Fractal eXtremePlug-Ins
All of Fractal eXtreme's fractal formulae are supplied by plug-ins. This makes Fractal eXtreme easily extensible, both by Cygnus Software and by third parties. The Cygnus Software plug-ins may be freely distributed for use with Fractal eXtreme.

Currently all of the Cygnus Software plug-ins are distributed with the main installer. This includes 64-bit optimized plug-ins with the 64-bit installer. Additionally, there are some third party plug-ins, described at the bottom of this page, and available for download by clicking on the plug-in name.

Recent updates

April 2008:

The 2.000 release of Fractal eXtreme almost doubles the average speed of the 32-bit deep-zoom Mandelbrot calculations and the new 64-bit calculations can be up to five times faster than even the newly optimized 32-bit calculations!

March 19, 1998:
  • Improved Mandelbrot FPU calculations - 30-100% faster!
  • Improved Mandelbrot FPU cycle detection.
  • Added cycle detection to Mandelbrot deep-zoom calculations.
  • Improved and optimized cycle detection on other plug-ins.
All of the cycle detection improvements offer potentially unlimited speed improvement. On fractal images displaying part of the fractal interior, with high max-iterations settings, speed improvements of over twenty times have been measured. Unlike some fractal programs, the cycle detection is enabled for every single pixel, for maximum benefit, but is designed so that the overhead for cycle detection is minimal.

July 25, 1997:

  • The Misc1.dll plug-in, supporting six Barnsley formulae was released.
  • Deep zoom versions of most plug-ins were added, allowing virtually endless zooming!
  • Most plug-ins were optimized and run up to 100% faster!
  • The Mandelbrot Complex Power equation was added.
  • A serious bug in the Newton Complex equation was corrected.
  • Julia calcs were added to the hidden Mandelbrot formula.
  • Show calculation path now works for Newton and Hidden Mandelbrot.

Cygnus Software Plug-Ins

Misc1.dll - New!
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
Barnsley1 7200 Yes
Barnsley2 7200 Yes
Barnsley3 7200 Yes

Mandelbrot.dll
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
Mandelbrot 7200 Yes

MandN.dll
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
Mandelbrot Cubed 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Fourth 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Fifth 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Sixth 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Seventh 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Eighth 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Ninth 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Tenth 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Arbitrary Power 7200 Yes
Mandelbrot Complex Power - New! 7200 Yes

Newton.dll
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
Classic Newton 47 No
Complex Newton 47 No
Nova 47 Yes

AutoQuad.dll
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
AutoQuad 7200 No

DistortMand1.dll
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
Hidden Mandelbrot 7200 Yes




Third Party Plug-Ins

fxAbsMand - by Jeremy Thomson - added March 2012
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
Burning Ship 7200 Yes
Buffalo 7200 Yes
Celtic Mandelbrot 7200 Yes

To find other plugins it may be worthwhile visiting fractal forums where they discuss such things.

iGeometry.dll - by Ian Smith
Sample Formula Max Zooms Julia
Sierpinskis Triangle 47 No
Four Recursive Circles 25 No
Apollonian Packed Circles 25 No



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