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Linux App of the day - XaoS

  • 24-11-2007 12:02PM
    #1
    hamster
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,766 ✭✭✭


    Hey Folks,

    I have been poking around some of extras apps available for ubuntu and one nice tool I came around is XaoS. This nifty thing is a cool fractal viewer and is one of the nicest I have come across.
    Quite small and installs by default in /usr/bin weighing only 652k - it handles quite a lot.
    Loading it the first time I got a lovely rendering of the classic Mandelbrot set - XaoS starts with this set in a transparent window. The version I'm looking at is 3.2 and the tutorials give you a clear idea of it's capability. A good substitute for fractint on the pc. Though it's hard to beat the dos version of the old reliable fractint. :)

    One nice feature is controling the no of iterations. The default is around 32. Using the left and right arrow keys you can reduce/increase this number and see the effect immediately on screen. For example at 2-15 you can make out how the mandelbrot shape is built.
    Left click zooms in and rightclick out. Middle mouse button allows you to drag it around in real time. Pretty cool. Very useful at high magnifications to drag around the fractal. I pushed the iterations up to 1000 zoomed in - and wow - it's amazing what a basic Pentium D-820 can do. Such raw power under the hood these day. This used to be so slow!
    You can use a cool autozoom mode and set the speed (up and down arrow) and turn on your favourite classic music and zoom in to over 625 Quadtrillion times before you reach the calculation limit.
    Color cycling is also available (like in fractint) and does a pretty good job! Forward slash key gives you stats on the current coord you are at and the area size you are looking at. At high mags - this info is breathtaking!
    There are many fractal types - the most famous are at a keypress such as 1,2,3.... and keys such as shift-a, e and so on. These hold the Julia set and others.
    Recommend you try it out if you haven't already. :)
    Actually if you came across any other cool toys like this - please let me know! :)

    fractals.png


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