[CR] Mandelbrot Explorer

[CopperD]

Name: Mandelbrot Explorer

Submitter: CopperD

Submitted: 15 Feb 2016

Category: *Uncertified*

LabVIEW Version: Not Applicable

License Type: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Simple Mandelbrot explorer that I wrote a few years ago.

 

Features

Many predefined color pallets

Rolling color pallet to produce motion effect

Ability to customize the color pallet

Log color mapping

Keyboard or mouse control

Basic shortcut keys

Saving high res images

 

Needed improvements

Clustering to clean up code more

Save settings

 

Operation

Load project in LabVIEW 2015 32/64 bit

Start program using Mandelbrot Main.vi

Click here to download this file

Did I miss something then I uploaded the UI image? It is clipped along the right edge.

 

Also no selection for LV version above 2012. I rather not clutter my home machine with several versions. If needed I can spin up a VM and save for prior versions. The code is rather basic so should work going pretty far back. I think I originally did this in 2012 or 2011.

[Yair]

Nice. I like the rolling functionality. The performance seems decent, although noticeably slow when panning while rolling. I haven't analyzed it to see if it can be improved, although I'm assuming you would probably need to calculate each pixel each time anyway.

 

If you were inclined to modify it, I would suggest moving the image saving into an event (and use PNG) and probably to use mouse scrolling for zoom (added as an event in LV 2013) and mouse dragging (Mouse Down+Move) for panning, as that seems more natural.

[CopperD]

You'll never get a silky smooth pan once you start to zoom in so I didn't use the mouse drag.

 

I was planning on having the scroll wheel for zoom but didn't put it in. If you're saving large images it takes much less overhead to use bmp. I was using the netpbm format internally for drawing gigapixel images. A nice popup box for saving so you can select the format and size would be a great addition. The other feature I removed was creating frames from a starting point to an ending point so you can create a movie.

 

Optimizations

Don't redraw known points

Cardioid and Bulb Checking - Manly only good for low zoom. * In Buddhabrot generator

Divergence check - Is a point a repeating pattern. *In Buddhabrot generator

Border Tracing - If you can enclose an area with one color along the edge then the area insize must be the same color.

 

Other

Use BC or other arbitrary precision library once zoom reaches a certain level

 

 

The Buddhabrot generator is distributed across several 64 core machines. I'll clean up the code and produce a standalone one for release.