Alien Cities

Alien Cities depicts fictional cities as they might look on another planet. Alien Cities are fractals, and can seem semi organic in nature. However, if you look close, you can see that each structure is sealed off from the atmosphere, showing its artificial nature.

Since Alien cities are a fractal, they have an almost infinite number of variations. In fact, taming the variability is one of the biggest challenges when using fractals.

Alien Cities is coded using shaders, so it renders instantaneously on any size screen. The default view is gpu friendly, in that it will stop redrawing after a second or two. However, a gpu is recommended since it is a shader. See below about using the camera.

Variations:

• 22 hand tuned palettes.
• Fx, Fy, Fz control height and x/y spread of features.
• Angle controls the angles of the fractal folds. This has a large effect on the overall look of the city. If you get an angle close to a multiple of 90, the city will look much like a normal city block.
• Radius controls the size of the features in the fractal, and has a large effect on the height of the features.
• Being a fractal ensures all cities will be unique.

Keys:

's' saves a png in the exact size of the screen.

Camera:

If you add ?allowCamera=1 to the url after you open it in a separate browser window, you can use the camera. Note that this will constantly use gpu resources, as it is redrawing every frame. If you minimize the browser window, chrome is smart enough to stop rendering.

The camera is an orbit camera with the following controls:

• left mouse drag rotates the scene around the center.
• right mouse drag pans the scene (moves the center of the scene).
• mouse wheel zooms in and out.

Zooming out will show the entire city as an island floating in space. Zooming in will show the details of the fractal, which can be quite intricate.