behind the Windows 3D Pipes screensaver.… Readers of a particular vintage might remember staring at the maze of pipes ...

Who knew a Windows screensaver could be so thrilling? And let's not forget the 3D Maze. I don't want to think about how many hours I spent watching the camera move through this strange, ...

It takes the assets (they were extracted directly from ssmaze.scr) from Windows 95's iconic 3D Maze screensaver—the one that endlessly wanders a maze of brick walls in first-person perspective ...

Remember old-school “fattie” monitors otherwise known as CRT displays? Remember how screensavers used to be a very necessary evil and a way of preventing the cancer-like monitor burn?

The winning screensaver would make it into the final Windows NT product. The OpenGL group went into overdrive, churning out 3D animations like 3D Text, 3D Maze, and 3D Flying Objects. But their ...

In the past, Windows screensavers included '3D pipes' where pipes grow and grow, '3D flying objects' where objects fly around the screen, '3D mazes' where maze spaces expand, and '3D text' where a ...

Microsoft, for their part, isn’t putting a lot of effort into new screensavers—the ones available in Windows 11 have been there since Windows Vista, which came out in 2007. The iconic 3D maze ...

Are screensavers art? If they are, one of the most iconic Windows screensavers, 3D Pipes, only existed because of an internal Windows contest to show off OpenGL support to Windows NT. Chen’s ...