xFractal-Visualizer

Interactive Mandelbrot explorer built with C++ and SDL2.

Image

Controls

Keyboard controls

Input	Action
Arrow keys	Pan view
R	Reset center/zoom/iteration offset
+ / =	Zoom in (toward center)
-	Zoom out (toward center)
[ / ]	Decrease / increase iteration detail
C	Cycle named palettes (fire/lava, ocean/ice, neon, grayscale, rainbow)
V	Reverse current palette
, / .	Decrease / increase color contrast/intensity
S	Save BMP screenshot
Esc	Quit

Mouse controls

Input	Action
Mouse wheel	Zoom toward cursor
Left click + drag	Pan view

On-screen button controls (SDL overlay)

A lightweight right-side overlay provides clickable buttons for:

• Zoom +
• Zoom -
• Pan ←
• Pan →
• Pan ↑
• Pan ↓
• Reset
• Detail +
• Detail -
• Palette

The button overlay reuses the same navigation/detail/palette logic as keyboard controls.

Build

Ubuntu

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y cmake g++ libsdl2-dev
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release
./build/xfractal_visualizer

Windows (Visual Studio)

cmake -S . -B build -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release
.\build\Release\xfractal_visualizer.exe

Adaptive detail

The explorer chooses maxIterations automatically from zoom level, then applies a manual offset from [ and ]. This keeps boundary detail visible when zooming without forcing high cost at shallow zoom.

Deep zoom limitations

This build uses double precision coordinates. At extreme zoom depths, floating-point precision eventually collapses nearby coordinates into the same value, causing visual artifacts/flat regions. True "infinite" zoom generally needs arbitrary precision and/or perturbation rendering. See docs/DEEP_ZOOM.md for the staged design.

Limitations of the simple overlay

• The overlay uses SDL primitive shapes (rectangles/line icons), not font-rendered text, to stay lightweight.
• Because there is no SDL_ttf dependency, detailed button labels are documented here and summarized in the window title/status.
• The panel intentionally occupies a small right-side strip and may still cover a small part of the fractal view.