Fractint
Fractint (originally FRACT386) is a freeware computer program to render and display many kinds of fractals. The program originated on MS-DOS, then ported to the Atari ST, Linux, and Macintosh. During the early 1990s, Fractint was the definitive fractal generating program for personal computers.
The Mandelbrot set rendered in Fractint | |
| Developer(s) | Stone Soup Group |
|---|---|
| Initial release | September 1988 |
| Stable release | 20.04p14
/ August 22, 2015 |
| Operating system | MS-DOS, Linux |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Fractal generating software |
| License | Freeware |
| Website | fractint |
The name is a portmanteau of fractal and integer, since the first versions of Fractint used only integer arithmetic (also known as fixed-point arithmetic), for faster rendering on computers without math coprocessors. Since then, floating-point arithmetic and arbitrary-precision arithmetic modes have been added.
FractInt can draw most kinds of fractals that have appeared in the literature. It also has a few "fractal types" that are not strictly speaking fractals, but may be more accurately described as display hacks. These include cellular automata.