BAILEYS@FSU.BITNET (NOLES #1) (11/07/89)
Scott Le Grand writes: >Hi, what exactly IS Fractal Magic Well, Fractal Magic is a program that generates color fractal pictures. I have seen it running on a Mac II (I think), and the pictures are magnificent. Fractals are, very roughly, mathmatical models of chaotic behavior. Taking the initial set of one particular kind of fractal, the Mandelbrot set, one would see a symmetrical thingy that looks kind of like three circles. The internal edges of the figure are very colorful, and kind of fuzzy looking. When one selects a small area of this fringe to reevaluate, the resulting picture would be essentially a blowup of the first, but the edges of this picture would be even more colorful and complex. Also, one might find tiny copies of the initial set amongst all this confusion. The basic property of this type of fractal is that one may reevaluate$sections of it infinitely many times, and yield infinite variations. That is, the edges of the figure are defined with infinite resolution, but no matter how many times you blow it up, you can still find small copies of the first set. This is probably a very bad description of this phenomena, but for a better one, I$would heartily suggest getting the binary called MANDEL from panarthea. It c is the fastest Mandelbrot generator I have ever seen (these t}pes of programs can sometimes take lours to evaluate a section). In addition to the program itself, the author has included a small doc file on the mathmatical formuli he implemented. If you are into assembly, the source code is available from the same place (panarthea). The full address of panarthea is> archive-server%panarthea@sun.com on the UN*X box I use. Bitnet address may be different. Bob Marley FSU Comp Sci