Fractice Mandelbrot deep zoom to 2^316 (bigger than the universe!)

This is an extremely deep dive into the Mandelbrot set, to 2^316 (binary). In decimal that's 1E+95, or 1 with 95 zeros after it. The coordinates are identical to a similar deep zoom movie posted to YouTube by user metafis, but my version has higher resolution (648x480), and was rendered with 2x antialiasing (four pixels computed for every output pixel). It also has an improved palette, similar to the one used by the Wikipedia Mandelbrot page. The uncompressed video looks better of course--fractals are close to the worst case for video compression--but H.264 does surprisingly well.

The video was rendered using my own fractal software, called Fractice, which supports distributed processing using a client/server architecture. The render took five months, using a cluster of up to 20 dual-core PCs on a LAN, all running the Fractice rendering server. The actual number of servers varied over the five-month period but averaged around 15. Rendering only occurred at night.

Fractice is a free, open-source fractal explorer/renderer for XP/Vista. It supports navigation, history thumbnails, previews, antialiasing, deep zoom, printing, posters, palettes, multicore and distributed processing, movie recording, undo/redo, color cycling, and job control. It also has VJ features, such as mixing, mirroring, origin motion, palette tweening, dual-monitor, and MIDI.

For more info and to download Fractice:
http://fractice.sourceforge.net

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Fractice
• Mandelbrot
• deep
• zoom
• fractal
• psychedelic

[YesIamJames]

Thankyou for making this available for free. I've got the demo version fractal extreme which does pretty much the same thing but it's locked at 2^100.

How does this compare for rendering time at deeper zooms?

[ckorda]

@YesIamJames Fractice is probably at least as fast, but comparisons are tricky. You already have FX on your computer so you could test this. Up to around 2^45, your CPU's floating-point hardware (SSE) works fine and it's plenty fast. Beyond that it's software only (deep zoom). That's at least 100x slower, and gets slower the further you zoom, because you need more bits for the same quality. Also Fractice doesn't guess, so you must disable FX's guessing option for a fair comparison.

[phillipanthony77]

Hello ckorda.

I was very interrested by this video and was wondering if you could send me a high resolution copy. I would really appreciate a response.

Thank you

[ckorda]

@phillipanthony77 The uncompressed original is 8.5GB, so the best I can offer is the MPEG2 version (308MB): search for "chris korda" over at archive.org and you'll find it.

[jesal21]

This would make one badass rug!! Very nicely done, and thanks for uploading this. Is it possible to upload this in HD format??

[ckorda]

@jesal21 @jesal21 This video took FIVE MONTHS to render on a cluster of up to *20* dual-core PCs. And that's just for 640x480 with 2x antialiasing. At that rate even low HD would take at least a year, assuming I could get my hands on that many computers again. The uncompressed original looks way better but it's 8.5GB, so the best I can offer is the MPEG2 version (a mere 308MB): search for chris korda over at archive.org.

[Bumsoft]

Just a bit of fun I've been having with my calculator if anyone's interested.. If the first frame is equivalent to looking at the observable universe then ~one minute in is looking at the size of the earth, ~one minute 25 seconds is looking at the size of a human being, and ~2 minutes 15 in is looking at the size of a proton. Madness..

[InnertainStudios]

good stuff

[DeathBYDesign666]

Just to clarify this is not bigger than the universe as we have no clue how big it actually is. I think the term you want is "visible universe". Great vid though makes me wish I had some shrooms to really enjoy it.

[dreinulleinssechs]

@phillipanthony77 u can also use CLIPCONVERTER.CC

and set the quality to AVI, it has xvid codec and u can pump up the bitrates. :)

[ashwadhwani]

Bigger than the 'known' universe

[YesIamJames]

@ckorda Yeah I noticed that it slowed down once the zoom got high but it's just as quick if not quicker at low zoom. Might check out your forums at some point.

[Logdotzip]

i watched the video for a while, looked away, everywhere else i look, seems like it's moving away from me, being pinched smaller