Fractal eXtreme lets you calculate fractal zoom movies quickly, by calculating key frames and letting Fractal eXtreme 's Movie Player create the intermediate frames at playback time. The results, crudely simulated here with this animated GIF, can be quite spectacular. And, by using the zoom movie plugin you can put spectacular zoom movies in web pages. You can also convert these zoom moviess to .AVI format, for use in multi-media and other applications. For more information on zoom movies, go here.
Fractals have a reputation for being very computation intensive.
This reputation is well deserved. The fastest computers in the world can be brought to their knees if you zoom in far enough. Cygnus Software has spent hundreds of hours on the very important calculation routines to ensure that they run as fast as possible. The result is that Fractal eXtreme 's Mandelbrot calculation routines typically run two to three times faster than any other fractal programs we've seen. Fractal eXtreme features an automated explore function that randomly tunnels down into interesting parts of fractals.