mightymandel v16

GPU-based Mandelbrot set explorer

BUGS

Distance Estimator

  • overflows double beyond ~1e-145
  • goes wrong beyond ~1e-55
    • test case down-the-rabbit-hole.mm (too light)
  • not possible to switch between --de and --no-de at runtime
  • occasional NaNs with fp32 at low zoom
    • test case examples/mm/fp32-nan-de.mm
  • --no-de gives visible seams with tiled rendering
    no-de-seam-1
    no-de-seam-2
    no-de-seam-3

Glitch Correction

  • bad glitches without --no-approx
    • test case zoom into emndl_perturbation_test_2013-06-14.mm
  • warn: delta(z)_0 == 0, rendering will probably fail
    • all pixels have the same delta(z)_0, insufficient precision in double
    • leads to bad images
  • --no-glitch gives minor visible seams with tiled rendering

Parsers

  • parse_ppar_corners() uses a fixed precision (256 bits)
  • parsers assume ASCII (or other 8bit encoding)
  • parsers don't check success of mpfr_set_str()
  • parsers should use strtod() instead of atof() to be able to detect errors
  • fractint .gif parser doesn't read extended precision metadata

Other

  • if image is 100% interior, it will never finish rendering. possible algorithm to check this case before starting rendering:
    • first exclude problematic corner points
      • boundary points exactly representable as binary floating point
      • perhaps just exclude real axis and +/- i, are there others?
      • maybe perturb points if this is the case (make rectangle 0.5px smaller?)
    • for each corner, check if it is interior
      • if all corners are interior to the same component
        • if shape estimate of component is cardioid (non-convex)
          • (*) calculate interior distance estimates for each point
          • if there are any regions not excluded by the distance estimates
            • compute the interior|exterior distance estimate for a point in the middle of such a regions
            • if interior and same component, exclude another region and goto (*)
            • otherwise rectangle has exterior points and it's safe to render
        • else rectangle is 100% interior to a convex circular bulb might be easier to check a region in a previous frame, at least for --interactive and --zoom. for --tile perhaps render a small preview of the view to check interior tiles. --timeout mitigates the problem somewhat.
  • render.c has a hardcoded maximum period (100000) for finding the first reference
  • render.c has a hardcoded maximum pass count (1000) for number of references
  • test suite assumes example parameters are in directories matching extension
  • need a way to turn view radius into zoom frame count
  • need a way to render a subsection of a zoom sequence
    • perhaps start radius / end radius, which are rounded outwards to 2^n values
  • timeout calculations are broken if a render is stopped and restarted with ctrl-Z and later fg
  • extra/zoom needlessly uses double-size textures
  • extra/zoom needlessly uses two passes for cubic interpolation
  • extra/zoom needs to have window visible or it pauses rendering
  • --slice 0 saves unneeded reference orbit in fpxx_step.c, wasting system memory