Bug 223398

Summary: mandelbrot wallpaper: automatic frontier walking/zooming
Product: [Unmaintained] plasma4 Reporter: A. Mosteo <alejandro>
Component: desktopAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED    
Severity: wishlist CC: jacob.benoit.1
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Compiled Sources   
OS: Unspecified   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description A. Mosteo 2010-01-19 13:01:30 UTC
Version:            (using Devel)
Installed from:    Compiled sources

I like very much the "follow the sun" in the globe wallpaper; from time to time I take a peek and enjoy the new sites showing.

Now, the mandelbrot wallpaper looks fantastic once you zoom into some frontier point. And, in the end, the Mandelbrot set is an infinite world to explore. Thus, I'd like to see an addition in which it automatically keeps visiting new places as time goes by. Not jumping randomly, but akin to "follow the sun", changing slightly the actual view. I can think of two approaches that could even be combined:

a) Increase the zoom automatically.
b) Move the point of view, following the frontier.

I admit I see a) to be "easy" while I don't have much idea if b) is easy or not to implement. Filing this as a wish.
Comment 1 Benoît Jacob 2010-03-27 17:09:31 UTC
Well, I totally agree that that would be very cool. Actually, this has been requested several times. Unfortunately, Mandelbrot is extremely CPU-intensive. If we implemented what you suggest, the risk is that that would take 100% CPU. So the first thing to think about is how to limit CPU usage. Some idea:
 - use only 1 thread, so 1 CPU core, instead of using all CPU cores.
 - we are already using a very low priority ("LowestPriority").
 - render a new point of view only, say, every hour.

The next question is how to change the point of view to make it look good. a) will only work well if the viewpoint has been carefully selected for that, which means the user has to do that job, which means there will be no surprise as he has previously looked at the highest-zoom picture. Might still be interesting together with the new import/export parameters feature: the user could import a point of view that's been crafted by someone else, or we could ship some. b) is... insanely difficult to implement, except for those small parts of the frontier that have a simple mathematical equation (the main cardioid and the left hyperbolic components). There, there might be something interesting to do.

To any future coder wanting to take on this feature request: I'm not opposed in principle, but please preserve the Mandelbrot plugin's current simplicity, performance and consistency.
Comment 2 Benoît Jacob 2010-03-27 17:14:12 UTC
Quote: "b) is... insanely difficult to implement, except for those small
parts of the frontier that have a simple mathematical equation (the main
cardioid and the left hyperbolic components)."

Ah, wait... no, actually we have equations for all the hyperbolic components, so we could actually do that.

The big problem is the CPU usage and the GUI for that.
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2018-06-08 20:22:20 UTC
Hello!

This feature request was filed for KDE Plasma 4, which reached end-of-support status in August 2015. KDE Plasma 5's desktop shell has been almost completely rewritten for better performance and usability, so it is likely that this feature request is already implemented in Plasma 5, or is no longer applicable.

Accordingly, we hope you understand why we must close this feature request. If the requested feature is still desired but not implemented in KDE Plasma 5.12 or later, please feel free to open a new ticket in the "plasmashell" product after reading https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Bug_Reporting

If you would like to get involved in KDE's bug triaging effort so that future mass bug closes like this are less likely, please read https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved#Bug_Triaging

Thanks for your understanding!

Nate Graham