MARTI stands for "MAthcamp Ray Trace Implementation." (The name was arrived at because we all decided that we really needed an acronym.) MARTI is a platform-independent ray tracing program that will shortly be expanded to include the "circle universe."
The program began as a project at Mathcamp, easily one of the coolest summer camps on Earth. The concept was based on one of Noah Goodman's many "toy universes," in which weird stuff happens as an analogy to see our own universe. The idea that he brought up in his "Mathematics of Physics" course was a simple universe: what would happen if light traveled in circles?"
As simple as the concept is (even with fixed radius), and ignoring the impact on relativity/quantum mechanics/whatever, this presents some fascinating visual pictures (for example, you can easily see the back of your head). Mirrors get even more interesting, and it's just about impossible to visualize, since your brain gets multiple conflicting images. The result is, basically, something weird. Therefore, he got a project together to create a "ray tracer." Ray tracers are usually used in 3-D graphics for movies or computer games or other applications to create more-or-less realistic images of reality. They trace rays of light from the eye outwards to see if they intersect any objects, and then color the appropriate pixels on the screen.
The group got together and successfully created a normal ray tracer (our logo was actually created with our program, using some 63 objects - a bunch of spheres for the letters, a plane underneath, and a big sphere behind). The ray tracer itself is platform independent - it was compiled on GNU C++ on a unix machine, outputting PPM files (easy for us - they use ASCII). These PPM files can easily be read on just about any system - on Unix/Linux/etc. you can use xv, and on Windows you can use Paint Shop Pro or LView Pro (both easily available as shareware from http://www.shareware.com or http://www.download.com. For convenience, we have the images here stored as bitmaps (.BMP) and JPEGs (.JPG). The PPMs are just too big.
As of now, the program does not yet render in the circle universe; the equations were complex, and it's not quite finished (though it almost is). In addition, we'll be adding a scripting language to the program and other useful features. Until then, enjoy the pictures!
Hits as of September 11, 1999, 10:13PM, when the circle images were added: