Strange attractors guide

Start

The tool opens on the Lorenz attractor, coloured by speed and turning slowly on its own. The shape fills in as the points build up.

What you need

• A current browser with WebGL. Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari all have it.
• Nothing else. There is no picture or sound to load.

Your first result

1. Open Strange attractors. Lorenz is already drawing.
2. Under Attractor, pick one of the eight. The trail clears and the new shape starts to build.
3. Drag in the view to turn it. Scroll or pinch over the view to move closer or further, or open Camera and move Distance.
4. Under Parameters, move a slider to bend the shape, and under Color pick how the points are coloured.
5. Press Save PNG at the top of the panel or Copy.

Good to know

• Save PNG saves the view, glow included, as the attractor's name and -attractor.png, such as lorenz-attractor.png. It is the size of the view on your screen, times your screen's pixel density up to 2 (1.5 on phones). It is a standard range (SDR) picture; nothing here is HDR.
• Copy puts a PNG of the view on the clipboard, where the browser allows it. It is the same picture as Save PNG, glow included.
• The line under the attractors shows how many frames a second are drawn, how many points are in the trail, and which attractor is running.
• Parameter, step size, distance, point size and glow changes glide to their new value over a moment instead of jumping.
• Too many points in one place add up to white. Lower Point size, Max points or Bloom strength to see the lines.
• On a phone the controls sit in a bar at the bottom of the screen. Tap the bar to open them.