Mikael H. Christensen released a new version of his excellent app called Fragmentarium — a free GPU based explorer of fractals and generative systems.

Changes in the bew version touch almost every aspect of the application:

• The 3D camera has been rewritten. Now it is a “first-person”, pinhole camera that can be controlled using a mouse and a keyboard. Camera view can now be saved together with other settings.
• A picture can be rendered in an arbitrary resolution now thanks to newly introduced tile based rendering.
• Preview is now possible: Fragmentarium will render to FBO with lower resolution.
• In addition to preview of the whole picture a tile preview was added for previewing part of high-resolution images.
• A simple experimental animation controller was added (without keyframes just yet).
• Presets can be stored now.
• New fractals: QuaternionMandelbrot4D, Ducks, NewMenger.
• The improved raytracer now features dithering, fog and new coloring schemes.

Here is e.g. a Quaternion Mandelbrot 4D fractal with Reflection:

And here is an animated morph of a perturbated Menger 4D, created by Mikael as well:

Fragmentarium is available for Windows and Mac and can be built on Linux from source code.

More on this topic:

• Mandelbulber 1.04 released with new fractal formulas
• Mandelbulber 1.02 adds volumetric lights
• Mandelbulber 0.99 brings 360 degrees panoramic views to 3D fractals
• Mandelbulber 0.98: a new formula and open file preview
• Fragmentarium: a new GPU-side generative art tool