chaoscope.github.io

Chaoscope for Android

A modern Android reimagining of the legendary Chaoscope desktop tool, originally created by Nicolas Desprez in the early 2000s. His pioneering work introduced countless people to the visual world of strange attractors — this app carries that spirit forward, rebuilt from scratch for today’s mobile devices.

Note: No original code, assets, or binaries from Nicolas Desprez’s Chaoscope were used. All source code was written independently. The name is used in tribute and with attribution.

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What is it?

Strange attractors are the visual fingerprints of chaotic systems — mathematical structures that trace hypnotic, infinitely detailed shapes when iterated millions of times. Chaoscope for Android lets you explore, tweak, and export them right from your phone.

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Features

• 12 attractors — 2D and 3D systems, each with editable parameters
• Logarithmic density rendering — the same histogram tone-mapping technique that made the original Chaoscope images distinctive
• 6 colour palettes — Nebula, Fire, Electric, Aurora, Matrix, Greyscale
• 5 render styles — Standard, Gas, Liquid, Plasma, Solid
• Full 3D camera control — yaw, pitch, roll, zoom for 3D attractors
• PNG export — saved to Pictures/Chaoscope/ on-device
• No internet, no tracking, no ads — fully offline

Attractors included

Name	Dimensions
Clifford	3D
Peter de Jong	3D
Gumowski-Mira	2D
Lorenz	3D
Rössler	3D
Aizawa	3D
Thomas	3D
Chaotic Flow	3D
Icon	2D
Barnsley Fern	2D
Julia	2D
Pickover	3D

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Architecture

Kotlin / Jetpack Compose  (UI layer)
         │
         ▼
  ChaoscopeViewModel      (render state, export logic)
         │
         ▼
  ChaoscopeEngine.kt      (JNI bridge)
         │
         ▼
  libchaoscope.so  (C++17 native library)
  ├── attractors.cpp   ← iterate attractor equations
  └── renderer.cpp     ← histogram accumulation + tone-mapping + palette

The rendering pipeline follows the classic Chaoscope approach:

1. Iterate the attractor equation for millions of steps → collect (x, y, z) points
2. Project 3D points through a configurable camera → (u, v) screen coordinates
3. Accumulate into a density histogram
4. Apply logarithmic tone-mapping to compress the dynamic range
5. Map through a colour palette → final RGBA bitmap

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Requirements

Tool	Version
Android Studio	Hedgehog or newer
Android Gradle Plugin	8.x
Kotlin	2.x
CMake	3.22.1+
NDK	r25 or newer
Min SDK	26 (Android 8.0)
Target SDK	35

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Building

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/joeyaresius/chaoscope.git
cd chaoscope-android/android

# Build debug APK
./gradlew assembleDebug

# Install on connected device
./gradlew installDebug

The C++ native library is compiled automatically by the Gradle CMake integration. No manual NDK steps are needed.

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Project structure

android/              ← Android app
  app/src/main/
    cpp/              ← C++17 native rendering engine
    java/com/chaoscope/app/
      ui/             ← Compose screens (SplashScreen, AttractorScreen)
      AttractorDefs.kt
      ChaoscopeEngine.kt
      ChaoscopeViewModel.kt
      MainActivity.kt
    res/              ← resources, icons, themes
prototype/            ← Python proof-of-concept (Phases 1–4)
LICENSE
README.md

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Privacy

This app collects no user data. All processing is performed locally on the device. No third-party analytics, crash reporting, or advertising SDKs are included.

See the full Privacy Policy for details.

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Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first for significant changes so we can discuss the direction.

Feedback and suggestions can also be sent directly to chaoscope@duck.com.

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License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE for the full text.

Copyright 2026 Lucas (Chaoscope for Android)

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

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Acknowledgements

• Nicolas Desprez — creator of the original Chaoscope for Windows, whose work inspired this project.
• The mathematics and chaos theory community for decades of research into strange attractors.

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