This is my work for my Senior Project. The goal is to build a fractal
visualization tool for 2d and 3d fractals.
Coded for Linux x86
Using Opengl:
mesa-common-dev
Using SDL 1.2:
libsdl1.2-dev
libsdl-image1.2-dev
libsdl-mixer1.2-dev
libsdl-net1.2-dev
Development Progress
10/6/12 - After using a basic iteration on some points using a random number
generator to give me a random distribution, I have found a few problems.
I didn't think about the need to store the points to prevent having to
run through the generation with each frame which is very costly. I also
didnt think about how difficult it will be to have a pretty picture
from this plane iteration. After poking around on the internet I think
the ansewer is going to be in writing a shader to do the rendering and
compiling the shader on the fly based on user input. I have never wrote
a shader before so that is what I must learn next.
10/10/12- Discovered a silly error where I was rendering a point at each depth
of the iteration causing major performance drop. After the correction
performance is at least resonble for this intial aprroach. I will
continue looking at the Shader language to see if there is a better way
to use there. I have had the idea though that what might be best is to
generate all the points at the offset and store them, then use
interpolation to give a general shape of the fractal. I am concerned at
the mathematics behind such a method but I do belive using the random
path frame by frame is eating unnecussary resources but I most likely
need that for unlimited zooming. Exploration of these ideas are needed.