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Regions Guide

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Bradley Brown edited this page Aug 13, 2026 · 1 revision

Regions Guide — Coordinate Bookmarks

A region in Fracturing Fog is a saved view: center coordinates with full DD/QD limb fidelity, zoom factor, iteration count, fractal type, and optional preferred theme + bound saved-equation name.

Companion pages: User Index · Avalonia User Guide · Slideshow Guide

PLACEHOLDER — Region combo dropdown with built-ins above the divider and user saves below

A friendly tour

Think of regions as bookmarks for the fractal. You wander, you find a view you love, you press V to bookmark it, and from that moment on it appears in the Region dropdown forever. Pick it from any other session and you snap back to the exact same spot — same coordinates, same zoom, same iteration count, same fractal family.

Two kinds of regions live in that dropdown:

Kind Where they live Editable?
Built-in Baked into the app — Classic Full View, Seahorse Valley, Elephant Valley, Mini Mandelbrot, Period-3 Bulb, etc. no
Yours Anything you save with V. Stored as plain JSON under %APPDATA%\FracturingFog\regions.json. yes

Tip

Right-click the Region dropdown to sort: Default (built-ins first, then yours), or By Fractal Type (Mandelbrot bookmarks together, Julia bookmarks together, etc.). The setting persists per dropdown — toolbar and Floating Menu remember independently.

Worked example — "Bookmark something deep, come back tomorrow"

  1. Pan and zoom freely until you find a swirl that grabs you. Pay no attention to coordinates.
  2. Press V. A name prompt opens, pre-filled with something sensible like "Mandelbrot zoom 1.4e12".
  3. Change the name to anything you like — "the swirl above the spike" works.
  4. Hit OK.

Tomorrow:

  1. Launch the app. Open the Region dropdown.
  2. Pick your bookmark. The view snaps to the exact saved coordinates, with the same iteration count and fractal family.

Worked example — "Share a region with a friend"

  1. Open Floating Menu → Region Navigation → Exp… (Export).
  2. Pick a .json filename and save it. The file is text — a few KB.
  3. Email / DM / Discord that file to your friend.
  4. They open Floating Menu → Region Navigation → Imp… (Import) and pick the file. Done — the region appears in their Region dropdown like any other.

Important

Regions remember the fractal type too. If you bookmark a Julia view, picking that bookmark snaps you straight into Julia — you do not need to switch the Type dropdown first.

Worked example — "Paste a precise coordinate from a friend"

When deep-zoom enthusiasts swap coordinates online, they paste pipe-separated limbs like:

-0.7548776661778 | 1.2e-17 | 0 | 0

Those four numbers are the high-precision representation of one axis. Fracturing Fog reads them natively:

  1. Open Floating Menu → Region Navigation.
  2. Click into the CX textbox and paste the line above. Repeat for CY with the imaginary half.
  3. Type your zoom into Zoom and your iteration count into Iter.
  4. Click Go. The view jumps.

Now press V to bookmark it so you do not have to paste again next time.

Table of Contents

  1. Why Regions
  2. Built-in vs User Regions
  3. Save Workflow
  4. Apply Workflow
  5. Sort + Filter
  6. Export + Import
  7. JSON Schema
  8. Pipe-Separated Limb Format
  9. Slideshow Integration
  10. Tips

1. Why Regions

Manual pan + zoom + iter tuning to reach a memorable view takes minutes. Pasting the coordinates back later only works if you've recorded them at full precision — at zoom 10²⁵ a double-precision (x, y) is already inadequate.

Regions solve this by capturing every input the renderer needs, with extended-precision limbs preserved as-is, so re-applying a region is bit-exact.

2. Built-in vs User Regions

Category Source Editable?
Built-in Baked into <install>\Resources\Regions\, ships with the EXE No
User %APPDATA%\FracturingFog\regions.json Yes

The built-in tour covers cardioid valley, period bulbs (2 / 3 / 4 / 5), seahorse valley, elephant valley, double-spirals, the antenna, multiple mini-Mandelbrots, and several deep-zoom showpieces (e.g., a 1e25 location demonstrating QD math).

Applying a built-in works; deleting one does not — the Delete button only acts on user entries.

3. Save Workflow

  1. Pan / zoom / type-switch to the view you want.
  2. Press V, or click Floating Menu → Region Navigation → Save.
  3. The name prompt opens, pre-filled with a suggested name based on the active fractal + region area.
  4. Type a final name and confirm.
  5. If the name already exists in the user library, an overwrite confirmation prompt appears (added in v0.6.2). Confirm to replace, Cancel to back out.
  6. The new region appears in every region combo (toolbar + menu).

Auto-captured fields:

  • Center coordinates (Hi + 3 low limbs per axis when DD/QD precision is engaged)
  • Zoom
  • Iterations (current or locked)
  • Fractal type
  • Theme name (if a non-default theme is active)
  • Bound Sandbox / User Equation / User Bulb entry name (if applicable)

4. Apply Workflow

Selecting a region in any combo (toolbar OR menu):

  1. Pauses any in-flight calculation.
  2. Mutates the view state in place: pan/zoom anchored at the saved coordinate (full precision restored), iter count snapped to the saved value, fractal type re-selected if it differs.
  3. Re-applies the recorded theme if one is stored AND the corresponding Lock checkbox in Post-FX is OFF.
  4. Re-applies any bound saved equation (Sandbox / User Equation / User Bulb) by name. If the bound entry has been deleted, the engine falls back to the currently-loaded source — no error.
  5. Triggers a full-quality re-render.

The Slideshow engine uses the same Apply path under the hood — there is no separate ""slideshow region"" type.

5. Sort + Filter

Right-click any Region combo (toolbar OR menu) for the sort menu:

Item Effect
Default Built-ins first, then user regions, original declared order
By Fractal Type → <type> Filter to regions whose stored type matches <type>

A non-selectable — select region — header is injected at the top of the filtered list — picking it has no effect (the VM filters em-dash-prefixed entries from selection handling).

6. Export + Import

Export

Floating Menu → Region Navigation → Exp… opens a Save File dialog. The exported JSON contains your entire user region library (built-ins are not exported — they're already in the recipient's EXE).

Import

Floating Menu → Region Navigation → Imp… opens an Open File dialog and merges the loaded regions into your library.

Name-collision handling (per-entry prompt):

Action Effect
Skip Keep your existing entry; discard the import
Overwrite Replace your entry with the imported version
Rename Append a numeric suffix to the imported entry's name
Skip All / Overwrite All Apply the choice to remaining collisions silently

7. JSON Schema

Each entry in regions.json is a single Region object:

{
  "name": "Seahorse Valley Deep",
  "type": "Mandelbrot",

  "centerXHi": -0.7548409391432949,
  "centerXLo1": 1.2e-17,
  "centerXLo2": 0.0,
  "centerXLo3": 0.0,

  "centerYHi": 0.05716936067717272,
  "centerYLo1": -3.4e-18,
  "centerYLo2": 0.0,
  "centerYLo3": 0.0,

  "zoom": 1.2e15,
  "iterations": 8192,
  "quality": "Ultra",

  "themeName": "Inferno Cycling",

  "sandboxName": null,
  "userEquationName": null,
  "userBulbName": null,

  "notes": "Deep dive into the central seahorse — see ridges around the spiral arm",
  "isExtreme": false
}

Field rules:

Field Required? Notes
name Yes Must be unique within the file
type Yes Mirrors FractalType enum (case-sensitive)
centerXHi / centerYHi Yes Standard double precision
centerXLo1..3 / centerYLo1..3 No (default 0) DD low limb + QD extra limbs
zoom Yes Double; scientific notation accepted
iterations Yes Integer ≥ 64
quality No Suggested preset; falls back to current
themeName No Preferred theme
sandboxName / userEquationName / userBulbName No Bound saved-equation reference
notes No Free-form
isExtreme No True = filtered out when Include extreme regions is off

JSON is indented (System.Text.Json) — easy to diff and share. Field omission follows WhenWritingNull so null values disappear from the file entirely.

8. Pipe-Separated Limb Format

The CX / CY textboxes accept a special pipe-separated limb format for paste-back of high-precision coordinates without loss:

-0.7548409391432949 | 1.2e-17 | 0 | 0
Limb Position Meaning
1 Hi Standard double
2 Lo₁ DD low word (~10⁻¹⁶ of Hi)
3 Lo₂ QD second extra limb
4 Lo₃ QD third extra limb

Single-double paste-back drops the low limbs. Three- or four-limb paste-back round-trips DD / QD precision so a region saved at zoom 10²⁵ can be reproduced bit-exact across machines.

The Floating Menu's Copy button emits the limb format for CX and CY, plain values for Zoom and Iter.

9. Slideshow Integration

Slideshow Settings exposes two region-affecting controls:

Setting Effect
Beats per Region How many beats / seconds before the next region applies. Set to 0 to lock the active region.
Include extreme regions When off, regions with isExtreme: true are skipped during slideshow rotation

Shift+click the Slideshow button is a shortcut for ""lock the current region"" — equivalent to setting Beats per Region = 0 for the current session.

10. Tips

Use descriptive names. ""Seahorse Valley Deep"" beats ""DeepZoom27"" two weeks later.

Group with categories. The notes field is free-form — prefix with [Demo], [Showcase], [Bug] to filter by hand later.

Save before exploring. Pan + zoom doesn't undo. Save the current view as a region before chasing a new direction — if you lose the spot, the region is still in the library.

Edit JSON by hand. The file is plain JSON. Tweaking a stored zoom, iteration count, or theme name in your editor of choice and re-launching the shell picks up the change. Reload from the Floating Menu pulls the file without a restart.

Don't manually edit the limbs. The Lo₁/Lo₂/Lo₃ fields are arithmetic residuals. Editing one value without the others produces a non-normalized DD/QD number that may render as visual noise.

Pair regions with bound equations. If your view depends on a Sandbox or User Equation entry, save the region while that entry is active so the binding is captured. Sharing the region JSON + the equation JSON gives the recipient a one-click reproduction.

Use isExtreme for >10²⁰ zooms. Set this field by hand-editing JSON for regions you don't want appearing in casual slideshow rotation — the calmer rotation makes for a better demo.

Slideshow region filter applies to user regions too. A user region with isExtreme: true will be filtered just like a built-in extreme region. Useful for keeping your library tidy without removing the entry.

Regions Guide · Fracturing Fog · © 2026

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