A screensaver with rockets, satellites and UFOs

Space traffic is the busy one. In the night pack of Screensavers by Zaweba, it fills a dark sky with rockets in six styles, shuttles, capsules, freighters, fighters flying in formation, satellites, UFOs, aliens, spacemen, asteroids, meteors, comets and random planets. A UFO may even beam up a cow.

It's a cheerful screensaver with a sense of humour, and it's easy to tone down if you'd rather keep the sky sensible. Here's what it can do and how to set it up.

Everything that flies past

The setting for what flies past has three choices. Everything is the full show, UFOs and aliens included. Everything but UFOs and aliens keeps the rockets, shuttles and spacemen while dropping the science fiction. Only rockets, spacecraft and satellites is the most realistic, closest to a busy day in orbit.

Planets can be a few, one or none. Meteors and comets can be on or off. How busy decides how much is in the sky at once, and speed and tumble control how fast things move and how much they spin as they go.

A good starting point is a moderately busy sky at a low speed with a little tumble. That lets each craft cross the screen slowly enough to be recognised, which is half the fun. Turn speed and busyness up later if you want chaos.

A screensaver children enjoy

With everything switched on and the sky fairly busy, Space traffic is a hit on a family computer. There's always something new crossing the screen, and spotting the cow being beamed up becomes a game. For a classroom, the realistic setting with only rockets, spacecraft and satellites gives a calmer screen that still sparks questions.

You'll sometimes see it called Shuttle drift. That was its old name, and it keeps the same id, so if you installed it under that name your settings carry on.

Launching it on your PC

Open Screensavers by Zaweba and choose Space traffic. The live preview plays beside the settings and follows them as you change things, so you can see straight away what each choice does. Press Preview full screen to watch it at full size; move the mouse, press a key or click to stop. Then press Use this screensaver to build it into your Windows profile, with no administrator rights. Windows' Screen Saver Settings opens so you can choose it and set the wait time.

Settings are read every time it starts, so switching the UFOs off for a meeting and back on afterwards needs no reinstalling.

Across monitors, and on a laptop

Space traffic looks great stretched across several monitors, with craft crossing from one screen to the next. The several monitors setting also offers one on each monitor, or only the main monitor with the others black. On a laptop, Install and options has a frame cap of 30 or 60 frames a second and a battery saver that blanks the screen below a set charge, 25 per cent by default.

Pairing it with calmer skies

Space traffic makes a nice contrast with Deep space, where galaxies turn slowly, and Starfield warp, which flies you through the stars. Tick all three and use Install several, and the PC picks one at random each time it goes idle. Some days you get a quiet sky, some days a traffic jam.

Like every screensaver in the pack, it's drawn by Zaweba's own code and runs offline, as free software with no account.