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#        Wildfire5\PPC - ©1997-98 by Andreas Maschke          #
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#        The Benoit PlugIn                                    #
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#        1. Free available Wildfire Update                    #
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CONTENTS

 Introduction
 Copyrights
 Benchmarks
 Problems

INTRODUCTION
 This document describes the Benoit-PlugIn for Wildfire5\PPC.

 Benoit is a fractal generator written by Andre' Osterhues.
 The program and its source-code can be found for example
 on the PPC-develeper-CD  by phase 5.
 We addapted this code (few minor changes were necessary
 because the original Benoit program renders to a ARGB-CyberGFX-
 window) to create a PPC-Fractal-PlugIn for Wildfire5\PPC in an
 easy way.
 Using this PlugIn it is for example possible to generate
 "threedimension fractals" combining one Benoit- and one
 Bump3D-effect in Wildfire5\PPC's Processor.


COPYRIGHTS
 This PlugIn is FREEWARE.


BENCHMARKS
 Coordinates-file   Original Benoit Program    Wildfire PlugIn
                    PPC         M68K           PPC       M68K

 Burning            3.92 s      51.80 s        3.48 s    24.86 s
 Dragon             0.40 s       2.39 s        0.24 s     1.66 s
 DragonHeart        1.19 s      11.98 s        1.08 s     8.28 s
 FireStarter        1.51 s      16.09 s        1.40 s    11.62 s
 Waves              4.82 s      58.64 s        4.80 s    33.04 s

 All tests were performed at a resolution of 320x256.
 (The Benoit window was sized accurately to fit this dimension
  with its inner width and height)

PROBLEMS
 Wildfire beeing an image-Processor was never designed to
 perform (slow) calculations at very high precision.
 Most parameter-handling (e.g. Envelope-evaluation, loading
 and saving of parameters, ...) is only done at single precision.
 This makes it impossible to use some Benoit-Coordinates-files
 which define very small ranges for x and y.
 Ranges like -0.123...0.124 are no problem - but some files
 contain ranges like 0.13470297852531...0.13470297852537.
 Sorry, but Wildfire can not handle such accurate numbers,
 i.e., they are equal for it.