# Fracturing Fog — User Documentation Welcome. **Fracturing Fog** is a real-time fractal explorer for Windows (with cross-platform foundations). It lets you wander the famous *Mandelbrot set*, its many cousins, and your own custom equations — zoom in trillions of times, paint them with hundreds of colour themes, record videos, and even synchronise slideshows with music. This page is the entry point for end-user documentation. If you are a developer or contributor, head instead to the [Technical Index](../Technical/_Index.md). For a top-level router that bridges both audiences plus the project-wide roadmaps, see [Docs Index](../_Index.md). --- ## What is a fractal? A **fractal** is a shape made of patterns that keep repeating as you look closer. Coastlines, ferns, broccoli, lightning bolts, snowflakes — they are all fractal-like. Mathematical fractals push that idea to its logical extreme: their detail never runs out, no matter how deep you zoom. The most famous of all is the **Mandelbrot set**, defined in 1980 by Benoit Mandelbrot. Pick a point on the complex plane, run a tiny formula on it over and over, and ask: *does the result stay small, or does it run away to infinity?* The points where it stays small form an astonishingly intricate black silhouette. The points that escape are coloured by how *fast* they escape — and that gives you the rainbow halos you see in every Mandelbrot picture. ![Classic Mandelbrot set rendered with the default HSV palette at the home view (centre = (−0.5, 0), zoom = 1).](../Images/fractals/mandelbrot.png) If that already sparks curiosity, the rest of these guides will hand you the tools to wander as far as your imagination wants to take you. --- ## Where do I start? | If you want to… | Go to | |----------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------| | Get the lay of the land — every menu and button | [Avalonia User Guide](Avalonia-UserGuide.md) | | Save and recall favourite views | [Regions Guide](Regions-Guide.md) | | Take a screenshot, print a poster, or record a video | [Capture Guide](Capture-Guide.md) | | Run an automatic slideshow with music | [Slideshow + Audio-Reactive Guide](Slideshow-AudioReactive-Guide.md) | | Direct a cinematic Scene — timeline, flying camera, video | [Scene Engine Guide](SceneEngine-UserGuide.md) | | Recolour what you see, or invent a new palette | [Colour Theme Editor Guide](ColorThemeEditor-Guide.md) | | Write a one-line palette in a tiny domain language | [ColorGen User Guide](ColorGen-UserGuide.md) | | Write your own fractal formula in the equation DSL | [User Equation & DSL Guide + Cookbook](CalcGen-UserGuide.md) | | Explore Mandelbulb-style 3-D fractals | [User Bulb 3D Guide](UserBulb-Guide.md) | | Turn a 2-D fractal into lit relief or 3-D terrain (+ mesh export) | [Relief 3D Guide](Relief3D-Guide.md) + [Cookbook](Relief3D-Cookbook.md) | | Add god rays, cinematic fog, and volumetric clouds to 3-D scenes | [Volumetric Lighting Guide](Volumetric-Lighting-Guide.md) + [Cookbook](Volumetric-Lighting-Cookbook.md) | | Render on a powerful workstation, drive from a laptop | [Client / Server Guide](ClientServer-UserGuide.md) | | Configure the local render server | [Server Admin Guide](ServerAdmin-Guide.md) | | Stand up a multi-machine render cluster | [Distributed Rendering Guide](Distributed-UserGuide.md) | | Memorise the keyboard shortcuts | [Keyboard Shortcuts](Keyboard-Shortcuts.md) | --- ## A two-minute tour 1. **Launch the app.** Out of the box you are looking at the classic Mandelbrot set, centred on `(-0.5, 0)`. 2. **Roll the mouse wheel** over the picture. You zoom in (or out) anchored at the cursor. 3. **Left-click and drag** to pan. While dragging, the picture is fast and slightly fuzzy; when you let go it polishes itself in the background. 4. **Right-click and drag** to draw a rectangle. When you let go the view zooms straight to that rectangle. 5. **Pick a different family** from the *Type* combo in the toolbar — Julia, Burning Ship, Newton… 6. **Pick a different palette** from the *Theme* combo. There are over 200 built-in themes. 7. Hit **`M`** to bring up the Floating Menu. Hit **`T`** to open the live Colour Theme Editor. Hit **`R`** to reset. 8. When you find something beautiful, press **`V`** to save it as a *region* you can revisit any time. That is the whole core loop. Everything else is a refinement of one of those steps. --- ## A glossary, in plain words | Term | Plain meaning | |-----------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | *Fractal family* | The mathematical recipe used — Mandelbrot, Julia, Newton, etc. Each family has its own personality. | | *Region* | A saved spot — coordinates, zoom level, and palette — that you can jump back to any time. | | *Theme / Palette* | The colours that paint the fractal. Themes can also do 3-D lighting, gloss, glow, distance shading. | | *Iteration* | One step of the recipe. Deep zooms need thousands or millions of iterations to resolve detail. | | *Precision* | How many digits of accuracy the calculation uses. Deep zoom needs more digits. The app picks for you.| | *Quality preset* | A bundle of trade-offs (iteration count + maths precision) that decides how detailed the picture is. | | *Slideshow* | A self-driving tour that cycles through regions and themes on its own — optionally on the beat. | | *Floating menu* | The big stack of controls that pops up when you press `M`. Everything you ever need lives there. | --- ## Reading conventions - **Bold** marks a UI label you can click. - `Monospace` marks a literal keystroke, file name, or value to type. - A line starting with `> [!NOTE]` is a friendly aside. - A line starting with `> [!WARNING]` is something to be careful with — they are yellow, not red, because the author is red/green colour-blind and yellow reads as the unambiguous alert hue across the rest of the app's UI as well. --- ## Need more? - Every dialog has a **Help** button — clicking it opens the relevant guide jumped directly to the matching section. No more hunting through a wall of text. - The same docs render in a web browser too: open `Docs/site/index.html` after running `dotnet run --project Tools/DocSiteGen` (or visit the project's GitHub Pages site). - See [Documentation Plan](../Documentation-Plan.md) for what is still being written and how to contribute.