Hello,

I've been enamoured by fractals for as long as I can remember and I am a frequent visitor to the fractal gallery. I download a lot of the images and I've set my screen saver to change my desktop background every minute so that My computer constantly has new fractal images for me to contemplate...

I'd love to be able to play with fractal generating software... I use Mac OSX and I am wondering if there is fractal software that runs on a mac. I admire tresamie's images very much and that gallery indicates Ultrafractal 3.0, which seems to be Windows only (though it doesn't say so anywhere) and I've also looked at Fractal Explorer, which is also Windows only.

Does anyone know of a Mac fractal generating programme?

Thanks!

sure there is a great software for your need. look for ArtMatic Pro this is a great stuff. have fun with it! greetings

Went to the product info pages for ArtMatic Pro, but found no references to fractals at all...?? It also looks like a huge basic art program, rather than a specific fractal prog. I'm looking for a program like MandelBrowser--but that's built to run on today's newer Macs (I have a flat panel iMac). Up til now, I've used just freeware, but I would be willing to pay for an easy-to-use fractal app---no entering mathmatics or obtuse interfaces, please. Anybody know of anything?

Hi Patricia, I know what you mean... Artmatic Pro looks really cool but it is expensive ($299 to $499 US) and it makes a lot of assumptions about one's math competencies. I may still get it but I was wondering if there was a Mac (especially OSX) compatible programme like Ultra Fractal.. or some such. Anyone else heard anything?

I post a long reply befor but it never get though I'll try later... Luc

I keep going back to good old free MandelBrowser, one of the first ones I stumbled across--it's easy to learn, requires no math competency and saves pictures to PICT format. But then I see the 3D fractals that apps like UltraFractal can do.....and I want an UltraFractal for the Mac....sigh. Luc, please do post again! I'll see it tomorrow AM (US Pacific Coast Time). Gotta be something out there somewhere.

Hi, Ok, second try. First all the PC generator I try run in VirtualPC ( Window95), I used that for long time until I got the money to buy a PC now I used both platform the pc to generate fractal and the Mac for PP and all the other stuff. The downside with VirtualPC is that Window frezze with some equations and renders ( only a few) and its slow. Near all the Mac generator run in the classic environnement except for 2 or 3 but you have classic on your mac, Im glad that some people developped fractal generator for mac but execpt for spangfract I never used them because of there limitations. Here are some link: http://Fractalarts.com/ASF/Download.html Check at the bottom of the page http://spanky.triumf.ca/pub/fractals/PROGRAMS/MAC/ http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/Fractal_Software.html http://fraktali.849pm.com/fracpromac.html For the MAC: FracPPC & Fractal Domains http://www.fractaldomains.com/ other MAC programs: http://66.39.71.195/Software/MAC/ http://www.arosmagic.com/Fractals/ http://www.lor-thil.dircon.co.uk/ http://hypertextbook.com/chaos/92.shtml http://spanky.triumf.ca/pub/fractals/programs/MAC/ http://archives.math.utk.edu/software/mac/fractals/ http://radagast.org/~dplatt/mac/ http://www.swin.edu.au/astronomy/pbourke/ Spangfract2.8B is an incredable generator not easy to use because its a beta and no documetation are avelable, this software start to make jalous in the PC user ;-) try the 2.8B version its more stable than the 2.8b play with it and slowly youll find your way around with it they are 2 link were you could DL it; http://home.cinci.rr.com/fractalman/Programs/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Spangfract/files/ There are a Yahoogoupe about this and David Spangler is a really nice guy. Cheers, Luc P.S. If you need nore info contact me.

Wow! Thanks for the info!

This is from the creator of Spangfract....wow,thanks Luc for your compliments. I just wanted to correct a little typo of Luc's. The current version is 1.8Bbeta, not 2.8Bbeta. I am currently working on cleaning up version 1.95 which is much easier to use and has more features,fewer bugs. Quick note, I am not using OS X, so it's a "classic" Mac program. It is free,though and should run fine on Mac OS 8 thru 9.22. I've been reluctant to do the documentation since it's been changing so much as I've learned more about the math/programming. These URLs are for Stuffit versions of the program itself. http://home.cinci.rr.com/fractalman/Programs/SpangFract1.8Bbeta.sit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Spangfract/files/SpangFract1.8Bbeta.sit

Lots of ports of UNIX programs are made to run on Mac OS X or MacOS X with XWindows for X (also by Apple...name's something like that, takes RAM....) See FOTD (fractal of the day!) for some amazing depth-first fractal fun and other reasons to buy your local university's math department pastry for a month of thursdays, hoping they will do an illuminating colloq. And program reccomendations, and ways to go searching for -the good stuff- (or """ you haven't seen before!) Let me know if there's no ports to Mac OS X yet. Fractalman, let us know what to do to encourage a port. I can probably help a bit.

Thank you all for all the info! I'm going to try some of the apps listed above and will also ask around the Mac community locally. I've never run windows-emulations programs, so I need to check up on them too. I dearly love fractals--they're totally addicting for me :))))

Hi Patricia, Maybe I am wrong in this, but my experience with Windows emulator programs (specifically Virtual PC 3, 4, and 5) is that they are slow, slow, slow. THey have all the disadvantages of working in a PC environment with significant disadvantages added in. I understand that VPC, and presumably programs like it, can be useful for situations in which one MUST run things like MS Access, or if one is sending MS Office files to old PCs running early versions of Windows (95, 98, etc) with old versions of MS Ofiice (97, or earlier). VPC can also be used if one is building websites and one wants to see how they will be drawn on different computers using older browsers etc. The point is, is that in my experience, VPC absolutely stinks when it can to anything even remotely multimedia. I found its performance using QuickTime movies for example to be really terrible, and this is on a G4 PowerBook maxed out on RAM. I guess I don't know for certain, but I would bet that running a Windows based fractal generator in the VPC shell would be awful. Does anyone have first hand experience with this? I would like to be wrong about this--I have VPC5 and I would be happy to upgrade that to version 6 if I had some reason to think I could run Ultrafractal...

Hi Ted, As I said I use VPC 3 and 4 Window95 virtual disk on an iMac OS 8.6 ( G3 333mHz, 384 mb ram ) It work, not fast for sure and some equations make window freeze. Most of the time I used Tierazon or Sterling because they are fast generators BUT every generator I tried work, even Xenodream and Ultrafractal 2.05 but I remembre I had a lot of problem with ChaosPro. In my opignon VPC will always be an emulator with all the disavantage of it, but it served me well, with it I produce around 500 fractal images posted on different NG. If you already have VPC 5, try the demo version of Ultrafractal 3 you'll see the performance... A little advice use a Window95 virtual disk in my experience it make a big difference in speed versus other version of Window ( 98, millenium or 2000) Now that I have both computer I can't live without one or the other... ;-) Cheers, Luc

Hi Luc, I'll try VPC5 with the UltraFractal demo. Do you mean to say that the Win95 virtual disk is Better than the Win2000? I have the 2000 disk with my copy of VPC though I could probaly dig up an old copy of 95 if I understand you correctly. I wonder why the 95 would be faster? Thanks again for the great info!

Hi Ted, Excuse me English it's not my natural language yes you understand me correctly in all my test window95 is the fastest OS with VPC probably because it use less resource. With a PC my favorite OS is 2000 but with VPC, 95 is really the fastest. Cheers, Luc