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Julia Meets HTML5

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the keep-on-zooming dept.

mikejuk writes "Google labs has created a demo web page where fractals combine with HTML5 to give a fully interactive viewer that uses nothing but JavaScript and as many cores as you care to offer it and not a plug-in in sight."

16 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. The article is on a webpage. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    So why not hyperlink "Julia sets" to something telling us wtf a Julia set is?

    1. Re:The article is on a webpage. by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sorry, this is "News For Nerds." Nerds know what a Julia set is.

      --
      Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
    2. Re:The article is on a webpage. by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 2

      And how to spell it in a headline.

      --
      Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
  2. Link missing from summary. by Kagura · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here's the link to Google Labs' . Also, there's an obvious typo in the summary title. I'm unhappy with Slashdot lately.

  3. Who? by DeathSquid · · Score: 2

    "Google labs has created"... I think not. Actually I suspect talented people have created. How about their names?

    Or have they been totally borged?

    People create. Corporations monetize.

  4. Re:html5 by MosX · · Score: 5, Informative

    The canvas tag is a part of the HTML5 spec. So it is an HTML5 application.

  5. Why is this surprising? by slim · · Score: 2

    It's nice, although not as quick as all that on my machine.

    But what does this demonstrate? Anyone interested knows you can display arbitrary graphics using HTML5 canvas. Anyone with any sense knows you can calculate a view of a Julia set in Javascript. Add the two together, and it's inevitable that this demo would be possible.

    Now, how about using Web sockets to set up some kind of P2P network whereby if someone else is viewing the same region as you are, your machines collaborate on the calculations...

    1. Re:Why is this surprising? by jfengel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think the point is that Julia sets are compute-intensive, and they want to show off that "Modern browsers have optimized JavaScript execution up to the point where it is now possible to render in a browser fractals like Julia sets almost instantly" (to quote the web page rather than the freaking blog TFS linked to).

      The demo shows a count of "flops". It's hardly instant on my laptop (an elderly beast), and 20 megaflops isn't exactly making GPUs quake in their boots, but it implies that running Real Applications written in Javascript is a reasonable thing to do.

    2. Re:Why is this surprising? by Jahava · · Score: 2

      It's nice, although not as quick as all that on my machine.

      But what does this demonstrate? Anyone interested knows you can display arbitrary graphics using HTML5 canvas. Anyone with any sense knows you can calculate a view of a Julia set in Javascript. Add the two together, and it's inevitable that this demo would be possible.

      Now, how about using Web sockets to set up some kind of P2P network whereby if someone else is viewing the same region as you are, your machines collaborate on the calculations...

      That and the Mandelbrot / Julia sets are awesome to explore, and they can now be explored from your browser with no dependencies. Something doesn't have to demonstrate a new or innovative use of technology to be cool and worthwhile.

      But this demo not only performs a significant number of floating-point calculations. It also utilizes several system cores, demonstrating (once again) the viability of an HTML5-equipped browser as an application platform.

    3. Re:Why is this surprising? by DerekLyons · · Score: 2

      I think the point is that Julia sets are compute-intensive, and they want to show off that "Modern browsers have optimized JavaScript execution up to the point where it is now possible to render in a browser fractals like Julia sets almost instantly"

      Sure, if you're working at the top level (where it's not particulary compute intensive), but zoom down a few steps and it's suddenly as slow as molasses. (Slower than FRACTINT back on my old 386.)
       
      They make it look fast by limiting the number of iterations and by using a calculation method that draws a 'draft' version first and then goes back in and repeats the calculations (increasing the detail level) while you're going "ooh shiny" over the not very detailed 'draft'. They've taken a page from FRACTINT for that - this method was included in the program specifically as a method of quickly creating a low fidelity rendering so the user could quickly search for interesting locations that would then be re-examined using methods that were computationally intensive.
       
      I.E. it's a demo rigged to *look* spiffy and shiny, but if you have any actual under-the-hood knowledge you can see right through the smoke-and-mirrors.

  6. Ahhh fractal demos by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Informative

    One of the first things I ran on my shiny-new Commodore Amiga in 1985.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  7. An actual link by jfengel · · Score: 2

    Here's a wacky idea: a link that is (a) not slashdotted, and (b) not to a blog posting.

    Google Labs

  8. Re:J u i l i a ? by apetrelli · · Score: 2

    Julia would be "Giulia" in Italian. Juilia is plain wrong.

  9. Re:This takes me back... by slim · · Score: 2

    It takes me back to the old days, of my misspent youth, when we grabbed somebody's Postscript fractal generator demo, set the number of iterations to something dubiously suitable to even the desktops of the time(it worked; but took about ten minutes) and then sent it to every postscript-capable printer we could locate across our school's network...

    Hah. I once found a very short piece of Postscript which ray-traced a reflective sphere on a chess board. So I sent it to the office printer. I assumed I'd crashed it, but sure enough, 3 hours later, out pops the picture.

  10. Re:This takes me back... by Fnkmaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nothing quite like calculating and rendering fractals in Javascript to make your Core i7 feel like a Pentium 200.

  11. What? by Trogre · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Great, now I can render the Mandelbrot set on my dual-core 4800+ box nearly as fast as I could on my 386 with FractInt.

    I wish I was kidding, but if this is a representative demo of HTML5 then we're in trouble.

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife