iAttractor for iPhone
If you’ve followed my experiments for very long, you know I have a bit of a thing for strange attractors. So, it was only a matter of time before I coded one up for the iPhone. I bring you iAttractor:
https://www.bit-101.com/blog/?page_id=1872
There’s a free version and a full featured version, as described in the link above. I’m under no assumption that this is going to be the next runaway best seller (maybe if I added some fart sounds…). It’s more a labor of love. And I learned so much while coding this up. But I’m sure there are at least a few other chaos freaks out there willing to dish out a few cents to compensate for my last two lost weekends and several evenings.
The Pickover attractor included in the free version is pretty robust and will give you all kinds of neat shapes. My personal favorite is the alternate Lorenz formula, which creates these really need mesh donut like figures, in a million different variations (as well as plenty of other stuff). There’s also the classic Lorenz butterfly and a couple of polynomial formulas that aren’t quite as robust – tend to go off to infinity more often than not, and don’t have a huge variety of shapes, but still have some cool possibilities.
As I mentioned, I’ve coded attractors many times over the years, and the iPhone touch screen is one of the coolest ways ever to interact with them. It really is like holding a little attractor in your hand and spinning it around with your fingers. OK, I’m a geek.
The app was submitted tonight so, if all goes well, it should be up on the store some time later this week.
Note, the video is a bit washed out, over-exposed. Looks better on the device.