Prism HD app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: Applied Thaumaturgics
First release : 01 Jun 2011
App size: 9.72 Mb
Prism HD is an inspiring exploration of real light shining through glass prisms and splitting into natural rainbows beneath your fingers. Interact with a variety of beautiful scenes, or create your own. Completely accurate in math and physics, you will be amazed at the feel of life in the light exploding from just a few simple prisms.
* Debuted at the Future Canvas 2 iPad art exhibit in San Francisco.
* Featured on the Atmospheric Optics Picture of the Day:
- "Prism HD is an iPad/iPhone App combining optics, accuracy and beauty.
* As seen on Wired.com:
- "There is a certain beauty in manipulating theoretical light and angles
of refraction and watching what happens"
* Also featured on KRON TV San Francisco
* Used as inspiration by professional artists and architects.
DESCRIPTION
Prism HD uses sophisticated ultra-fast ray-casting to simulate tens of thousands of individual rays of light as they pass through a variety of colored or clear glass prisms. As you move and rotate the prisms and the light-source, the light reacts instantly to your touch, sending showers of beams across the screen. The beams combine and split in a fantastic array of natural rainbow patterns that you will recognize from the real world around you, but have never been able to interact with freely before. The result is an accurate simulation of the natural world with a surprisingly emotional power.
FEATURES
* Simple controls.
* 13 beautiful pre-set scenes.
* Every scene can be easily customized.
* Fully multi-touch.
* Tuned for all devices:
from iPod Touch to iPad 3, including Retina support and iPhone 5.
* Regular prisms: triangles, squares pentagons, etc.
* Star-shaped prisms with any number of points.
* Perfectly circular prisms, which accurately simulate drops of water.
* Each prisms shape and color can be easily changed.
* Simple control of optical properties like Index of Refraction and Dispersion.
* Written in 100% Objective-C, C++, and OpenGL for maximum performance.
* Many natural phenomena are accurately reproduced:
** Refraction, Dispersion, and Partial Transmission
** Snells Law and Total Internal Reflection
** Caustic Reflections
(Have you ever noticed the curved reflections inside a coffee cup ?)
** Natural Rainbows are easily illustrated using a circular prism
** Accurately shows real-world optics behind atmospheric halos such as Sundogs.
HOW IT WORKS
Hundreds of thousands of individual rays of light are simulated each second.
Every ray obeys three simple laws of optics:
1. Refraction:
Light bends as it passes from one medium to another.
2. Dispersion:
Blue light refracts more than red light.
3. Transmission and Reflection:
When light passes from one medium to another,
some of it passes through and some is reflected.
When these simple laws of nature are combined in a powerful computer such as an iPad,
the experience is captivating and beautiful.