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. Not. MojoWorld comes from the mind of Dr. F. Kenton "Doc Mojo" Musgrave, the man who largely invented the technology that those other programs use.

The Roots of MojoWorld

It all started with Benoit Mandelbrot, the world's most famous living mathematician, and the father of fractal geometry, the new branch of mathematics that makes it all possible. Mandelbrot and his assistant Sig Handelman made the first images of fractal mountains in the 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 calls Doc Mojo "the first true fractal-based artist."

From the late 1970's through today researchers like Loren Carpenter, the late Alain Fournier, and a host of others have been advancing the technology of making realistic synthetic landscapes both for academe and Hollywood, as in the Genesis Experiment in the movie "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn." In 1994 Doc Mojo and his colleagues wrote the book on the subject: "Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach." The second edition appeared in 1998. 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.


The Future of MojoWorld

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. Everything you've ever seen in this world or any other is a candidate for inclusion in MojoWorld. There's way more stuff to put in there than there is time in our lives to put it in. MojoWorld has a carefully designed open architecture to accommodate not only what we of Pandromeda can add, but also what you and 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.