Backgrounds

Nightingale offers a deep selection of background themes during playback, cycled with the T key.

10 GPU Shader Backgrounds

Ten backgrounds are rendered in real-time using GPU shaders (GLSL):

1. Plasma — flowing colorful plasma effect
2. Waves — undulating wave patterns
3. Nebula — cosmic nebula clouds
4. Starfield — deep space star field
5. Sonar — radial pulse sweeps
6. Voronoi — animated cellular tessellation
7. Vortex — swirling color tunnels
8. Metaballs — fluid blob morphs
9. Spectrum — frequency-bar visualizer
10. Oscilloscope — waveform line trace

These run at full frame rate and adapt to your display resolution.

Shaders are audio-reactive when the microphone is enabled: a real-time analyzer drives shared uniforms (level, low/mid/high band energy, beat impulses) so louder vocals push the visuals harder. With the mic off, the shaders animate on their own time-based clock.

Pixabay Video Backgrounds

Pre-downloaded video backgrounds from Pixabay in 5 flavors, cycled with the F key:

1. Nature — forests, mountains, rivers
2. Underwater — ocean, coral, sea life
3. Space — galaxies, nebulae, Earth from orbit
4. City — urban skylines, night cityscapes
5. Countryside — rolling fields, sunsets

Videos are pre-downloaded during setup so they’re ready instantly.

Source Video Playback

When playing a video file (.mp4, .mkv, etc.), the source video plays as the background automatically. If the source is not directly playable, Nightingale generates a compatible playback version in cache.

Source video background timing follows playback tempo, so visual sync stays consistent when tempo is adjusted.