You have to take into consideration that the default wallpaper is arguably the most seen picture in the entire world.

Yup... but, if everyone thinks it's a rendering, and you could have saved tons of money by actually rendering it instead of doing what these guys did, it's still a waste of money if you ask me...

That can be said for many other artistic creations. But if you ask me, the fact that it was so elaborate adds something to it. The end result might be the same but the intentions and the process to get there matter.

Also, waste of money. We’re talking Microsoft. It’s not like those money we’re going to be spent on charity. They paid some creative people to do creative work. We should appreciate that.

But it has the air of the banal. For something supposedly so creative it seems to totally lack....creativity. I suppose 100% in keeping with a tech company's vision for what a computer desktop should look like.

You must not be a fan of https://youtu.be/_ve4M4UsJQo?si=99yLl7V2hisVp0zT then.

(That commercial literally had Honda execs complimenting the team on the quality of their CGI when they first saw it. Needless to say they were blown away when they found out it was real.)

I knew what this was going to be before clicking it.

We had an Accord at one point when I was a kid, and Honda sent us (my dad) a DVD of this with some behind the scenes when it released.

I watched that DVD a hundred times, maybe more.

That awesome! The funniest part is the end though, where the car is revealed and it's boring and kind of ugly. The commercial is way too good for that car :)

I think it's a little bit comfortable to think of a tech company as putting money into the arts.

Am neither a photographer nor any vision expert. But, what's the point of having billions if to not spend on whimsies.

Gmunk was working on visual graphics for the web back in late 90s / early 2000s with Vir2L.

If they wanted to, they could have easily banged out half a dozen wallpapers in an afternoon using Maya or whatever, but they chose the physical route.

This is the hilarious part about the comments. Nobody knows who GMUNK is and it shows. Dudes been knocking it out of the park for decades.

He's my all time fav digital artist, his infrared photography work is fantastic.

May well be, but I’m reminded of Columbus’ Egg[0].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus

If only they had the same dedication to keep ads out of the core OS.

Yea, I appreciate their dedication but the end-product doesn't equal the effort when Jane in XBox 3d effects department probably could have done this during her lunch break.

For one still sure but they have made lots of movies from that set that were used for promotion. At some point this is a lot easier to get so much much material and quick variations.

Sometimes these things land and sometimes they don’t. XP’s grassy hill seems to have been universally loved but could easily have been seen as lazy.

Granted, MS used to actually take theming seriously. XP had an excellent marketing campaign that tied in with the visual scheme of the product. Even the OS sounds tied in with the choice of music for their commercials, “Ray of Light” by Madonna.

Now we just get the wallpaper and there’s no concerted effort to make a theme of joy or accessibility or creativity or anything.

It was lazy in the sense that photo had not been taken specifically for XP. It was a pro photographer seeing a nice thing to take a picture of with not specific project in mind, snapping it, then having it sold through a stock photo agency.