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Fractal Lab
- azeirah 11y agoWow.
- fogleman 11y agoSo when can we try it for ourselves?
- azeirah 11y ago> Fractal Lab is my {NOT AZEIRAH'S} personal technical and creative canvas where I can explore ideas freely in my own time without obligations and support commitments, so for the moment it isn't available online or for local installation. I have some project ideas I first want to fully explore using Fractal Lab, after that I'll probably release the code. This is on his site soo... someday maybe
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ctdonath 11y agoFailing that, his main page promotes the iOS app FRAX. Any opinions/experience about it?
- archagon 11y agoWow! The demo video[1] is really impressive. How are those effects created, I wonder? Do the fractals get their own depth maps? How do you arrive at algorithms that look so darn beautiful, especially those metal and plastic shaders? Is there prior art for this? [1]: http://fract.al http://fract.al
- jonah 11y agoI've played with it. Quite nice.
- Synaesthesia 11y agoIt's pretty awesome, real time fractals on your iPad, a lot to explore. Looks really great. Having parameters and textures animate while you're zooming on an iPad in real time on a fractal is impressive.
- ctdonath 11y agoI paid the $4 and got it. Slick & entertaining. Not as hard-core math-ish as I'd like, but fun to zoom around in. There's in-app "pro upgrade", which I find a bit irritating if that's where the greater numeric control & deeper resolution resides.
- pantalaimon 11y agoI suppose it has 2D fractals only, my Haswell CPU struggles with 3D fractals already - I wish I had a experience as smooth as in fractal lab.
- webXL 11y agoGoogle found this: http://hirnsohle.de/test/fractalLab/ http://hirnsohle.de/test/fractalLab/ Edit: Looks like an older version, but still pretty fun to play with
- yesbabyyes 11y agoI found this via @mrdoob on Twitter[1] and if he's impressed by this kind of stuff then, well... :-) [1] https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/595297811656286208 https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/595297811656286208
- 13 11y agoIf Mr Doob is impressed, drop everything and go look at it.
- jjar 11y agoSimply wow.
- shocks 11y agoScrolling is completely broken. :/ (But this looks awesome!!)
- azeirah 11y agoIt's using drag to scroll
- mikeyd 11y agoOtherwise known as "broken".
- yellowapple 11y agoIt shouldn't, since the implementation breaks text selection and actual scrolling for desktop users.
- Gigablah 11y agoWhy are people downvoting this person for stating a fact?
- yellowapple 11y agoBecause it's a shitty excuse for deliberately breaking UX. Because it's an indication that the designer believes he/she knows better than the OS programmers, the browser programmers, and the user when it comes to site ergonomics when said belief is demonstrably misguided. Because it doesn't fix the problem.
- Gigablah 11y agoYou are not answering my question. Why are people downvoting azeirah when azeirah isn't the designer of the site, and is not even advocating the design of the site?
- grkvlt 11y agoI keep reading these comments on HN, but for me, I have never experienced a 'broken' scrolling effect. I browse using Chrome on OSX using: 1. my laptop touchpad and two-finger dragging, 2. the up/down arrow keys, 3. the spacebar, or 4. the scroll-wheel on my mouse. On my phone I use Android Chrome and scroll by dragging up and down. Anyway, I can't remember ever having these techniques not work. Is there some other way of scrolling that I haven't thought of, and therefore am not using day-to-day, that breaks for other people, or do I just put up with it unconciously, switching between methods 1-4 automatically on the laptop, and never notice? Or, are people using iPads or iPhones, which I do not own, and they are more susceptible? Or Browsers-other-than-Chrome, which I guess must exist ;) Genuinely curious!
- azdle 11y agoIn case the creator is reading this, please don't break scrolling. This page scrolls impossibly slowly for me. (Firefox 37.0.2, OSX 10.10.3)
- azeirah 11y agoDrag to scroll
- falsedan 11y agoScroll to scroll
- yellowapple 11y agoI'm on a desktop. My mouse has a scrollwheel. My scrolling is perfectly fine on pretty much every other website. Why should I be expected to know to "drag to scroll" as if I'm doing all my web browsing on a smartphone emulator?
- daveloyall 11y agoDrag is already assigned to an operation.
- kachnuv_ocasek 11y agoAlso, please don't break the middle mouse button. I use it to open a bunch of new tabs when reading the text.
- kefka 11y agoNote to author: I didn't bother to read the page because scrolling and navigating was horridly broken. Do not hijack the scrollbar and/or mouse navigation.
- grkvlt 11y agoStrange. I could scroll using the scrollbar or two-finger scroll-gestures on the trackpad (plus by dragging the text, which is unusual) and I'm using Chrome for OSX. What platform are you on that has this problem?
- madez 11y agoThe speech in the video is hardly understandable (at least for me). Is there a transcript anywhere? Edit: You seriously think a comment asking for a transcript because the voice seems hard to understand deserves being down voted?
- tempestn 11y agoIt seems very clear to me. Perhaps there's a problem with your browser sound?
- mholt 11y agoNo, the narrator is definitely whispering.
- oh_sigh 11y agoI could easily understand him, but yes, the narrator sounds like he's almost falling asleep, or he is recording in a room with a sleeping baby and doesn't want to wake it. I assume your comment is receiving so much resistance because apparently a lot of people find his voice "soothing", and people don't realize that a soothing voice is not necessarily the best for communicating information.
- madez 11y agoBut why - for everything good in this world - would they down-vote then?
- tempestn 11y agoI didn't down-vote, but I expect the comment comes across as antagonistic. Objectively, he isn't whispering. Whispering means sounds are not voiced, which is not the case here. So at best this is an exaggeration. Bluntly stated as it is, it likely seems unnecessarily negative in tone to some.
- bretr 11y agogreat golf voice
- simonmd 11y agoThe author's voice makes me want to create some happy little fractal trees over here ... then some happy little fractal clouds over there ... This is awesome. I want to play with this very badly.
- AceJohnny2 11y agoOn the topic of the voice and its effect, you may be interested in http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr
- iyn 11y agoThis is the first time I've heard about ASMR, thank you for the link, not sure if it's placebo, but watching this video was... interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erTe2wkxc-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erTe2wkxc-g This article provides some context: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-whisper-then-tingles-then-87-million-youtube-views-meet-the-star-of-asmr/2014/12/12/0c85d54a-7b33-11e4-b821-503cc7efed9e_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-whisper-then...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- madez 11y agoStrangely, the voice in the video makes me uncomfortable.
- getsat 11y agoThe lip smacking and semi-whispering is very annoying to me.
- kelvin0 11y agoHe is like the Bob Ross of fractals! Used to enjoy simply listening to the soothing voice of this PBS paint show host... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MghiBW3r65M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MghiBW3r65M
- joshuapants 11y agoOh great another site that ruins the OSX back gesture.
- QuantumRoar 11y agoThose were some of the most unsatisfying swipes I can remember.
- tomc1985 11y agoDoesn't work with my scroll wheel either
- Retr0spectrum 11y agoIt also ruins scrolling for me. I have to click and drag the scrollbar.
- kelsolaar 11y agoImpressive! The UI looks really user friendly and your video shows quite a nice panel of creative use cases, really keen on being able to play with that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- xenonysf 11y agoI want to 3D print with this. yes!
- mu_killnine 11y agoWonderful little demo, you can tell he's really explored the concept of fractal generation in great depth over the course of his development...it's incredible. It's interesting how similar the stimulation I get from his voice is compared to the visuals I am seeing in his demo. Tingles, everywhere...
- joejev 11y agoThe software looks awesome, the combination of your voice and the video was really soothing.
- amelius 11y agoThis is truly amazing. However, I can't help but wonder what the possible uses of this tool are (except for exploring fractals, and making fractal-art).
- vvpan 11y agoSo how does one learn to draw fractals? Any good resources I should check out?
- iammyIP 11y agohttp://www.fractalforums.com/ http://www.fractalforums.com/ could be a start
- elwin 11y agoThis site has some useful articles: http://hpdz.net/TechInfo.htm http://hpdz.net/TechInfo.htm
- DanBC 11y agoFractint was well respected software. It's very old but the source is available. I'm not sure what kind of licence the source is under - this was in the days when people called things "stone soup". The math is going to be easily portable. http://www.nahee.com/spanky/www/fractint/getting.html http://www.nahee.com/spanky/www/fractint/getting.html
- joshu 11y agoI can't select text? Blah
- yellowapple 11y agoWas it really necessary to implement your own scrollbar? It's absurdly slow (and therefore annoying) on Firefox/Conkeror, and seems entirely redundant when the browser handles scrolling perfectly fine.
- jeorgun 11y agoAlso, it seems to break swipe-left/right-to-nagivate-back/forward in Chrome and Safari. I was sure my touchpad was broken or something.
- darkstar999 11y agodon't mess with the scroll bar!!
- bloaf 11y agoI have a weird issue in Chrome where setting the video volume causes the page to scroll down until only the lower half of the video was visible. I am unable to scroll back up and have to refresh the page.
- tslocum 11y agoExperiencing the same issue... But boy is that scroll bar pretty /s
- daemin 11y agoI thought it was just broken for the scroll wheel on the mouse, and therefore if you had a fancy apple trackpad you could swipe easily and quickly through the content.
- pmontra 11y agoExactly. I was about to post the same comment. No advantages over the browser scrollbar, only some extra problems for the developer and the viewers.
- chriswarbo 11y agoI agree. All I saw was a "Blast! This video can’t be played with your current setup." message, and thought that was it. Up/down cursors and scrollwheel don't work. I just started clicking on elements randomly to see why on Earth this might have been upvoted. Eventually I somehow triggered the scrollbar to move down and saw that there was some text to read!
- eigenvalue 11y agoI can't but help to think there might be some commercial potential here-- it looks incredibly fun to play with. Perhaps a free web-app where you can pay to have animations rendered at high resolution server-side and then placed in a Dropbox folder for download. Or something that makes music videos by using audio information to control some of the fractal parameters during an animation.
- yesbabyyes 11y agoPerhaps you could seize the opportunity to train yourself not to look for a commercial value, or indeed, any value beyond it's inherent value. To me it's obvious that this has value in itself; and frankly, I'm surprised you don't appreciate that.
- coderdude 11y agoWhat's wrong with looking for commercial value? This community is heavily focused on startups, after all. Is the inherent value of 3D fractal art that it looks cool? I don't think that's lost on anyone here.
- yesbabyyes 11y agoIt's not that it's wrong, I just felt eigenvalue was so quick to jump to that, you know? And as you say, it's a startup community and so on, and sometimes that seems a little... One-dimensional to me. Part of it was actually probably my not-quite-conscious perception of eigenvalue's ideas as pretty unimaginative and lacking in potential. What about an immersive world where everything is a fractal and where all players can build new things? Everything is an algorithm with a few parameters and it's made real when you observe it. Now that's a billion dollar idea which might even be an estimation of the workings of the real world. :-) But, truthfully, it was mostly just a play on words and GPs username.
- biot 11y agoThat a person mentions a single dimension does not mean that they don't appreciate additional dimensions. Perhaps you could seize the opportunity to train yourself not to read too much into a few sentences? :)
- asurma 11y agoOculus Rift plz?
- ldom66 11y agoWow this is really, really impressive. Every little detail of the app and the rendering is finely designed and well thought of. There are even god rays and camera aperture settings. I would love to try it!
- jhund 11y agoI know I'm dating myself by posting this. Tom, the creator is associated with Kai Krause, creator of some cool graphics software a long time ago... http://kai.subblue.com/en/contact.html http://kai.subblue.com/en/contact.html
- aidos 11y agoOh wow! Sudden flashbacks of Kai's Power Tools plugin for Coral Draw...
- daveloyall 11y agoI've never heard of any of these people, but I have a strange impulse to buy some iOS app called Frax. ...Wait! No. No, I don't.
- jonah 11y agoYou should, I've played with it and it's quite amazing! Edit: Here is one of the other creators talking about it a bit more: http://kai.subblue.com/en/frax.html http://kai.subblue.com/en/frax.html
- daveloyall 11y agoI think you missed my point. I don't like advertising, and that whole website is a particularly nefarious form of it. "Buy FRAX! Douglas Adams would have!" Oh, ffs.
- frogpelt 11y agoWhat? I had to go back and see if we were looking at the same website. I don't think we were.
- danielvf 11y agoWhen I looked at the interface in the video, I was thinking that it looked like the Kai tools from back in the day. Not just the visual look, but the philosophy of "exploring", rather than "creating".
- ZeroFries 11y agoExploring these worlds via VR would be amazing. Exciting times ahead!
- ingomaro 11y ago"Bob Ross - The Joy Of Fractals"
- gavanwoolery 11y agoIf anybody is interested in how this stuff works, I highly recommend looking at: http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/menger/menger.htm http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/menger/menger.htm and many of the fractal examples at shadertoy.com
- gavanwoolery 11y agoAlso, before reading that you might want to read and study the associated shadertoy example in: http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfun... which covers distance functions.
- kpatterson 11y agoFirst off, awesome work. This is absolutely insane. Can't wait for the previews. I want to design my next game with all fractal art, and this might just be the golden tool.
- xixixao 11y agoThere aren't enough positive comments here. Damn this is so cool, technically rendering-wise, UX-wise, a great showcase... I love the video! Really hope the author releases the app, even if it isn't open sourced.
- DarkStarX1 11y agoJust amazing and a far cry from my adventures with Fractint and a i386 Math-Co back in the day.
- tjic 11y agoFirst person to use this tool to find a BLIT wins! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story)
- ntumlin 11y agoIt boggles my mind to think that this guy knows more about fractals than I could ever know there is to know about fractals. It's really interesting to me how people gain such deep knowledge of fields that I'll never scratch the surface of. Makes me wish I had more time.
- sneak 11y agoSHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY (His voice is wonderful though, so maybe KEEP TALKING AND TAKE MY MONEY.) I would pay $199 for this in a .app bundle instantly.
- aidos 11y agoIncredible. In the 90s we had rendering software that took about 10 minutes to general a single 2D fractal. I loved playing with it. When I went to university, as part of a course, we watched a video where someone had created animations by adjusting a single parameter of the (2D) fractal over time. They'd spent untold hours of processing time to generate the frames. It was magical because it helped to offer insights into how the parameters are tied to the shape of the structure. I seem to recall fractals that looked like they were slapping each other's hands. This is the first time I've really seen fractal software in the last 10-15 years. At university we talked about how it would exist one day, but damn, that's just incredible to see.
- isp 11y agoYou might like to try out Mandelbrot Maps. It allows real-time interactive exploration of the relationship between the Mandelbrot set and associated Julia sets. (There is a corresponding Julia set for each point on the Mandelbrot set, and some striking structural similarities.) Also, the images it produces are beautiful. :-) Disclaimer: I wrote the original version for my MSc project 7 years ago. Future students added further improvements in later years, including notably creating two Android apps. All versions are free and open source software. - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.ed.inf.mandelbrotmaps https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.ed.inf.m... - Android app port, by Alasdair Corbett - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.bunnies.fractalmaps https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.bunnies.fra... - Updated Android app (Fractal Maps), by Sky Welch - http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/mandelbrot-maps/ http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/mandelbrot-maps/ - Original Mandelbrot Maps (Java applet), by me - Wadler's blog: http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/fractal-maps.html http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/fractal-maps.html | http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/mandelbrot-and-julia-surprising.html http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/mandelbrot-and-julia-su... | http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/mandelbrot-maps.html http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/mandelbrot-maps.html
- mathgenius 11y agoIn the 80's I wrote pascal code on my 8088 box to generate mandelbrots. Would leave it running overnight, and excitedly jump out of bed in the morning to see what it produced. Four colour CGA awesomeness. Impressed the teachers at school, they had no idea what to make of it. (Unfortunately no girl ever kissed me because of my teenage fractal prowess.) My eyes are watering watching these new 3D creations.
- estefan 11y agoDude I expect you could easily sell that to movie studios or game studios to develop levels/scenes. 7:11 looks like the inside of an industrial building, or you could use it to develop organic looking assets, mystical scenery/mandalas, etc. I reckon you could definitely commercialise this.
- bluejoy 11y agoThis is absolutely amazing. I wonder what it takes to create something so brilliant single handedly, and that too as a hobby!
- supercoder 11y agoThis is amazing. The UI looks great, and of course the functionality is incredibly inspiring. Really look forward to the day when I can play around with it !
- markuswaltre 11y agothis is one of the most impressive demos i've watched in a while. can't wait for it to go live!
- bipin_nag 11y agoThis is awesome.
- doctorstupid 11y agoIt's so refreshing to hear someone speak in a calm and understated tone for a change.
- edwinjm 11y agoHe's the modern version of Bob Ross.
- bipin_nag 11y agoYou can create vivid unimaginable universes/superstructures with such detail just by changing some parameters. Planets, space stations, cities, forest, ocean, I can only say what else. The fractals I have seen in the video outnumber the unique sci-fi worlds in movies/games I have seen. I feel like a God who can create my own universe. Simply amazing. Just wow.