What you'll see on the screen

This is it! The main window. It has the picture, of course, and a floating control panel.

The Picture

You can choose 320x240, 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768 pixels, selectable from the Size of picture button, on the Control Panel.

Control panel

The Control Panel can be dragged around the screen, but it cannot be dropped on itself. The controls are explained below.

Picture Progress: A blue progress bar shows how much of the picture has been completed, and there are buttons to Pause, Stop or Redraw the current picture.

Hide/Show advanced controls: Rolls up or rolls down the Control panel. Roll it up to see more of your picture, roll it down to access the controls.

Show me:

If you are lost in zooming, click the Top Set button for the full fractal set.

If you are new to FracRove, click Some sample areas for ready made places to explore. You'll also find samples in the coordinate files.

If you know about fractals and their coordinates click on Coordinates of picture to see or modify the present picture.

A map to explore is enabled when you are exploring Julia Sets or other slices of the fractal.

Colouring the picture: You can change the palette, or the picture coding system.

Picture values: You can choose the picture size, and generation method from Iteration level, Size of picture, and Generation by...

User Level sets the features you can use. Manipulating aspects of a 4D fractal object is a complex job, so I divided FracRove into sets of features that introduce you slowly up to Slicing the beats to produce 3D cross-sections of the 4d object. Only Advanced, Genius, and Magus levels are available in this release (3.0).

Explore Fractal: Choose one of the preset fractal objects for exploration. This release (3.0) offers only the z2, z3, and z4 Mandelbrots Sets. I'll add more when I get the time.

Explore slice: These are 2D cross-sections (called a Slice in FracRove) of a 4D object. You can select a slice for exploration from this dialog.

Dimension Pusher: This sets the step, at Genius level, for each time you press a Dimension Pusher button. It can be 0.1, 0.01, or 0.001.

Magnification: Shows how deep you are in the fractal object you are exploring. The value is a linear measure, that is a Magnification of 100 means you would need to put 100 screens top-to-bottom to show the full object. Some areas are rich in variation, but some simply show the same features no matter how deep you explore. This is called self-similarity and is a feature of fractal objects.

Make a tile: Not available in this release (3.0).

Move to adjacent area: Use this to generate a picture of a bordering area. You can use this to make large and detailed pictures of an area. Print out the centre and all the adjacent areas and cut and paste the pictures together. You could paper an entire wall with such pictures

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