25 years of fractal fascination

[schizo]

After nearly 100 posts it's time for an introduction to myself and my 25 years of fractal fascination. I am sure some of you followed a quite similar path of fascination for fractal structures. So I hope its entertaining.

As a child of east germany the access to computers was limited. While the west already had C64 and Amiga computers the GDR technic was some years behind.
So our first computer somewhen around 1987/1988 was a Z1013 from Robotron http://www.z1013.de/ It was a self-assembly kit so you had to "build" your computer and it required a TV (difficult to get) as display. My father built an own keyboard in a wodden box.
The Z1013 had no real graphic abilities and could display just 32x32 black-white characters. The good thing: there were 16 special characters that had all combinations for a 2x2 black-white pixelblock. So you had an impressive resolution of 64x64 pixels in black and white.
The program was written by my brother in basic and stored on tape - press enter when you hear the beeeep
Example of a Z1013 fractal image - impressive :


The next step was a KC 85/3: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleincomputer_KC_85/2-4
Also a computer from east germany but this time with real graphics (320×256, 16 (hardwired?) colors). My father borrowed it over christmas and that year the fractals were more interesting than the christmas presents. What could be more fascinating than waiting for some seconds to see the next pixel? 

Example of a KC fractal image:


The book "Computer und Kunst" by Horst Völz gave us a lot of inspiration. It has included a basic program for calculating the mandelbrot set and also great fractal images in color.

After a while waiting some seconds for the next pixel became quite frustrating. So I needed better hardware ... hardware from the evil west! So with my 12/13 years old I pulled the strings in the background and finally east and west germany re-united. So I've reached my goal and the world was a better place ... just because of fractals
The first fractal zoom video I ever saw must be around 1990/1991 and was presented in a science show at the ZDF (second german TV). We asked the ZDF to get a copy on video tape even we hadn't a video recorder at that time.

Then we bought a holy Amiga and there were already some programs available. One of the most impressive was MandelMania because it was so fast. When I saw it the first time rendering the mandelbrot set I couldn't believe that it can be rendered in 15 seconds. Very impressed I did a lot of exploration with that program.

My brother also wrote a fantastic program called "Fractal Universe". It has a formula editor, dithering methods to simulate more colors, a cool color editor, different inside/outside coloring modi and much more.
724x564 and 16 colors with dithering gave already quite good results.







Books like "The Beauty of Fractals" gave us more insight into chaos and order: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beauty_of_Fractals

Around 2000 I switched to Windows and did a lot of images with Vchira, TieraZon, GrafZViZion, Sterlingware and Flarium.
These images are still online (Fractal Sector 1-3): http://psykick.de/rot/
Even rendering images at 15000x10000 and printing in poster size was possible. I was nearly in fractal heaven.

There wasn't much action for some years because of kids and everyday live.

Then in 2009 the german Spiegel online reported about the Mandelbulb:
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/numerator-apfelmaennchen-erobert-die-dritte-dimension-a-669220.html

At youtube I found Daniel White's "Into the Heart of the Mandelbulb" - wow!
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/cDd8R0xlkNA&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/cDd8R0xlkNA&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

The fire started to burn again. I have to explore these new worlds!

My first attempts in 2011 with mandelbulber were not so impressive (should have tried more).
At 28.January 2012 I've downloaded Mandelbulb 3D V1.76 and became quite fast a fan of this software... not good for my energy bill ;-)
After 2 1/2 years of mandelbulbing (cool word he) I did some images:
http://schizo604.deviantart.com/gallery/
... and a lot of videos / stereo videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/schizo604

Especially the hybrid mixing of formulas makes the possibilities really infinite and there is still so much to explore.
Follow us into chaos and beyond...

[cKleinhuis]

haha, thx, sounds like a bedtime story to me, .... "and they still render because formulas got huge and zoom depth got even deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeper "

[mclarekin]

Thanks schizo for an enjoyable read. Those early days were really interesting.

[Chillheimer]

yeah, thx for the nice read.
love the detail in pic 1!

and thx for your efforts to reunite germany, good job! 

[schizo]

haha, thx, sounds like a bedtime story to me, .... "and they still render because formulas got huge and zoom depth got even deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeper "

ha, thats true. simply quality has improved extremly while rendering time stays the same as in the past: many nights ...