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Fractal Explorer & Renderer · Open Source

Parsec

Infinite worlds, rendered in real time.

Parsec is a free, open-source GPU fractal engine for explorers and artists. Fly through distance-estimated 3D fractals — Mandelbox, Mandelbulb, Kleinian groups, Menger sponges, and twenty more — in real time, or dive into classic 2D escape-time sets with true perturbation-based deep zoom, down to radii around 1e-147. Keyframe your journey, render gallery-grade stills, and pay what you want to support development.

Get ParsecView source

Live render — a Julia set whose constant κ is drifting right now. In Parsec, you keyframe that drift.

20+raymarched 3D fractals
1e-147deep-zoom radius floor
12K @ 16×hero stills · SSAA
GPL-3.0free & open source

Distance-estimated · raymarched

Fly through mathematics

Twenty-plus 3D fractals, each a GPU distance estimator with orbit-trap coloring and configurable lighting and reflections. The free-fly camera reads the distance field and adapts its speed — gliding fast through open space, slowing as you sink into the detail.

  • 01Mandelbox
  • 02AmazingBox
  • 03Rotated Mandelbox
  • 04Mandelbulb
  • 05Quaternion Julia
  • 06Amazing IFS (KIFS)
  • 07Kleinian
  • 08Pseudo-Kleinian
  • 09Pseudo-Kleinian 4D
  • 10Folded Menger
  • 11Bicomplex Julia
  • 12Apollonian Gasket
  • 13Phoenix
  • 14Biomorph
  • 15Mosely Snowflake
  • 16Riemann Sphere
  • 17Mandalay Fold
  • 18Anisotropic Fold
  • 193D Burning Ship
  • 20Hybrid (Box × Bulb)
  • 21QJulia × Box
  • 22Orbit Hybrid (KIFS + Mbox)
  • 23Thomas Attractor

Perturbation deep zoom

Deeper than doubles allow

The 2D explorer — Mandelbrot, Julia, Burning Ship, and Prospector — pairs a high-precision reference orbit with per-pixel delta iteration, and switches render paths automatically as you descend.

01

Direct fp64

shallow zooms

Every pixel iterated in full double precision on the GPU — instant and exact while doubles still have digits to spare.

02

fp64 perturbation

mid depths

One high-precision reference orbit in binary fixed-point, then cheap per-pixel delta iteration — carrying the zoom far past where naive doubles dissolve into blocks.

03

floatexp perturbation

deep · to ~1e-147

Extended-exponent arithmetic keeps the deltas alive at the bottom of the descent — radii around 1e-147, the combined fp64 + floatexp precision floor.

reference orbit validated against an mpmath arbitrary-precision oracle. In Julia mode the constant κ is keyframeable — a κ sweep morphs the whole set across an animation, exactly like the hero above.

Timeline · stills · video

Animate and render like a studio

Keyframe timeline

Set keyframes on camera, parameters, palette — even the Julia constant κ — then hit Space to preview. Animations save and load per fractal.

Gallery-grade stills

Hero renders at resolutions up to 12K with up to 16× supersampling, with shared palette, lighting, and reflection controls across every fractal.

Video export

Render an animation as a frame sequence and Parsec prints the exact FFmpeg command to stitch it — copy, paste, done.

Deep-zoom hero still (placeholder)
Mandelbox fly-through frame (placeholder)

GPL-3.0

Open source, openly owed

Parsec is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 — the whole engine, shaders and all. It stands on decades of work shared freely by the fractal community, and it gives back the same way.

Contributions are welcome — issues and pull requests both. It's a labor of love maintained alongside other projects, so be patient with review times.

Browse the source

Standing on

  • Tom Lowe's Mandelbox
  • The Mandelbulb collaboration
  • fractalforums
  • Mandelbulber
  • Inigo Quilez

The honest part

What it needs from your machine

OpenGL 4.3+
A GPU with compute shaders — both the 3D raymarchers and the 2D deep-zoom pipeline run on compute.
fp64 compute
Deep zoom needs double-precision GPU arithmetic. There is no software fallback — a reasonably modern GPU is required.
FFmpeg (optional)
Only needed to stitch exported animation frames into a video. Parsec prints the exact command after a frame export.

Out in the wild

Follow the renders

Deep zooms, fly-throughs, and hero stills from inside Parsec — posted as they come out of the renderer.

Instagram@fractal_meadowYouTube@fractal_meadowBluesky@fractal-meadow.bsky.socialGitHubzoomacroom-games/Parsec

Coming soon

Be the first to explore

Parsec is free and open source, launching soon. Leave your email and we’ll let you know the moment it’s ready.

Or just build it from source — that's the point of the license.