The spectacular entries for the March/April Fractal programming contest are now available for download and viewing. (See also, the web contest.) Take the time to examine the beautiful screenshots found on this page. When you are done, download some of the examples programs. Many of these entries feature hallucinatory palette manipulations that will send your mind skipping and hopping into the next dimension -- a place where there is no Bill Gates, no DOJ, no Scott McNealy, and best of all, no Larry Ellison!
The code found here contains many useful components. There are elucidating examples in Pascal and C++ of how to use the VCL Canvas property, how to perform wondrous mathematical feats, and even how to use OpenGL! To my great joy, the Java developers also came through with a few well designed components, including a particularly strong showing from Ben Walding.
The pictures generated by these examples of programming prowess light me up inside like a fireworks display. Running these programs is like taking a walk through a fabulous modern art gallery of the future, where paintings animate themselves, where you can set the mood of the pictures you view. If you are feeling sedate, set the colors to deep greens and blues. If you are feeling charged up, choose fiery reds and brilliant yellows, then press the animate button and watch the colors flicker across the screen like the cascading molten flows of a volcano.
The more time you can spend with the best of these programs, the better. Even if you think you know all about fractals, I think everyone will find at least a few tricks they have never seen before.
There are no clunkers here. Some of the programs are clearly superior to the others, but they all get the job done in an admirable fashion.
For those who are interested in exploring Fractals in more depth, you might want to check out the shareware program written in Delphi and available at http://www.ultrafractal.com/.
Language: Delphi
Contest Subject: Fractals and Fractal Landscapes
The following people contributed entries:
Language: C++
Contest Subject: Fractals and Fractal Landscapes
Language: Java
Contest Subject: Fractals and Fractal Landscapes
To help with the download size of this page, I am not show the complete interface to this program. To view the whole program, click here.
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Earl, who has been a long time supporter of the online Delphi community, submitted multiple entries. It's hard to say enough good things about the Fractal Show and Lyapunov examples. They are not the fastest performing examples among the entries, but they provide enough options to let you create some truly wondrous pictures.
This is a very powerful fractal generator. The code is not particularly fast, but it has lots of options, and allows you to produce very beautiful images.
See more pictures.
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More Earl Glynn Lyapunov Pictures
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Jean Francois includes three fractal related java beans in his entry.
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Fractal types available in this example include: ftJulian, ftMoire, ftSierpinski, ftFern, ftLeaf, ftCurl, ftKoch, ftFour, ftLeafY, ftMaple, ftPlant, ftPyramid
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More screen shots from Mike Garrards program.
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Unfortunately, you need to download this remarkable program before you can understand what it does. As shown in this picture, the shape looks a bit mundane. But it is actually a three dimensional picture of "chaos" that you can rotate with the mouse. Quite amazing!
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This C++ program comes with a fractal component. It draws the fractals extremely quickly.
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This spectacular program is in C++.
This program is written in C++.
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More screen shots of Layne Lund's program
Paul's app runs best in full screen mode, which made it difficult for me to shrink a screenshot of it down to a size that can be downloaded over the web. To really appreciate what this landscape generation tool does, you need to download the application.
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This phenomenal program offers an option to animate the palette that will take you back to the 1960s and leave you there, front row center, tapping your feet, while Miles runs down the Voodoo! The code for the program uses OpenGL.
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This remarkable Delphi program comes with a set of components that allow you to dynamically manipulate the shape of a fractal composition at run time.
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Jake Stains entry comes with a whole set of components for manipulating fractals.
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This is one of those remarkable programs that seems to put the lie to the idea that Java is slow. The code in this example appears to keep pace with the examples written in Delphi and C++.
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This program contains an architecture for using Delphi plugins, and a landscape generator that rotates an object.
