In case you think that the default speed is boring (it is quite slow, to make XaoS smooth on a slow computer) you may change it by pressing arrow up/down. But faster zooming is more expensive, so if the speed is too high you will see little but funny colorful blinking rectangles.
A
, play your favorite music, drink coffee and relax. I never
tried this but it should be really relaxing! Many pictures in the XaoS
gallery were discovered using the autopilot.
The autopilot also has some additional features. It turns back when the zoomed picture stops being interesting, and is able to spot when it's zoomed into a really boring part (or has reached the limit of floating point numbers) and restart zooming from the top.
On keys 1
to 5
are Mandelbrot sets of various power. The "normal"
Mandelbrot set is on key 1
.
On key 6
is a fractal called Newton. It is Newton's famous formula for finding roots.
On key 7
is the fourth ordered Newton fractal.
On key 8
is a fractal called Barnsley.
On key 9
is Barnsley's second fractal.
On key 0
is Barnsley's third fractal.
With keys SHIFT-A
you can display a fractal called octo. It is a fractal that Thomas
discovered in fractint.
With keys SHIFT-B
you can display a fractal called Phoenix. It is a very nice and quite famous fractal.
With keys SHIFT-C
you can display a fractal called Magnet. This fractal has quite a complex formula so it is
a bit slow.
With keys SHIFT-D
you can display the Magnet2 fractal.
The rest of the built-in fractals are accessible through an other menu, but you can still use the hotkeys.
On SHIFT-E
is a fractal called Triceratops found by Arpad.
On SHIFT-F
is a fractal called Catseye found by Arpad.
This is more interesting if you change the bailout value.
On SHIFT-G
is a fractal called Mandelbar. It was in
Gnofract4d, and they found it at:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MandelbarSet.html
On SHIFT-H
is the Lambda fractal.
On SHIFT-I
and SHIFT-J
are the Manowar
and Spider fractals, they were found by users of fractint.
(Scott Taylor or Lee Skinner)
It was on http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/
taylor_skinner_type.html
The next 3 fractals are famous classic fractals.
On SHIFT-K
is the Sierpinski Gasket.
You can change its shape by selecting another Julia seed.
(This is for technical reasons.)
On SHIFT-L
is the Sierpinski Carpet.
It's shape can also be changed by selecting another Julia seed.
On SHIFT-M
is the Koch Snowflake.
C
To see more about coloring modes, try the tutorial on Incoloring modes from the XaoS features overview.
Those cryptic names for coloring modes are mathematical formulae, where iter means number of iterations, real means real coordinate of last orbit, and imag means imaginary coordinate of last orbit.
F
.
You might also want to see the tutorial on Out-coloring modes from the XaoS features overview.
I
.
Like the coloring modes, planes have cryptic names. You guessed it, they're
mathematical formulae. Here mu
means coordinates in the normal
complex plane. If you have coordinates in 1/mu
plane, and you need
coordinates in the a complex plane (to calculate the Mandelbrot set) you
simply use the coordinates as mu. Lambda is another plane that can be
converted to mu using a similar formula.
In the Mandelbrot mode, you can get a corresponding Julia by moving the mouse
to an interesting point and pressing M
. To get back press M
again. Some fractals (Barnsley and phoenix) are already in their Julia
versions, because the Mandelbrot ones are boring. But by pressing M
in such fractal you should get the Mandelbrot version, and by choosing another
point as the base point and pressing M
again you should get a
completely different fractal. The most interesting points for Julia sets
are at the boundaries of the Mandelbrot set. Most of the Julias inside or
outside the set are boring.
J
and a small Julia set will be displayed in the top
left corner. Then move the mouse around with button 1 depressed, and the Julia
for the point the mouse is over will be automatically generated.
P
. XaoS will
automatically generate random palettes. Many of them look ugly, so
press P
again to get another one until you find one you like.
filter menu
or press E
.
Y
. In the truecolor modes you need
to enable the palette emulator filter first. This is done
via the E
key, or from the filter menu.
Press and hold arrow right
and wait until iterations are high enough.
This may slow down calculation much. To reduce number of iterations
press arrow left
.
.gif
images, you may change the resolution. This
can be done by pressing =
in the full screen drivers, or simply
by resizing the XaoS window.
This action is bit dangerous, because XaoS can crash during initialization if there is some problem with initialization; XaoS tries to initialize a new driver, and if it fails it attempts to return back to the original. Sometimes this is impossible, and all XaoS can do is terminate..