Walls are just walls, but when done right, they can really liven up a room. If you’re thinking of some simple, fairly low-cost ways to spruce up your gaming setup, consider this often overlooked but essential part of gaming room decor: live wallpapers.
What is a Live Wallpaper?
A live wallpaper is a special kind of application that allows you to add cool effects to your home screen.
They work by placing graphics on your home screen and having them run in the background. This can be achieved by setting up an activity that runs at startup, or by creating a completely new activity with custom graphics.
It is a fairly simple addition to a desktop, but when you add a live wallpaper to your monitors, it can give an entirely different and fresh feeling to your device.
Here are some softwares that let you add a live wallpaper to your monitors, so you can enhance your gaming setup:
Lively Wallpaper
Lively Wallpaper is one of the softwares that allows you to apply a live, animated wallpaper to your desktop monitor.
The best thing about this application is that it is a fully free and open source software (FOSS). In other words, anyone can download and have unlimited access to it for free.
You could take any existing video and put it into the software so it can generate a live wallpaper out of it. You could also take an already existing live wallpaper and edit it, including adding shaders, tweaking the colors, and many more.
It is also compatible with any resolutions, and can be used in multiple monitors at once, which is useful if you have a dual-monitor or triple-monitor gaming setup, for example.
Wallpaper Engine on Steam
This is an application on Steam that allows you to change your Windows desktop wallpaper to 2D and 3D designs.
Though you would need to purchase it from the store, buying the software will gain you access to over ten thousand live wallpapers made by the community.
You can also customize each available wallpaper, such as by changing the colors, making them interactive with your cursors, and even making some on your own!
If you have a cyberpunk or vaporwave-inspired gaming room setup, for example, adding a live wallpaper to your desktop in that same aesthetic will surely make your room an even more unique space.
Rainmeter
Rainmeter is another software that offers live wallpapers. Like Lively Wallpaper, it is also free and open source.
One thing that makes Rainmeter stand out from other live wallpaper softwares is that it doesn’t just offer live wallpapers as a standalone. Instead, it is an entire toolkit that allows users to install custom widgets and skins to your wallpaper.
In other words, users can also add extra features to their live wallpapers that make them interactive, such as clocks or animated icons that will lead to certain applications in the computer when clicked.
Rainmeter is a good software to try out if you are interested in having a desktop layout that entirely matches, all the way from the wallpaper to even the toolbars.