Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu!kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu!DAVISM
From: DAVISM@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu (Michael T. Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Excluding Mandelbrot set
Message-ID: <3544@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 89 02:44:56 GMT
Sender: news@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu
Organization: Ohio State University
Lines: 30


	I have written a program based primarily on the fractal generating
program from Douglas A. Young's X WINDOW SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS WITH XT.
This thing is unbearably slow, and our system programmer suggested figuring
out some way to determine if a given point is within the Mandelbrot set or
not, before actually running through some number of iterations.  I don't need
to know the distance from the origin, only whether or not the point is within
the Mandelbrot set or not.  The algorithm should amount to no more than a
simple check, something like the following:

	if (InMandelbrot(point(x,y)))
	    /*ignore*/
	else
	    /*calculate distance*/

The basic idea is to avoid running through the "maximum" number of iterations
for each point in the Mandelbrot set.  Is this possible, or alternately, is
there a more acceptable algorithm in terms of speed?

							Much obliged,
							    Mike

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