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Hi All - I haven't mucked around much lately with Mandelbulb 3D mainly because of a lack of free time. But when I do, it's my 4-core laptop that gets the workout usually.  It makes things go faster but not all THAT fast. And I find that when I try to zoom in tightly in the Nav, I have that same slowing-down-freezing-up problem I mentioned in the past which seems to be getting worse. The program can simply freeze and stop. I was told that "it depends on the formula", but that is kind of like hunting the proverbial needle in a haystack trying to work out which formulas will cause freezeup and which ones don't... Also, I am still very much an amateur, I make mistakes, forget to do things, maybe get the dIFS mixed up or whatever, but still...  I notice this prob on a lot of formulas; I can even get stuck on the default mandelbulb when trying those tight zooms.

Is there a hard and fast trick that anyone has found that would help me avoid this frustration? It's these kind of difficulties that prevent me achieving very much in M3D...

Without having an example formula to look at I can't say for sure but there are limits to how far you can Zoom. Mostly depending on the Formula and how the Distance Estimations are handeled for that Formula by the program. Generally though zooming isn't a real problem, sometimes you seem to hit a brick wall when zooming or everything just disappears...2 things to check in these cases are if it disappears 1-Far Plane, if it is too small (close) fog has gotten it, set Far Plane to 10K you can always move it back in later...2- if you seem to run into a Brick wall and Zoom just stops....Check the Nav, is Fixed Zoom and Steps set or not, which ever way it is checked change it(toggle on or off) click either Walking(normal Zoom) or Zoom(Fixed Steps) which ever is now selected a couple of times then switch back to where you were originally and the Zoom may be now freed up again.

If you mix d.IFS formulas with Escapetime Formulas don't worry, the program will tell you and you can't do anything anyway...

Oh, yeah also, you can Narrow the FoVy to Zoom further if you truly hit a Brick Wall but Narrow FoVs render slower too.


Damn, another thing too, the number in Sliding and Walking steps will determine how far and fast you Zoom when not in Fixed Zoom.