I have finally joined Twitter to see what all the fuss is about.
Hopefully it can be as productive an experience as blogging has been.
Jason.
Category Archives: Softology
Multi-threading support in Visions of Chaos
A long overdue and much requested feature in Visions of Chaos has been better support for multi core CPUs. Watching Visions of Chaos churn away calculating a long series of frames for a movie and only seeing one of your CPU cores in use can be frustrating.
Converting single threaded code into multi-threaded capable code is not exactly easy (depending on the algorithm some code is easier than others) but I have started converting some of the easier modes into multi-thread capable code.
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) was one of the modes in Visions of Chaos that really needed a speed up. See here and here for my previous experiments with SPH.
This next screenshot shows all the 12 cores of an i7 being used for calculating the SPH formulas. Note that the actual displaying of the particles cannot be parallel so there is not 100% CPU utilization. As the particle count goes up (and the time it takes to calculate the million particles moving takes longer than the display time) the CPU usage jumps closer to 100% on all cores.
After conversion to multi-CPU capable code it was time to render some new 4K resolution SPH simulations. Once the particles count and resolution goes up to fill a 4K screen the times start to plummet again, but seeing these in full 4K resolution is really nice. The parts in the following movie used 1,000,000 SPH particles each which is double my previous particle counts.
Other than SPH, the other modes that take advantage of the rewritten parallel processing code are 4D Cellular Automata, Coupled Cellular Automata 2, Ying-Yang Fire Cellular Automata, Large Neighborhood Totalistic Cellular Automata and Liquid Crystal Cellular Automata. The CA modes are the easiest to convert to parallel processing as by nature they update each cell independent of the others.
There is still a lot of code and modes that would benefit from parallel processing. Yet another entry on my ever expanding to do list of features for Visions of Chaos.
Jason.
Anagram Generator for Android
I have updated my old Anagram Generator app for new Android devices.
Features include;
Lexigram and anagram searching.
Word searching using wild card characters. Useful for crosswords and Scrabble.
Rhyming. Search for words that rhyme with a sepecified word. Good for song writers and poets.
Dictionaries supported are Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Download Anagram Generator from the Google Play Store here. 100% free and 100% ad free. No device access required for use.
Jason.
ADDLED updated and re-released
After some updates for the latest Android versions I have now released the latest version of ADDLED to the Play Store. ADDLED is 100% free and ad free.
The aim is to find a set of numbers that add up to a total value. Initially the levels are simple with just sums using positive numbers, but later levels give larger grid sizes and negatives, multiplication and division.
As the difficulty increases there are more strategies to implement to get through levels.
The levels are quick enough to fill in a few minutes when you have some spare time. There are 5000 total levels to keep you more than occupied.
If you think this is your sort of puzzle game, download ADDLED through the Google Play Store.
Jason.
Updated Visions of Chaos for Android
I have updated my Visions of Chaos for Android application to version 1.19. Click here to go directly to the Google Play Store page.
New features/fixes include;
1. Added more color palettes
2. Added more sample GLES shaders
3. Added Delete option to remove shaders that are incompatible with device
4. Fixed instabilities with pinch zooming
5. Fixed out of index bug that sometimes occurred with Buffalo Fractals
6. Fixed spinners’ dropdown text colors so they are more visible
7. Fixed bug in GLES shaders that date.w was passed as current second rather than seconds since midnight
I do recommend using a new high end Android phone or tablet. The shaders can crash older devices and general performance can be frustratingly slow on old phones.
All of the images on my Instagram gallery were created using the app.
Jason.
10 years on YouTube
Today marks 10 years since I started my YouTube channel.
Back then a video with a resolution of 240p (426×240 pixels) like the following was considered OK.
These days I can upload a 4K video (nine times the vertical and horizontal resolution of that 240p video) and once YouTube puts it through their internal conversion routines it will usually come out looking excellent.
Jason.
Visions of Chaos now supports the Mitsuba renderer
Mitsuba Renderer is a free 3D rendering engine created by Wenzel Jakob that creates realistic images like the following.
Wenzel is one of the co-authors of the seminal PBRT book, so he knows his stuff. Mitsuba uses an XML file format for the scene files that you can pass to the renderer as a command line parameter. This makes it easy for me to build a compatible XML file and get Mitsuba to render it each frame.
Here are some sample 4K images created with Visions of Chaos and rendered with Mitsuba using the constant lighting model. Constant lighting means that light is simulated hitting surfaces from all directions evenly. This means there are no shadows, but crevices within structures and corners are shaded darker because of ambient occlusion.
Using Mitsuba really gives clean, nicely shaded results and the examples above only using the most basic Mitsuba lighting/material setups. Mitsuba has handled the multi-gigabyte sized scene files with millions of spheres and/or cubes scenes with ease. All the end user needs to do is download/unzip Mitsuba and point Visions of Chaos to the main executable.
Jason.
64 bit Visions of Chaos now available
The latest version of Visions of Chaos now includes both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version. You will need to have a 64-bit version of Windows to use the 64-bit version, but if you still use a 32-bit version of Windows then the 32-bit version of Visions of Chaos will continue to work for you. If you are not sure what “bitness” (bititude?) your Windows is, press Windows-Pause and look next to “System type” on the dialog that appears. Both versions are included with the same install exe to avoid confusion and the 64-bit version only installs if you are running 64-bit Windows.
The main advantage of the 64-bit version over the 32-bit is that there is no longer a 3 GB memory limit. As screen sizes have increased the amount of memory that Visions of Chaos requires to render some of its modes at these higher resolutions was hitting the 32 bit application memory limits. 64-bit Visions of Chaos can now use as much memory as you have physically installed in your PC.
Jason.
The Burning Ship Fractal
The Burning Ship Fractal is a slight variant on the Mandelbrot Set Fractal.
The basic Mandelbrot Fractal formula is z=z^2+c. The Burning Ship Fractal formula is z=abs(z)^2+c.
The following image is the standard power 2 Burning Ship Fractal rendered using CPM smooth coloring.
Zooming in to the right antenna part of the fractal shows why it was named the Burning Ship.
The next 3 images change the exponent 2 in z=abs(z)^2+c to 3, 4 and 5.
The same power 2 through power 5 Burning Ships but this time using Triangle Inequality Average (TIA) coloring
The next 4K resolution movie shows a series of zooms into Burning Ship Fractals between power 2 and power 5 colored using CPM coloring
and finally another 4K movie showing more Burning Ship zooms colored using TIA coloring
All of the above images and movies were created with Visions of Chaos.
Jason.
Custom Formula Editor for Visions of Chaos
One of the features I have wanted to implement since the earliest versions of Visions of Chaos has been a formula editor and compiler so users can experiment with their own fractal formulas. This has also been requested many times from various users over the years. Now it is finally possible.
Rather than write my own formula parser and compiler I am using the OpenGL Shading Language. GLSL gvies faster results than any compiler I could code by hand and has an existing well documented syntax. The editor is a full color syntax editor with error highlighting.
As long as your graphics card GPU and drivers support OpenGL v4 and above you are good to go. Make sure that you have your video card drivers up to date. Old drivers can lead to poor performance and/or lack of support for new OpenGL features. In the past I have had outdated drivers produce corrupted display outputs and even hang the PC running GLSL shader code. Always make sure your video drivers are up to date.
For an HD image (1920×1080 resolution) a Mandelbrot fractal zoomed in at 19,000,000,000 x magnification took 36 seconds on CPU (Intel i7-4770) vs 6 seconds on GPU (GTX 750 Ti). A 4K Mandelbrot image (3840×2160 resolution) at 12,000,000,000 x magnification took 2 minutes and 3 seconds on CPU (Intel i7-6800) and 2.5 seconds on GPU (GTX 1080). The ability to quickly render 8K res images for dual monitor 4K displays in seconds is really nice. Zooming into a Mandelbrot with minimal delays for image redraws really increases the fluidity of exploration.
So far I have included the following fractal formulas with the new Visions of Chaos. All of these sample images can be clicked to open full 4K resolution images.
Buffalo Fractal Power 2
Buffalo Fractal Power 3
Buffalo Fractal Power 4
Buffalo Fractal Power 5
Burning Ship Fractal Power 2
Burning Ship Fractal Power 3
Burning Ship Fractal Power 4
Burning Ship Fractal Power 5
Celtic Buffalo Fractal Power 4 Mandelbar
Celtic Buffalo Fractal Power 5 Mandelbar
Celtic Burning Ship Fractal Power 4
Celtic Mandelbar Fractal Power 2
Celtic Mandelbrot Fractal Power 2
Celtic Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 2
Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 2
Lyapunov Fractals
Magnetic Pendulum
Mandelbar (Tricorn) Fractal Power 2
Mandelbar Fractal Power 3
Mandelbar Fractal Power 3 Diagonal
Mandelbar Fractal Power 4
Mandelbar Fractal Power 5 Horizontal
Mandelbar Fractal Power 5 Vertical
Mandelbrot Fractal Power 2
Mandelbrot Fractal Power 3
Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4
Mandelbrot Fractal Power 5
Partial Buffalo Fractal Power 3 Imaginary
Partial Buffalo Fractal Power 3 Real Celtic
Partial Buffalo Fractal Power 4 Imaginary
Partial Burning Ship Fractal Power 3 Imageinary
Partial Burning Ship Fractal Power 3 Real
Partial Burning Ship Fractal Power 4 Imageinary
Partial Burning Ship Fractal Power 4 Real
Partial Burning Ship Fractal Power 5
Partial Burning Ship Fractal Power 5 Mandelbar
Partial Celtic Buffalo Fractal Power 4 Real
Partial Celtic Buffalo Fractal Power 5
Partial Celtic Burning Ship Fractal Power 4 Imaginary
Partial Celtic Burning Ship Fractal Power 4 Real
Partial Celtic Burning Ship Fractal Power 4 Real Mandelbar
Perpendicular Buffalo Fractal Power 2
Perpendicular Burning Ship Fractal Power 2
Perpendicular Celtic Mandelbar Fractal Power 2
Perpendicular Mandelbrot Fractal Power 2
Quasi Burning Ship Fractal Power 3
Quasi Burning Ship Fractal Power 5 Hybrid
Quasi Celtic Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 Real
Quasi Celtic Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 False
Quasi Celtic Perpendicular Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 False
Quasi Celtic Perpendicular Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 Real
Quasi Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 3
Quasi Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 Real
Quasi Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 False
Quasi Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 5
Quasi Perpendicular Burning Ship Fractal Power 3
Quasi Perpendicular Burning Ship Fractal Power 4 Real
Quasi Perpendicular Celtic Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 Imaginary
Quasi Perpendicular Heart Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 Imaginary
Quasi Perpendicular Mandelbrot Fractal Power 4 False
Quasi Perpendicular Mandelbrot Fractal Power 5
A lot of the above formulas came from these summaries stardust4ever created.
All of these new custom fractals are fully zoomable to the limit of double precision floating point variables (around 1,000,000,000,000 magnification in Visions of Chaos). The formula compiler is fully supported for movie scripts so you can make your own movies zooming into these new fractals.
This next sample movie is 4K resolution at 60 fps. Each pixel was supersampled as the average of 4 subpixels. This took only a few hours to render. The resulting Xvid AVI was 30 GB before uploading to YouTube.
So, if you have been waiting to program your own fractal formulas in Visions of Chaos you now can. I look forward to seeing the custom fractal formulas Visions of Chaos users create. If you do not understand the OpenGL shading language you can still have fun with all the default sample fractal formulas above without doing any coding.
Jason.
Softology's Blog 