Is there a futuristic HUD desktop theme for Windows?
Scene by Zaweba's Holo HUD and Control panel scenes give Windows a heads-up display look, with glowing rings for CPU, memory and graphics.
Two scenes in Scene by Zaweba were made for exactly that look: Holo HUD, with glowing rings and brackets, and Control panel, in navy and cyan with heads-up panels and live data feeds. Both show CPU, memory and graphics readings on the desktop, and both are original art drawn by Scene, free to use.
A HUD desktop works because it turns numbers you'd normally ignore into something that looks alive. The machine's load becomes a ring that fills, and the wallpaper glows quietly behind your icons.
Holo HUD
Holo HUD is the obvious pick for a science fiction feel. Its readings sit in glowing rings, with bracket shapes and soft light around them. It's the scene to use if you want the desktop to look like a display in a film.
Control panel
Control panel is more of a working dashboard. It uses navy and cyan, heads-up displays for the system readings, and space for data feeds. It even comes with example feeds called Orders today, Low stock and Revenue today, left empty for you to point at your own web addresses, so a small business can see its figures in the same style.
The HUD skin for any widget
The look isn't tied to those two scenes. Scene has a HUD skin that any widget can use: cut corners, brackets, tick marks and segmented bars. Every widget kind works in every skin, so a clock, weather panel, notes widget or now playing panel can join the HUD style. Widgets take the scene's palette, with an optional highlight colour.
The launcher bar has a holo texture to match, among others such as chrome and panel.
Other scenes with a similar spirit
Space station uses rings and glow as well, if you'd like something more spacious. Cockpit is a light aircraft cockpit with working instruments, where the altimeter shows CPU and the airspeed shows memory. Car dashboard has a speedometer for CPU and a rev counter for memory. They're a different flavour of instrument panel, and they suit gamers and simulator fans who want a themed desktop without any game software.
Getting it on your desktop
Open the Scenes tab, select Holo HUD or Control panel and choose Switch on or off, or press Ctrl+Space. To move widgets about, use Arrange mode from the tray menu or the Scene menu, drag and resize them, and press Done. Because the built-in scenes are read-only, Scene saves your arrangement as your own copy with "(my layout)" in its name. For deeper changes, Scene > Duplicate gives you a copy to open in the editor, where you can change colours, fonts, skins and the wallpaper.
CPU, RAM, GPU, network and disk readings work on their own. If Pulse by Zaweba is running, Scene uses its readings, and temperatures and fan speeds need Pulse.
What it costs your PC
Glow and motion sound heavy, but Scene is designed to be light. The wallpaper pauses while a full-screen game runs, and can pause on battery too. Each scene has a frame-rate cap. And none of it touches Windows itself: everything is Scene's own windows, and switching off leaves your desktop as it was.
