🚀 go-pugleaf

In article dejohnso%asylum.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (David Johnson) writes:
>>but I haven't read/heard of any work on exploring Fractals in 3 dimensions...

>It isn't clear what you mean by this - these fractal datasets are 3D, and
>any exploration of them (do you mean viewing of them) would be no different
>than any other dataset you could look at in a HMD.  The basic problem would 
>be that since fractals depend on a lot of detail for their beauty, you might
>
>If by explore you mean the creation and use of 3D fractal datasets, like
>I said, they are already 3D.  Although, some would be easier to use in
>today's VR equipment then others.  For example, clouds tend to be a "slice"
>of a 4D fractal, and are volumetric data whereas the mountains are surface
>representations and thus more amenable to display on a polygon-based
>graphics engine.

Sorry, I didn't make myself crystal clear...

I'm aware that fractals are three dimensional, but interacting them
with current programs (like Fractint) shows you one 2 dimensional image
at a time (for obvious reasons)...  

What I meant to say is that it would be nice to have a interface so
one can view fractals in three dimensions via a HMD.  I know how long
it can take to render even simplistic fractals (more than a second
on a Sparc 2)... So besides increasing CPU power, I'd guess that you
can decrease the amount of computation required by decreasing the
image quality (ie: resolution).  But then this is already done since 
HMD's don't have as high a resolution as most computer monitors...

I realize the image would have to be generated twice ... What I'm
wondering though is: would it be possible to get decent effects
by using a very low resolution and a simplistic fractal...

Also, since it takes quite a bit of development to create Virtual
Worlds ... this would seem to be a cheap and easy way to create
a three dimensional world...

Hope that was a bit clearer... As mentioned before I don't have a 
great deal of knowledge about fractals or HMDs...  Just thought
I'd spew this out and see what the net drags in and see if
it gets saluted, etc.. 
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