NANY 2009 Release: Fractal Explorers

[TPReal]

NANY 2009 Entry Information

This is in fact two tiny programs, but they are both about exploring a fractal, and they share common libraries, so I put them here together.

Application Name	MandelbrotExplorer and JuliaExplorer
Version	Rolling Release it's not any big program, I'm not versioning it
Short Description	Viewing Mandelbrot set and Julia sets
Supported OSes	Any
Download Link	http://tpreal.dcmembers.com/Fractals.zip
System Requirements	Ruby ruby-opengl gem
Version History	2008-11-30 16:00 - First release 2008-12-04 21:00 - Compatibility with some graphic cards added (thanks, deviantopian)
Author	TPReal

Description
The applications are written just for fun, as an étude of Ruby and OpenGL Shading Language.

JuliaExplorer - Fractal Evolution
JuliaExplorer allows you to explore Julia sets of quadratic polynomials of the form z^2+c. It allows you to zoom into any part of the generated set, but the even more exciting feature is the ability to change smoothly the value of the complex parameter c, and see the fractal evolve slowly from one form to another.

MandelbrotExplorer - Into The Fractal
MandelbrotExplorer allows you to explore the Mandelbrot set. It allows you to zoom into any part of the set.

Possible enhancements
There's a lot of things that could be done to make these programs better, like:

• Ability to save a specific image, or coordinates
• Option of antialiasing to make the images look smoother
• Maybe some colours or something
• Displaying FPS
• Automatic image changing (as if it was a screensaver)

But they are not planned - maybe I'll do some of those one day, and maybe I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader

Screenshots
MandelbrotExplorer
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JuliaExplorer
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Usage

Installation
First, you have to have Ruby installed, along with ruby-opengl gem. Ruby is available here: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/ , if you are using Windows, I recommend the One-Click Installer from here: http://rubyforge.org...jects/rubyinstaller/ . Some additional info cn be found in the zip archive, in help/Ruby Installation.txt.

Just unpack the zip archive and run MandelbrotExplorer.rb or JuliaExplorer/rb.

Using the Application
MandelbrotExplorer
Just play around with Arrow keys and the zoom: A and Z keys. That's all

JuliaExplorer
When you run the program, a short tutorial is displayed. The basics are: use Arrows and A, Z to see the fractal evolve, and use U, J, H and K, and zoom: S, X, to zoom into any part of the fractal. But it might be a bit tricky at first, so read the tutorial.

Some description can also be found in the help directory in the archive.

Known Issues
There are some issues with installing ruby-opengl on some older versions of One-Click Installer for Windows. See the help file for details.

[deviantopian]

Hmm... I downloaded ruby186-27_rc2.exe and installed it, then tried double clicking on JuliaExplorer.rb - I get the initial instructions, but when I hit Enter, I get this:

./lib/tp.GLShader.rb:150:in `link': Program link error: (ShaderError)
Fragment info
-------------
(15) : error C5051: profile does not support conditional returns

        from ./lib/tp.GLShader.rb:159:in `run'
        from C:/Documents and Settings/Richard/Desktop/Fractals/JuliaExplorer.rb
:46:in `oncreate'
        from ./lib/tp.OpenGL.rb:87:in `initialize'
        from ./lib/tp.OpenGL.rb:85:in `catch'
        from ./lib/tp.OpenGL.rb:85:in `initialize'
        from C:/Documents and Settings/Richard/Desktop/Fractals/JuliaExplorer.rb
:34:in `initialize'
        from C:/Documents and Settings/Richard/Desktop/Fractals/JuliaExplorer.rb
:129:in `new'
        from C:/Documents and Settings/Richard/Desktop/Fractals/JuliaExplorer.rb
:129

I tried installing Ruby to my Program Files Folder first, thought that might be the problem so uninstalled and installed in C:\Ruby instead, but that didn't make any difference.

Just wondered if you had any ideas why this might be?

Richard

[TPReal]

Hello Richard.

Thanks for reporting this. The error you got is an error that occurred when your graphic card tried to link the shader program. The error message is loaded from the graphic card and wrapped into a Ruby exception (ShaderException).

The error is probably because your graphic card is different than any of those that I have tested my program on. I'm not a shader expert, and well, I didn't know that some GP do not support conditional returns. What is the graphics you have?

Based on the error message, I guess I corrected it. On my machine it still works, so probably I didn't break anything Please download the program again (in the original post) and try to run the program. Let me know if any other errors occur

Thanks,
TPR.

[TPReal]

I see there are currently some problems with file hosting on dcmembers so I attached the file to the original post, apart from giving the link.

[mouser]

dcmembers just went down briefly, it's back up.

[deviantopian]

Yeah, that fixed it.
I have a NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX.

The fact that you can change the value of c on the fly in JuliaExplorer is very cool and not something I've seen before. It's like adding another dimension

[TPReal]

Glad to hear it works And I learned something about the shaders. The first time I saw the Julia fractal with the extra dimension was when I wrote this program, too

But it does mean that ideally your tool would be something that at least one other person in the known universe might be interested in downloading and using.

-mouser (November 22, 2008, 08:40 PM)

Have you seen, mouser? My program meets the NANY requirements