Real Time Mandelbulb

Is it available for download (Linux version I mean) ? I didn't see a link.

I've posted the sources now here: http://drift.merseine.nu/~ld0d/tmp/ovr-mandelbox-0.1.tar.gz -- but beware, it's not exactly easy to set up.

Enjoy. Let me know if you have any success with it.

only problem i find is that is requires a pretty beafy computer i tried out the few demos they made for that one program and there was only one of the demos (the catacombs) that worked for me without dipping too low in the framerate.

For anyone wanting to enjoy the Reflectoids one a bit more but can't because their PC isn't beefy enough for a good framerate, I wanted to point out that after you fire it up, you can left click with the mouse and adjust some of the settings. Here's what I do to make it run very well on my GTX680:

iters: 9 (originally 11)
REFACTOR: 0 (originally 0.50)
REFITER: 1 (originally 3)

Then just left click mouse again outside the options to close it, and enjoy!

"ld0d" wrote:
I've posted the sources now here: http://drift.merseine.nu/~ld0d/tmp/ovr-mandelbox-0.1.tar.gz -- but beware, it's not exactly easy to set up.

Very nice, thanks, I'll keep you informed for sure. :)

I have only tried the boxsplorer and am so impressed with the concept I am trying VERY hard to not race out and buy a beefy graphics card. at the the moment I am stuck with a an I 7 and mobile 260M graphics solution. New job and higher income in the coming weeks. so may be it wont be that long a wait.

I had a thought the other day about optimising the rendering of these ray marchers.

There's a lot of blank space in the final image, which means that there's a corresponding amount of generated image being removed from the pre-distortion generated image.

So has anyone tried something like the following:

• Generate a texture containing only the post-distortion eye vectors?


• Render a closely clipped "eye mask" shaped piece of geometry.


• Pass the view matrix to the pixel shader, apply it to the sampled eye vectors to get the correct world space orientation.


• Perform the ray marching as usual using the transformed eye vectors :?:

The performance of these ray marchers is often limited by the marching through the scene so instead of rendering the full 1280x800 resolution this would save as much frame as there were pixels omitted from being marched.

"FluffyFreak" wrote:
I had a thought the other day about optimising the rendering of these ray marchers.

There's a lot of blank space in the final image, which means that there's a corresponding amount of generated image being removed from the pre-distortion generated image.

So has anyone tried something like the following:

• Generate a texture containing only the post-distortion eye vectors?


• Render a closely clipped "eye mask" shaped piece of geometry.


• Pass the view matrix to the pixel shader, apply it to the sampled eye vectors to get the correct world space orientation.


• Perform the ray marching as usual using the transformed eye vectors :?:

The performance of these ray marchers is often limited by the marching through the scene so instead of rendering the full 1280x800 resolution this would save as much frame as there were pixels omitted from being marched.

Indeed, in boxplorer2 I pre-distort the rays I'm marching so every march counts; there is no post-process step.
Not using pre-computed texture though:
I compute the ray from the x/y coordinate, apply barrel distortion and clip against radius from eye center.
Then transform for current view and march.
https://code.google.com/p/boxplorer2/source/browse/trunk/include/setup.inc#22
So, sadly, that performance gain was already taken :(

Ah interesting, so that's where the round viewport comes from.

Super awesome, i have no word to say what awesome it is