Recently, a Reddit user visited the location where the famous Windows XP default wallpaper "Bliss" was filmed, and unexpectedly discovered that this hill in Napa Valley, California, USA, under certain weather and seasonal conditions, once again presented an almost identical scene to that of the past, triggering nostalgia and heated discussions among a large number of netizens.
This netizen went to the location of "Bliss" with his friends. When he stopped the car to take pictures, he captured a picture that was very similar to the classic wallpaper: the green grassy slopes were undulating and the hills in the distance had soft lines. Only the clouds in the sky were slightly different. He said such sightings were "extremely rare" as the hill was either covered in grapevines or a dry, yellow patch of grass most of the time. Other netizens added that the recent humid weather in California has brought the local vegetation back to life, allowing the hills to once again "interpret" the fresh greenery like the XP wallpaper in reality, but the clouds are no longer as perfect as in the photos back then.
After seeing the comparison between the old and new photos, many netizens simply set this newly taken photo of the hills as their Windows 11 wallpaper to pay tribute to the classic. Residents living nearby expressed their intention to take advantage of the period when there are no grape planting lines or pests and diseases on the hills to see the real-life "Bliss" with their own eyes.
The original "Bliss" photo was taken in 1996 by photographer Charles O'Rear, who was working for National Geographic at the time. This photo was later included as a stock image by the photo agency Corbis and licensed externally. In 2000, Microsoft purchased the rights to the photo and made it the default desktop wallpaper in the subsequent release of Windows XP. Windows XP, which was based on the NT architecture, sold more than 400 million copies in its first five years, which meant that hundreds of millions of users around the world—and even more members of the public who were exposed to the XP interface through media reports—had seen this wallpaper at least once.
O'Rear used a Mamiya RZ67 medium format film camera and recorded the hilly scenery in front of him on his way to visit his then-girlfriend. Due to the bright colors and simple composition of the photo, there has long been speculation about whether it was heavily retouched by Photoshop, but O'Rear has always insisted that this is a natural work that has not been "touched" in post. In contrast, the "new version of Bliss" captured by this Reddit netizen was obviously completed with a smartphone, and the texture of the picture naturally has obvious characteristics of the digital age.
Twenty-five years after the release of Windows XP, Microsoft has taken a completely different route when it comes to selecting wallpapers for its new generation of operating systems. Most of the wallpapers that come with Windows 11 are highly modified synthetic images or images generated by artificial intelligence. Photos that truly come from natural scenery and are pure scenery are relatively limited. Because of this, when people see the "Bliss" in the real world overlapping with the XP desktop in their memories again, they can't help but feel a sense of anachronism: from that simple green slope to today's bizarre world of digital images, "When did everything start to change?"