Where did Pandromeda™ and MojoWorld™ come from? That's a long story; one we'll make short here. You might think that MojoWorld is just a knock-off of other software that renders outdoor scenes. It’s not! MojoWorld comes from the mind of Dr. F. Kenton "Doc Mojo" Musgrave, the man who largely invented the technology that competing programs use.
In the 1970’s Benoit Mandelbrot, the world's most famous living mathematician, introduced fractal geometry, the new branch of mathematics that makes MojoWorld possible. Mandelbrot and his assistant Sig Handelman made the first images of fractal mountains in the late 1970's. In the early 1980's, Richard Voss helped Mandelbrot make the first realistic fractal landscapes. In the late 1980's Musgrave and Mandelbrot brought such images to the level of fine art. In 1993 Doc Mojo earned his PhD from the Yale computer science department for this work. His dissertation, "Methods for Realistic Landscape Imaging," remains the comprehensive road map for writing computer programs to create and render fractal landscapes. Mandelbrot credits Doc Mojo with being "the first true fractal-based artist."
In 1994 Doc Mojo and his colleagues wrote the book on the subject: "Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach." The third edition appeared in 2003. This book, Doc Mojo's dissertation and piles of academic papers are where you'll find the "how to" for building MojoWorlds. Basically, since the 1990's, our Good Doctor has been acknowledged as the world's leading expert in the field. Starting with VistaPro in the late 1980’s, landscape modeling and rendering software has been available for home computers. MojoWorld represents the new state of the art—there’s nothing else like it on Earth!
MojoWorld is not a static product or a one-off idea. It will always be, no matter how advanced the version, only the beginning of the unveiling and exploration of the parallel universe that is cyberspace. Currently it models one planet at a time; in the future it will model solar systems, then galaxies, then an entire universe. Every object and/or phenomenon you've ever seen on Earth or any other planet is a candidate for inclusion in MojoWorld. There's way more stuff to put into these worlds than there is time in our lives to place it there—it’s endless virtual real estate. MojoWorld has a carefully designed open architecture to accommodate not only what we of Pandromeda can implement, but also what you or anyone else can come up with as a MojoWorld plugin. So go learn to program, and get to work!
We've built MojoWorld as a sandbox for all to play in, and Pandromeda as a playpen for ourselves. It's all about fun, play, and rediscovering our sense of wonder. Join us, please! Let's see what's there to be found in this newly discovered parallel universe that MojoWorld reveals.
