Lol Engine Fractal Zoomer

This demo illustrates the power of NaCl, an exciting technology that lets you run native code in your browser.

Please wait a few seconds for the executable to load. There's no progress bar due to a WebKit limitation (which was recently fixed, so there will be a progress bar eventually).

Controls: mouse buttons — left: zoom in, right: zoom out, middle: pan (still buggy, sorry) .

Dat shit not working?

• If you're running Firefox, it won't work because the Mozilla people believe a browser should run JavaScript code, not native code. You can check this JavaScript fractal zoomer (if you know a faster one, let me know) and ask yourself what the fuck is wrong with those Mozilla people.
• Make sure you're running Chrome. Debian's current version of Chromium won't work for some reason, but Google ships decent .debs for Chrome that can be installed aside Chromium.
• Go to chrome://flags and activate Native Client for applications that do not come from the app store. You need to restart Chrome after that.
• On Linux, you may need to run Chrome with --ignore-gpu-blacklist
• If you ran a previous version of this page, use Shift Ctrl Delete to clear your cache and recent browsing history.
• If the colours are fugly, it's simply because I have no taste AND I am lazy.
• If you think it should work and it still doesn't, feel free to contact me at sam@hocevar.net.

Why NaCl?

I am now on a crusade against browser vendors who want to take over the web but want me to use pathetically underperforming technologies and I will dedicate my existence to writing something slightly remotely useful that cannot possibly work reasonably well if written in JavaScript simply to prove those idiots that they are actually the idiots they appear to be. I don't hate JavaScript, I hate that you want me to use JavaScript and I swear you're going to pay for that. That the worldwide specialists in memory leaks and general resource hogs and funny browser crashes would like me to use their own garbage-collected virtual machine is pretty ironic don't you think?

Frequently opposed arguments

“Today’s JavaScript engines offer acceptable performance” — Last I heard it was still 50% slower than native code which means 50% less battery life. Okay so I’m being dishonest with the battery analogy but so were you by saying “acceptable performance” hahahahaha oh wow.

“NaCl only works in Chrome” — Oh thank you, as a matter of fact that’s precisely what I am complaining about.

“NaCl is harmful because you cannot provide versions for all upcoming browser ports” — Well you are one clever motherfucker to point out that, but since every Firefox upgrade breaks approximately half my extensions, and given the current release schedule, this gives my pathetic browsing experience a half-life of about two months. Well, if that tells me anything it’s that I shouldn’t trust Mozilla with supporting my software.

This Mandelbrot zoomer isn't the fastest out there, but it still beats the shit out of anything I saw that was using JavaScript. If you know something good, let me know. Also, check out QuickMAN, a really fast viewer for Windows.

Written by Sam Hocevar using the Lol Engine and its NativeClient backend in 380 lines of C++ code and 100 lines of GLSL.