.: Lorenz Attractor Demonstrator :.

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Continuing with my interest in chaos, I created a simple program to enable me to explore the Lorenz Attractor. The program has a few neat features: it enables you to change a, b, and c, and also the time increment and number of calculation iterations. It will allow you to view from the X-Y plane, the Y-Z plane and the X-Z plane, allowing the user to look at the attractor from all the viewing planes. The best feature, in my opinion, is the ability to watch any number of points get attracted in realtime, in six different speeds. The calculated attractor can be toggled on and off for viewing purposes. The screenshot below shows the attractor viewing on the X-Z plane - with two points being simulataneously animated.

Instructions

The program is pretty simple to use. The A, B, C edit boxes correspond to the variables in the three differential equations used to calculate the attractor. T and N are the time increment and the number of iterations respectively. To animate a point, simply double-click where you would like your point to start. You may click any number of times in the attractor to watch multiple points animate. To stop all the points, simply press the 'Stop' button. To clear the attractor of animated points (either during animation or after) press the Redraw button. Note that pressing Redraw will stop all animations (as will changing planes or toggling the attractor).

The palette for the attractor is called lorenz.map, and is the same format as the Mandelbrot program uses (FractInt). I chose this palette since it provided a more uniform look to the attractor.