The dilation symmetry inherent in random fractal models of natural phenomena such as mountains and clouds allows us to implement arbitrary level of detail when imaging a planet built from them. Arbitrary level of detail frees the viewer to roam, to move as close or as far from the planet as desired, without significant aliasing or loss of detail. The realism of these random planets provides a real sense of being there. The planets are not an end in themselves, but rather a context for content, from shopping malls to artificial ecosystems. When the technology matures to the point that the full non-real time realism is available in an immersive, interactive environment we will have cyberspace, the future of the Internet.
Similarity is taken modulo intensity shift and scaling.
The decoder recovers an image approximation from this self-referential description by iteration. A lot of effort has gone into getting the best performance out of this approach, and we will review the main streams of this work. Of particular interest are the optimization of the partition, reduction of the encoding complexity, and attractor coding. Some of our currently ongoing work addresses optimization of error protection for transmission of fractal codes in noisy channels and progressive fractal image coding. Some encouraging results have been found and will be reviewed here.