Fractal eXtreme

[poorfuckedupnature]

This is the best commercial program for zooming very fast and very deep into the 2d-Mandelbrot.
The program is very easy to use.  Also you can make easy zoom- and iteration-movies.
The program is available for 32-bit- and for 64-bit-operating systems.

This is a little break for the zoom level discussion:

Zooms Magnification Amount Size of Monitor
1 2 bigger than a bread box
2 4  
3 8  
4 16  
5 32  
6 64  
7 128  
8 256 football field
9 512  
10 1024 100-story building
20 ~1E6 Vancouver Island
30 ~1E9 Jupiter's radius
40 ~1E12 Earth's orbit
50 ~1E15  
60 ~1E18 distance to Alpha Centauri
70 ~1E21 Milky Way galaxy
80 ~1E24 large doesn't cover it!
90 ~1E27  
100 ~1E30 huge
110 ~1E33 really huge
120 ~1E36 even huger
130 ~1E39 enormously gargantuan
140 ~1E42 size of electron to the universe
1000 ~1E301 incomprehensibly big...but we did it!
7200 ~1E2167 Maximum zoom level supported by Fractal eXtreme -- at this time.

Anti-aliasing is available.
Take a look at the trial-version.  All you don't get is zooms greater then 100.

http://www.Cygnus-Software.com/

[kram1032]

very nice image

If you use the theoretical physical minimum length to be observed/measured and take that to measure the observable universe, you'll get to roughly
5.4e61 planck lengths...
Anything beyond that is truely larger than the observable universe

[poorfuckedupnature]

yep. that's the reason why the little mandelbrot formula makes every computer system stuck. 

[regfre]

Good Program.Is very fast render.

[panzerboy]

The only program I use but then I'm obsessed with mandelbrots.
I just found out that Fractal Extreme .fx files will load directly into Gimp.
Turns out the .fx file has an imbedded BMP at the start.

I make a few zoom movies they're on my Youtube channel, user CommandLineCowboy.
The compressed videos really dont measure up to the quality of watching the zooms using fractal extremes movie player.
I've been wondering wether/how to share the actual .fxz files so folks could see my zooms in all their glory.
I don't really wan't to pay for a file sharing site like rapid share and they idea of setting up a torrent scares me,
letting folks access my computer directly.
Any ideas on how to share .fxz zoom movies?
Is anyone actually interested in them?

[Sockratease]

Any ideas on how to share .fxz zoom movies?

You could attach them to a post here.

There's a file size limit on attachments, not sure what it is.  Are fxz files very large?

[Bent-Winged Angel]

I just saw this thread & quickly downloade & played a couple min. I'm already addicted.  Too much fun!

[panzerboy]

I've set up a free Mediafire account.

A couple uploaded so far.
Generally they are a bit bigger than the Youtube video because they have a lossless compression (PNG?)
The zoom player interpolates the video frames, so at 25fps taking 1.2 seconds to do 1 zoom interpolates 28 frames.

http://www.mediafire.com/?9notyrxyoqxf2c9
13.3Mb
for this video
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/JPPHrteYo9A&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/JPPHrteYo9A&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

and
http://www.mediafire.com/?yadda6444n0c67e
30.56Mb
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/JKFvfyNJOkQ&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/JKFvfyNJOkQ&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

[panzerboy]

& A couple more of my Fractal Extreme Movie Files.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ec2g1n6b6v2am8r
33.6 Mb
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/smarO-rYkgc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/smarO-rYkgc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

http://www.mediafire.com/?kcwair6hdgxphvv
105.65 Mb!
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/AlsMKVkMArc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/AlsMKVkMArc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

I like to slow down the zoom (- key) to about .82/.85 zooms per second.
Enable the OpenGL and full screen then hit cntrl-s to Spin.
Hit Cntrl-Q about 5 times to slow the spin down, maybe cntrl-A to reverse the spin
Now that makes for a pretty amazing spinning zooming video.
If you don't like the rectangle frame at the bigging showing in the zoom you can f8 to mark
the beginning so you don't ruin the effect.
Sit back, put on your favorite music and indulge in the chemicals of your choice.

[jwm-art]

I gave Fractal eXtreme a go the other day. But it's a Windows program and I don't use Windows :-( I have Windows on my PC but I just don't ever use it.

Anyway, Fractal eXtreme makes my program MDZ look like a piece of medieval farm machinery :-(

FX is just blindingly fast and my addiction to the M-set is pleading with me to get it.

So, big question, has anyone tried running FX using Wine or one of the virtualization thingymajiggies under LINUX?

[panzerboy]

Jwm-art, do you use the SSE SIMD instructions for your calculations in MDZ? I guess it depends on the capabilities of the compiler you're using and library support. Unless you wan't to dive into x86 assembler 

[kon16ov]

James,

Fractal eXtreme and UltraFractal both work *mostly* well under WINE.  I say mostly because of FeX's export of anims not, well, exporting.  At least in the test runs I've done, it doesn't do anything and throws an error about pathing.  I'm wondering if it's the CODEC interpretation, permissions, or some other bugger.  Haven't figured it out.  Of course, haven't looked very hard, either...I like both FeX and UF, but even now as I type this, Mandelbulber, Mandelbulb3D and MDZ are the ones running, soooooo....you know...

Also, I wouldn't say it makes it look like MDZ look like medieval farm machinery (which doubled as fairly effective weapons in battle, remember!), since they strive to do different things.  I run MDZ for accuracy and real precision zooming (meaning going exactly where I want and getting the proper framing, etc, without doinking too much...).  Still, there's no doubt it's a good proggie -- and worth the price, methinks...or at least that's what I'm telling myself since I purchased it.  The other thing to consider is that it has blazing speed until you get deep and need a lot of iterations, then, it's right there with everybody else.  Although 500M iterations may seem excessive, it's how I roll. 

[panzerboy]

I've uploaded a few more Fractal Extreme zoom movies.

Doughnuts on a rope
320x240 15.47 Mb
http://www.mediafire.com/?7xe6k9ihy3h3l26
1280x720 166.1 Mb
http://www.mediafire.com/?242sdjaf797uai5
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwHPSpyAEHs&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/AwHPSpyAEHs&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

Julia set zoom
336x210 13.78 Mb
http://www.mediafire.com/?c335g6m9jabok89
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/bJyCQCprdjo&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/bJyCQCprdjo&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>


Mandelbrot Zoom Doot Doot
480x360 23.49Mb
http://www.mediafire.com/?o7jnppfc14qgvt7
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/SUACowTBm2c&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/SUACowTBm2c&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>


Colourful 'furry' mandelbrot zoom
576x360 35.35Mb
http://www.mediafire.com/?o53399o5dco81n5
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/QeZ80Ca5V4Y&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/QeZ80Ca5V4Y&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

[panzerboy]

If anyone is interested you can download my Fractal Extreme palette files here.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/2g2taaa2c5k9uu2/FXpalettes.zip
Theres only 223 of them!
My current favorites are f512kyrmwgcbXXintof16 and f512bcgwmrykXXof16.
These are created by duplicating the palette into the stripe palette then ofsetting the stripe palette by 16 places.
Creates a nice stripe affect and blends the colours a bit to get away from the very primary colour look.
Similarly named files have different offsets (the ofXX end of the filename).
Adjust the slider on the colour palette control by one step and this effectively reverses the offset (-16 instead of +16)
by making the 'even' palette odd and the 'odd' palette now even.

[JodyVL]

I've started a blog for fractal beginners if there are any newb's out there that found this thread (Although it will as of now also be a showcase for any and all fractal art I create, so you know, hop on over and check it out even if you're an fractal oldtimer... I'd appreciate some critique.)

http://mandelubber.blogspot.com/

If you're truly new, you should start from the first blogpost in May 2011.

It's been quite an adventure so far, and I've only just begun