Dave's Mandelbrot Fractal Generator

My name is David Lindsay, and I am a second year student reading Computer Science & Mathematics at Royal Holloway University of London. I created this Mandelbrot fractal generator as an extension to my first year essay entitiled "Fractals and the Mandelbrot Set".

To use my Mandelbrot fractal generator applet click on the appropriate link below :
 
1. Internet Explorer users please use the IE version of my Mandelbrot Fractal generator
2. Netscape users please click on the link to the Netscape version of my Mandelbrot Fractal Generator.

WARNING! Java is a slow but sturdy, interpreted programming language. The effect of this means that the applet (fractal program) may be quite slow, in creating and updating images. Please appreciate, that each time that you click to zoom, or change the settings, the computer must make many thousands of calculations, to generate the new image. If it becomes too unbearable to wait for, you can always minimise the web browser window to let it do the calculations in the background, whilst you do something else!

For more in depth information about how to use this program, please visit my user guide, or alternitively look further down the page to see an overview of the basic controls. For a general overview on the subject of fractals and the Mandelbrot set, feel free to look at an web based version of my first year essay.

Note: you will need a java enabled browser to view this applet. These images are best viewed in 800X600 resolution (or higher), with the colour pallete of your computer set to 24 bit colour (or higher) to fully appreciate the colours in the image. I find that the applet seems to perform quicker using Internet Explorer, but it will still work with Netscape.

Basic Controls

Left clicking the mouse pointer on an area of the image will zoom by the specified "ZOOM" factor into the picture, and conversely right clicking will zoom back out of the image.

This web page is designed for a mathematic audience, therefore if you do not want ot get bogged down with the math that is going on behind the scenes, try selecting some of my default images combo box in the main menu such as "stars" and "twister", with the different colour-schemes.

Some demonstrations of possible combinations of default images and colour-schemes are shown below!
 
Twister on 512 Colours
Sian on 512 Colours
 Stars on Green! Spirals on Inverse Red
Default image : "Twister" set on Inv 512 Colours 
Default image : "Sian" set on 512 Colours 
 Default image : "Stars" set on Green Default image : "Spirals" set on Inv Red

If you find any images that you think are worthy of being made one of the defaults feel free to email me the respective INIT_X, INIY_Y, STEP details of the image. For further information on how to record the information needed to generate your favourite image, please visit my user guide.