My Log Home iLWP – Review

If you are looking for the ultimate in free wallpapers to bring the home screen of your Android device to life, there is currently nothing as amazing as My Log Home by10 Ravens Interactive.

Available from Google Play, My Log Home is a 3D interactive live wallpaper featuring the eponymous icon of rustic comfort. Set in the midst of a rural panorama with a view of mountain scenery outside the windows, My Log Home is the epitome of cozy, especially for those who have always fantasized about living in a real log cabin with a roaring fireplace.

My Log Home has so many customizable features that you can tweak it to your heart’s content for hours on end every day and never get bored with it. There are dozens of interactive items which can be moved, removed, added, or changed with just a few finger swipes and taps. For instance, if you want to do some virtual spring cleaning, there are cobwebs to remove and pictures to straighten, or if you prefer a messier alternative, you can add more cobwebs and go round the 3D environment pushing everything out of its original alignment. Lights can be switched on and off, their quality of illumination increased or dimmed, and you can change the number of interactive items shown on screen to make a personalized version of the log cabin wallpaper according to your whims.

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The 360° view inside the log cabin is not only seamless but moves in conjunction with your Android device’s gyroscope and accelerometer. This brings the 8 conjoined scenes to life in a way that mimics roaming around a house with a virtual camera. The camera even comes complete with lens flare if you point it at the sun coming through the window. Options on the menu allow you to define the way of viewing in terms of different cameras, and you can select whichever style of camera you wish. Some cameras will show more or less of the screen depending on how they pan, and of course, you can play with the color palette used if you want something really different. Setting the colors to black and white or sepia gives an old world or silent movie feel to what you are seeing. Selecting a frame for the scene (called a “vignette”) and degrading the resolution completes the effect.

Should you want to make everything more realistic to see motes dancing in the sunbeams or sparks jumping from the glowing fireplace, the resolution and colors can be switched up from their defaults to an HD level, although as expected, slower Android devices may not be able to cope with the higher frame rates and will stutter as a result. There are many tweaks available on the menu, however, to optimize My Log Home for every phone and tablet which uses the Android platform (from version 2.2 and above). No matter how old your device is, My Log Home will work even if you may have to trade off some of the effects and textures to obtain a more fluid performance or extend your battery life. Very old Android versions may encounter slight interference with the lock screen, particularly if you are using a custom lock screen at the same time, but the latest upgrades fix those issues.

Looking around the log cabin is simply a matter of swiping your finger across the screen and rotating your device in your hands. Nearly everything that you see can be clicked or poked and prodded to do something. There are pictures hung on walls which can be replaced with photos from your own gallery, windows and cupboard doors can be opened or closed, drawers can be investigated, and you can leave a short note for yourself on the whiteboard above the computer desk. You can even turn on a radio, watch TV, or start a retro game of Pong by clicking on an Atari 2600 console. In the latter three cases, it would be nice if you could stream your own media into the radio and TV or actually play a game, but those options are not available. Maybe they will be in future versions.

Among the more practical features of My Log Home are a fully functional alarm clock and calendar. How much they will be used when all Android devices have a clock and calendar built-in is debatable, but it’s nice to have a visually pleasing alternative, and it’s something else to click on.

More impressive is the way that the view outside the window of the log cabin can be set to the current weather conditions in your location. Again, this is of questionable usefulness, but it’s still very clever. You can customize the outside to show numerous combinations of weather conditions, times of day, and seasons regardless of the real weather anyway, so if you’re fed up with looking at snow storms, you can cheer yourself up with a summer view of the lake and mountains instead. Other options will change the type of moon shown at night, add wind, fog, and rain to make things spooky, or you can relax with a nice sunrise or sunset.

My Log Home is easily one of the best interactive live wallpapers. It’s state-of-the-art graphics and low resource use make it something you will definitely want to download and explore for yourself. My Log Home may not be the most practical app in the world, but it’s certainly one of the most visually stunning.