Racing screensavers with bikes and open-wheel cars

Two racing screensavers come with Screensavers by Zaweba, both in the night pack. Night bike race puts you just behind your own motorbike in a floodlit night race, with a pack of riders leaning into corners. Night open wheel race runs on the same circuit with open-wheel race cars, sparks in the dips and the odd crash.

Both take place on an endless track of bends, lit by floodlights, with sponsor boards at the trackside. They're the most exciting screensavers in the pack, and you can tune them from a gentle cruise to a proper race.

Night bike race

The view is a chase camera just behind your bike. Settings include speed, the number of other bikes (from 0 to 16), how twisty the track is, distance blur and motion blur. You can choose your bike, suit and helmet colours, or let the colours change slowly, with a speed for how quickly they change.

No other bikes gives a lone practice lap. Sixteen gives a crowded pack fighting for position. The blur settings decide how sharp things look: more motion blur makes it feel faster, and distance blur softens the track ahead.

Night open wheel race

The cars are drawn as small 3D models. Sparks fly from them in the dips, rear lights flash, and now and then there's a crash: a spin, a slide along the wall or a barrel roll, with smoke and yellow marshal lights. Crashes can be set to never, rarely, now and then, or often. Other settings cover the number of other cars, how twisty the track is, the blurs and the car colours.

If you'd rather keep it clean, set crashes to never. If you like drama, often makes every lap eventful.

Starting the race on your PC

Open Screensavers by Zaweba and choose either race. The live preview follows each change, so it's easy to try a few twistiness and blur settings. Press Preview full screen to see the race at full size. Then press Use this screensaver to build it into your Windows profile without administrator rights; Windows' Screen Saver Settings opens so you can select it and set the wait time.

Settings are read each time the screensaver starts, so changing your helmet colour never needs a rebuild.

Whichever you choose, a slightly lower speed often looks better than the top setting on a screensaver. You can follow the riders or cars through each bend, and the floodlights and sponsor boards have time to register as they pass.

Both at once, at random

Can't choose? Tick both races and use Install several. That builds them into one screensaver that picks one at random each time it starts. Night motorway, a quieter drive through fog, fits the same rotation if you'd like a calm drive now and then.

On wide setups, choose one stretched across all monitors for a broad view of the track, one on each monitor, or the main monitor only with the others black. On a laptop, the frame cap of 30 or 60 frames a second and the battery saver in Install and options keep a long race from draining the battery.

Like everything in the pack, both races are drawn by Zaweba's own code, run offline and are free software under the EULA.