ASCII animations that are viewed in the command-line?

Question

I like ASCII animations and want to view them through a terminal window.

What famous Linux programs and commands are suitable here to display ASCII animations or view videos in a terminal screen?

Answer 1

Not really a short video but here is the most famous one: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run :

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

Answer 2

You can play any video as an ascii animation with the caca video driver for mplayer:

sudo apt-get install mplayer2 caca-utils
mplayer -vo caca /path/to/video

This has several output options which work better in X11 but can also work from a real terminal, even over SSH (urgh, it's horrible). It'll also sync sound in there too.

If you don't have any videos to hand, I can help you out. You wouldn't get this from any other guy. I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling. Gotta make you understand...

sudo wget -qO /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

youtube-dl -o- "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" | mplayer -vo caca -

Answer 3

Try this command:

$ curl -s http://artscene.textfiles.com/vt100/movglobe.vt | pv -q -L 9600

to see animated AsciiGlobe:

More examples: http://artscene.textfiles.com/vt100/

What is Animated Ascii Art?: http://www.qqpr.com/ascii-art-article-2.html

Source of command line snippet: http://www.cambus.net/visualizing-progression-of-file-operations-using-pv-pipe-viewer/

Answer 4

If you like trains, install sl:

sudo apt-get install sl

Now you can enjoy a beautiful old steam locomotive driving through your terminal as often as you want!

Also try sl with different parameters:

• -a: "accident" - people in the train crying for help
• -l: "little" - a smaller locomotive
• -F: "flying" - antigravity is cool! ;D

Answer 5

This is also a great one - I haven't tried it but it looks awesome...

A live aquarium!

You can find out how to install it here.

Answer 6

I've just found one:

Burn your terminal:

sudo apt-get install libaa-bin

Run it with aafire:

Answer 7

What 6 answers and no mention of bb?

Youtube vid at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ukhOAUseKY

if not installed:

sudo apt-get install bb

run with:

bb