A screensaver that drives down a motorway at night

Night motorway, from the night pack in Screensavers by Zaweba, puts you on an endless motorway at night in fog. Oncoming headlights pass on the other carriageway, tail-lights glow ahead to overtake, and streetlights, gantries, bridges, petrol stations, warehouses and houses slide past at the roadside.

There's something hypnotic about a motorway after dark. The lights come and go in a steady rhythm, the road keeps unrolling, and nothing much happens. That's precisely what makes it a good screensaver.

Traffic and roadside

Traffic can be light, medium or heavy. Light traffic gives the lonely drive home after midnight, with long stretches of dark road. Heavy traffic fills both carriageways with lights. Roadside decides what you pass: a bit of everything, industrial estates, or countryside. Industrial estates bring the warehouses and floodlit yards. Countryside is darker and quieter, with houses here and there.

Fog and streetlights can each be on or off. Fog softens everything and makes the lights bloom; turning it off gives a crisper, clearer night. Streetlights off gives an unlit road where the headlights are the main light.

Speed sets how quickly you travel.

A good combination for a calm screen is light traffic, countryside, fog on and streetlights off. It's quiet and dark, with the occasional pair of headlights looming out of the mist. For something busier, try heavy traffic through industrial estates with streetlights on.

The heaviest of the pack

Night motorway draws a lot: a whole road with traffic and scenery. In testing it was the heaviest screensaver in the pack on the processor, using between 0.2 and 2.5 per cent off-screen. That's still small, but if you're on a laptop it's worth knowing. Install and options lets you set a frame cap of 30 or 60 frames a second for all screensavers, and the battery saver blanks the screen when the laptop is on battery below a chosen charge, 25 per cent by default.

Joining the motorway

Open Screensavers by Zaweba and choose Night motorway. Try different traffic and roadside settings while the live preview follows. Press Preview full screen to see the drive at full size; a real mouse movement, a key or a click ends it. Then press Use this screensaver. It's built into your own Windows profile, with no administrator rights needed, and Windows' Screen Saver Settings opens so you can select it and set the wait time.

If you fancy countryside tomorrow instead of industrial estates, just change it. Settings are read whenever the screensaver starts.

Wide screens and long drives

A motorway is a natural fit for a wide setup. Stretch one across all monitors for a panoramic windscreen, or run one on each monitor, or keep it to the main monitor with the others black.

Other drives in the pack

If you like the feeling of travelling at night, the night pack also has Night bike race and Night open wheel race, both on a floodlit circuit. They're faster and more exciting, with other riders or cars around you. Tick Night motorway with them and use Install several, and the PC picks one at random each time it goes idle. A calm drive one day, a race the next.