DEFract 0.5 - 3D fractal explorer. Now with GUI!

[Patalo]

Is this a dead project? NOPE!!!! just sleepin'.

Well, the first post is updated with the new version.

• It includes a GUI made with Quickie by vrld (god, I got the basic controls of the parameters of the fractals in 15min. Quickie is awesome). You can easily play with the parameters now
• It has a small update on the rendering, now it adapts itself with the distance (near a surface, this surface quality is better). (It's faaaar from perfect)
• No more canvases.
• HUUUUUGE refactorisation (almost all lua code rewritten)

I broke my old computer and bought a new one, which is much more powerful. So DEFract might now be scaled for better computers. Sorry about that. (moreover I didn't integrated screen resolution controls yet )

Immediate future plans are : new shading options (fog and raytraced soft shadows, yeah baby. Not sure I'll managed to do it) and MIDI controls (only planed on Linux with ALSA). Maybe coloring options, but it will be difficult.

As always, it might not run, lag, crash your computer... sorry, I will do anything I can.

Have fun!

[Lafolie]

My crappy graphics card isn't liking this new version. I'll switch up to my better one when I get the chance. It ran but dropped to 1 fps and never recovered. For a benchmark:

2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo
8GB 1067Mhz DDR3
GeForce 9400M GPU
OS X 10.6.8

What I could see looked good though! Trippy backgrounds still get my vote.

[Nixola]

Great, I got a new PC just 4 days ago!
It runs fine, almost 30 FPS (on a GTX560), but every second or so everything resets, except the selected fractal and its colors, if Psychedelic is active... camera position and rotation, number of iterations, everything...

[coffee]

I'm quite excited to present my work.

This time my machine didn't get excited at all but in stress. It starts at 2fps. And once I try to mouse/arrow key becomes irresponsible. Your exploration went too far for my machine. But that screenshots looking wonderful anyway.
Maybe still left a version of pre-gui version (that worked well here) for weaker cpu/gfx machines could be a thought.

EDITED: I noticed now Lafolie config and problems. Almost same config (half memory here but better CPU), almost same results.

[Patalo]

Matter of fact, I don't think the new version is really worse in term of performance since the shader code is almost the same, it's more the default settings that are causing troubles.
The only thing that could make it run slower is that there is more extern variables in the shader's code. Maybe the gui does something, but your problems also seems to appear when it's not active.
I'll try to benchmark on my roomate's laptop, hopefully I will be able to propose different presets in order to make it run on more different computers (it should be easier than before with the last refacto), thanks for your feedback

Great, I got a new PC just 4 days ago!
It runs fine, almost 30 FPS (on a GTX560), but every second or so everything resets, except the selected fractal and its colors, if Psychedelic is active... camera position and rotation, number of iterations, everything...

Hey, great way to stress a new config
Strange problem you have, even stranger that it only happens with psychedelics colors. I'll investigate. (I try to monitor file change and reload it when there is one. It might be a bug in there). What is your OS?

[Nixola]

Wait, I didn't say that it happens only with psychedelic colors, I only said that if they're active they don't reset; everything else still resets without them, I'm on Windows 7 x64

[mickeyjm]

Wheres the download?
All I can find is an outdated version on github

[Nixola]

It's not outdated, that's the download

[Patalo]

Wait, I didn't say that it happens only with psychedelic colors, I only said that if they're active they don't reset; everything else still resets without them, I'm on Windows 7 x64

Oh ok. I will look at it.

Wheres the download?
All I can find is an outdated version on github

I was about to say "I uploaded it on the first post". But no. I forgot. Doing it right now.

[Patalo]

@Nixola : I couldn't reproduce the issue, even on windows. Well, I added a button to switch off auto-reload (which was probably causing troubles.), should be alright (and I didn't forgot to reupload it!)