| This is a shareware
release of James Gleick's CHAOS:
the Software. The software was written by
Josh Gordon, Rudy Rucker and John Walker for Autodesk, Inc., with
Josh Gordon doing the lion's share of the programming work. It is
our hope that this shareware release will allow educators, students
and dabblers to freely use our software.
We provide both the complete executable and the source code for
the legendary 1990 Autodesk release based on James Gleick's wonderful book Chaos.
The program runs under Windows as a full-screen DOS session. It
works in all known versions of Windows, up to and including Windows
XP. Great for classroom use or individual exploration.
You run the program by opening Windows explorer and clicking
on one of the following six batch file names. (We used to have
an master CHAOS.BAT, but modern versions of Windows don't support
that file, so now CHAOS.BAT just lists the names of six batch
files.)
MANDEL.BAT Mandelbrot sets and variations.
MAGNETS.BAT Magnets and pendulum.
ATTRACT.BAT Strange attractors.
GAME.BAT Barnsley's iterated function system fractals.
FORGE.BAT Fractal forgeries of mountains, clouds, etc.
TOY.BAT Cellular automata.
Here are some more details on the six modules.
MANDEL.BAT. A very fast Mandelbrot set program, incorporating:
quadratic
and cubic Mandelbrots, various fill patterns, quadratic
and cubic Julias, and the gnarly "cubic Mandelbrot catalog"
set I call the Rudy
set. The image in the background of this page is the RHORSE.FRP
parameter set for the Rudy set.
MAGNETS.BAT. A Pendulum and Magnets program showing chaotic
physical motion.
ATTRACT.BAT. A Strange Attractors program showing some
of the Hall of Famers as the Lorenz Attractor, the Logistic Map,
the Yorke Attractor, the Henon Attractor, etc.
GAME.BAT. A "Chaos Game", which is a Barnsley Fractals
program showing Iterated Function System fractals such as the
famous "fern".
FORGE.BAT A "Fractal Forgeries" program that
shows mountain ranges based on random fractals.
TOY.BAT. A "Toy Universes" program that shows some
cellular automata.
The software was originally released by Autodesk, Inc., in 1990,
and was placed in copyright to Autodesk at that time. When the
product went out of print in about 1992, Autodesk transferred
intellectual property rights for the product to James Gleick.
As shareware, CHAOS may be freely distributed,
but any commercial use should be approved in writing by James
Gleick. This shareware release has been prepared by Rudy Rucker.
We would be interested in hearing from anyone interested in funding,
or working on, a Windows or Java port and new shareware or commercial
releases of the program.
Download the CHAOS executables
and support files. (chaos.zip, 800K). Posted December 15,
1998. After downloading the chaos.zip file, unzip the chaos.zip
file. It will create a Chaos directory and copy all the executables
and support files into the directory.
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