GLVis visualization tool

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                             https://glvis.org


Version 4.5 released on Feb 6, 2026
===================================

Unlike previous GLVis releases, this version requires a C++17 compiler.

- Added visualization of the finite element DOF numbering in 2D scalar mode,
  with the 'n'/'N' keys that now cycles through: None → Elements → Edges →
  Vertices → DOFs. In parallel, the default numbering is the "local" one for
  each rank. This can be switched to the "global" parallel numbering with
  'Alt+n' (the former numbering method).

- Added visualization of complex data for grid functions from MFEM's class
  (Par)ComplexGridFunction. The complex values are represented by their
  magnitude, phase, real part or imaginary part, which can be cycled with the
  'Q' key. Additionally, complex functions can be animated by an added harmonic
  phase. The phase frequency can be increased/decreased with keys ';'/':'.

- Added the option to choose palettes by name using the command line argument
  -pname or --palette-name. This option is also available in scripts and streams
  using the keyword "palette_name".

- Color palettes defined in an external file can now also be specified in
  scripts and streams using the keyword 'palette_file'.

- Added headless (no GUI) visualization, relying on the EGL (Linux) or CGL
  (macOS) interface. It is available through '-hl' command-line option or the
  'headless' script command (before the visualization commands). In this mode,
  visualization ends at the end of the stream or script file. Note that GLVis
  must be compiled with EGL/CGL (see INSTALL).

- Refactored the code base to enable automatic generation of the script and
  stream command lists. Other improvements include:
  * Unified window initialization between the app and glvis-js.
  * Unified handling of streams and improved data storage, enabling animation
    of all data types.
  * Fixed the flag for real attributes of distributed meshes.
  * Fixed setting of padding digits for data collections.
  * Fixed cycling of the vector-to-scalar function in 2D with raw data.

- Added non-persistent mode for the GLVis server, where the server terminates
  after all visualization windows are closed.

- Added single-color palettes with a linear gradient of opacity to
  share/palettes-variable-opacity.txt.

- Generalized and unified processing of stream commands for glvis-js to support
  all commands.


Version 4.4 released on May 1, 2025
===================================

- Added more flexible representations for color palette and textures, enabling
  specification at both compile and run time. Run time palettes are specified
  with a file and the command line argument -pal <palette_filename>.

- Added 78 new optional color-vision deficiency friendly and perceptually
  uniform color palettes. See the files share/palettes-crameri.txt and
  share/palettes-cet.txt.

- Palettes can now also be specified with explicit alpha channels. See the
  example file share/palettes-variable-opacity.txt.

- Added loading of MFEM data collections (VisIt, Sidre, FMS and Conduit) through
  command line arguments '-visit', '-sidre', '-fms' and '-conduit' respectively.
  The field to plot can be specified using '-g' or '-q' for a quadrature field.
  Optionally, the cycle and protocol can be provided through the 'dc-cycle' and
  'dc-prot' parameters. Note that GLVis must be built using MFEM configured with
  the associated libraries.

- Added support for 1D/2D data (mesh and grid function) using scalar finite
  elements with up to 3 vector dimensions.

- Added support for 1D/2D vector finite elements with 3 range dimensions.

- Fixed a bug where discrete textures would not repeat.


Version 4.3.2 released on Sep 27, 2024
======================================

- Fixed the Mac binary build in GitHub CI and provided a signed and notarized
  version for download from the website.

- Fixed handling of key press events to work with localized layouts and enable
  key translation with 'AltGr'.

- Updated JavaScript bindings to fix issues in glvis-js and pyglvis, and added
  support for quadrature data visualization.

- Fixed visualization of 1D data and added a regression test.

- Miscellaneous CI improvements including: generating image diffs for tests,
  set `fail-fast: false` so that tests always run, rename artifacts to help
  avoid confusion, code-cleanup/light refactoring.


Version 4.3 released on Aug 7, 2024
===================================

- Added visualization of quadrature data (QuadratureFunction in MFEM). Both
  loading from file, with the new command line argument '-q', or from a socket
  stream, with the keyword 'quadrature', are supported. Three visualization
  options are provided: piece-wise constants on a refined mesh (LOR), L2 field
  with DOFs collocated (interpolation), or projection to discontinuous elements
  (L2 projection). Use 'Q' to switch between them. High-order quadrature data is
  supported only for tensor finite elements with the first two options. With the
  first option, only the mesh lines of the original mesh are visualized. This
  feature is also supported for the element-wise cutting plane in 3D (cplane=2).

- The GLVis auto refinement algorithm now takes into account the order of the
  data (mesh and grid function). The new refinement is chosen to be sufficient
  for resolving the curvature of the data, but only if we can do that with less
  than 2M vertices and 16 refinements. Otherwise, we print a warning and the
  user may still need to press 'o' to fully resolve the data. For more details,
  see the section Auto-refinement in README.md.

- Added option to specify the floating point number formatting in GLVis axes and
  colorbar. Use 'Alt+a' for the axes and 'Alt+c' for the colorbar. Formatting
  can also be specified in socket stream or glvis script with axis_numberformat
  or colorbar_numberformat, followed by a C-like formatting string, for example
  "colorbar_numberformat '%+06.1f'".

- Added a building option for setting the default font size.

- Added support for scalar integral finite elements, where calculation of the
  surface normals was not implemented and was crashing GLVis. The normals are
  approximately calculated from the point-wise projected value-based elements.

- Added two new modes for visualization of vector fields in 2D, placing the
  arrows above the plotted surface and using a single color.

- Added support to visualize solutions on 1D elements embedded in 2D and 3D.

- Significantly improved memory usage.

- Various other bugfixes and improvements.


Version 4.2 released on May 23, 2022
====================================

- Added 3D scene export to glTF format (https://www.khronos.org/gltf) which is
  bound to the key 'G'. This can be used to import GLVis scenes for rendering in
  Blender, as well as for augmented reality, see https://modelviewer.dev/editor.

- Added the option to cut a portion of the interiors of 3D faces to expose more
  of the mesh. Useful as an alternative to transparency. See keys Ctrl+F3/F4.

- Added a third mode to keys 'b'/'B' in 2D to display the mesh boundary colored
  by boundary element attribute.

- Support for visualization of pyramid-shaped elements.

- An edge numbering option is now available in 2D.

- In 2D, save and restore solution's value range when using keys 'e' and 'b'.

- Mac and Windows binaries are now automatically built with GitHub actions CI.

- The command-line option -mac was renamed to -save.

- Various other bugfixes and improvements.


Version 4.1, released on Aug 31, 2021
=====================================

- Use threads in server mode for window creation and session management instead
  of fork(). This resolves issues with the GLVis server mode on macOS. It also
  allows for closing all open GLVis server windows by Ctrl-C in the terminal.

- Preliminary support for interactive inline GLVis plots in Python Jupyter
  Notebooks with https://github.com/glvis/pyglvis and C++ Jupyter Notebooks with
  https://github.com/glvis/xeus-glvis.

- Added support for native builds on Windows with CMake.

- Added support for native Mac application bundle with "make app". The resulting
  app can be double-clicked, added to the Dock, etc.

- Added screenshots support to the JavaScript/web version (key 'S').

- Enabled support for WebGL 2, when available. This enables, among other
  features, support for controllable multisampling via framebuffers.

- Refactored rendering components, including palette and shader handling.

- Replaced pthreads and POSIX-specific code with C++11 standard thread library.

- Added a new regression test suite based on generated screenshots of stream
  files. See the README in the tests/ directory for more details. Note that this
  requires a git submodule for the baseline images, which are located in the
  separate https://github.com/glvis/data repository.

- Various bugfixes and improvements related to the JavaScript version, vertex
  numbering, script handling, screenshots, HiDPI support,  and more.


Version 4.0, released on Dec 11, 2020
=====================================

Starting with this version, the GLVis open source license is changed to BSD-3.

Unlike previous GLVis releases, this version requires a C++11 compiler.

- Major overhaul and modernization of the GLVis rendering and window management,
  replacing X Windows with SDL for platform-native window and event handling.
  This enables OpenGL 3+ support and HiDPI support on Mac OS X.

- Two rendering backends are included: one for legacy OpenGL contexts without
  support for shaders, and one with full support for modern OpenGL 3 features.
  The modern OpenGL context is preferred by default; a new command-line argument
  "-oldgl" can be used to request the legacy backend.

- Preliminary support for building GLVis to JavaScript/WebAssembly using
  Emscripten, see https://github.com/GLVis/glvis-js.

- Documented project workflow and provided contribution guidelines in the new
  top-level file, CONTRIBUTING.md.

- Added several perceptually uniform colormaps "turbo", "viridis", "plasma",
  "fusion", "iceburn", "viola", "pride" and "ocean" from
  * Google AI: https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/08/turbo-improved-rainbow-colormap-for.html
  * Matplotlib: https://bids.github.io/colormap/
  * CMasher: https://github.com/1313e/CMasher

- Added support for visualization of the element ordering curve with 'Ctrl+o'.

- Keystroke changes: cutting plane in 2D is now toggled with 'i' instead of 'w',
  and 2D element subdivision is controlled with 'o/O' instead of 'i/I'. These
  are the same as the corresponding keystrokes in 3D.

- Improved the 3D cutting plane algorithm for curved elements. The key 'I' can
  be used to switch to the previous (faster) algorithm which is suitable for
  meshes with planar faces.

- Updated to support the display and slicing of meshes with wedge elements.

- Improved the opening of parallel meshes/solutions.

- Transparency and printing in textured coloring modes is now supported, and
  no-texture coloring has been removed as a result.

- FreeType is now a required dependency and text on screen is rendered using a
  texture atlas.

- Replaced the "deep sea" palette with "ocean". Added new palette: gray.

- Added the ability to discretize a palette, i.e. to use just a prescribed
  number of its colors, see the new "number of colors" input of the F6 key.

- Added new script and socket command: "palette_repeat" which can be used to
  repeat and reverse/flip the palette - controls the same parameter as the first
  prompt after pressing the F6 key in the GLVis window.

- Added a key for setting the bounding box from the terminal (Shift+F7).


Version 3.4, released on May 29, 2018
=====================================

- When enabled, secure sockets (based on GnuTLS) now use authentication based on
  X.509 certificates. A new set of X.509 client/server keys can be generated
  with the updated version of the script 'glvis-keygen.sh'.

- Added capability to show element and vertex numbering in 2D (key 'n').

- Added support for reading mesh and solution from the same file.

- Added a CMake build system.

- Added 10 new color palettes which can now be switched both forwards and
  backwards with the 'p' and 'P' keys respectively.

- Allow multi-screen window managers to redraw on current screen.

- Printing to PDF is now done with 'Ctrl+p' (replacing 'P').

- Default multisampling linewidth for Macs is now 0.01 (seems to work better).
  On other platforms the default remains 1.4.


Version 3.3, released on Jan 28, 2017
=====================================

- Added the ability to change the axis labels displayed with the coordinate
  cross in the lower left corner. They can be set with the new 'axis_labels'
  socket command, for example: sol_sock << "axis_labels 'u' 'v' 'w'\n";

- With the corresponding version of MFEM, GLVis now supports gz-compressed
  files and socket streams.


Version 3.2, released on Jun 30, 2016
=====================================

- Added support for secure socket connections based on the GnuTLS library
  through MFEM. This option may be useful in multi-user environment to prevent
  users from sending/receiving visualization data to/from other users. See
  INSTALL for setup instructions.

- Added an optional caption at the top of the GLVis window. This can be set in
  several different ways: through a command-line parameter (-c|--plot-caption),
  a socket command (plot_caption), a GLVis script command (plot_caption) or the
  'C' keystroke.

  The caption is displayed as one of the states of the colorbar (key 'c') which
  now has 3 modes: no colorbar & no caption; colorbar & caption; colorbar & no
  caption. With empty caption, 'c' works the same as before.

  For vector fields, the current vector-to-scalar function is added to the
  caption in parenthesis.  Similarly, for 2D scalar fields, the "surface
  elements mode" (attached to the 'e' key) is added to the caption.

- Improved the handling of the "keys" command in GLVis scripts and socket
  connections.

- Added "scale" and "translate" script commands.


Version 3.1, released on Feb 5, 2016
====================================

- Moved GLVis from Google Code to GitHub. New website: http://glvis.org.

- Formatted the code with Artistic Style, see the "make style" target.

- Added 'help', 'distclean', 'install' and 'status'/'info' targets to the GLVis
  makefile. The default install directory is ./bin. That can be overwritten with
  "make install PREFIX=<dir>".

- With the corresponding version of MFEM, GLVis now supports the visualization
  of non-conforming meshes and grid functions.

- Added support for visualizing vector fields on surface meshes, and for element
  shrinking (F3/F4) of surface meshes.

- The 'P' key now prints in PDF instead of EPS format. The output still has
  some deficiencies, so 'P' is recommended only if vector format is necessary.
  For quick screenshots (e.g. for a talk), the 'S' key is preferable.

- Added a command-line option (-d | --pad-digits), to set the number of digits
  used for processor ranks in file names.

- Added a command-line option (-grt | -geom_ref_type) to refine the geometry
  using the Gauss-Lobatto instead of uniform points.

- In 2D, added keys that in addition to 'b', can cycle through the boundary
  attributes: shift+f9 (forward) and shift-f10 (backward); added visualization
  of element attributes as another state of the 'e' key.

- New socket command, window_geometry, can be used to arrange the visualization
  window on the screen

- Various other small fixes and styling updates.


Version 3.0, released on Jan 26, 2015
=====================================

- Updated the makefile to use the new build system in MFEM, so GLVis can now be
  built from any (serial or parallel) MFEM build.

- Support for saving screenshots directly in png format using libpng. Enabled
  by default with "USE_LIBPNG = YES" in the makefile.

- Support for antialiased fonts using the freetype library.  Enabled by default
  with "USE_FREETYPE = YES" in the makefile (the options "FT_OPTS_YES" and
  "FT_LIBS_YES" may need to be adjusted). The font is determined at runtime from
  a list of fontconfig patterns: fc_font_patterns in lib/aux_vis.cpp. It can
  also be specified on the command line, e.g. "-fn Ubuntu-15".

- Improved level surfaces to support hexahedral elements and to better represent
  high-order grid-functions and curved meshes using element subdivision.

- Added support for 1D meshes + solutions, visualized in 2D via extrusion in
  y-direction. The z-axis is scaled relative to the x-axis.

- Added support for surface meshes (2D meshes in 3 space dimensions).

- Added new (input stream) command, "autopause <int value>" that will stop (when
  turned on) the interpretation of the input stream after every mesh + solution
  update. Autopause can also be toggled using the "Control+Space" key.

- When visualizing a GridFunction from a socket, script, or the command line
  GLVis will now enable the subdivision mode ("f" key) and select subdivision
  factor (using the new AutoRefine method) depending on the number of elements
  (2D) or number of boundary elements (3D) in the mesh.

- Additional stream command support. Most of the script commands are supported
  including taking screenshots.

- New camera manipulation using Ctrl, the middle mouse button, and optionally
  Shift and Alt.

- Significantly improved logarithmic scaling mode (key "L").

- Improved visualization of smoothed (antialiased) lines without multisampling.

- Switched to MFEM's OptionParser class for command line arguments parsing.

- Various small fixes and styling updates.


Version 2.0, released on Nov 18, 2011
=====================================

- Extended GLVis to allow visualization of parallel meshes and grid functions.
  For data saved in separate files, the format is:

        glvis -np <#proc> -m <mesh_prefix> [-g <grid_function_prefix>]

  The file names are obtained from the prefix by appending '.' followed by a
  6-digit processor/subdomain number padded with 0's. The related (obsolete)
  option -par3d was removed.

  For results send by separate socket connections from each processor, the
  format just adds the prefix: "parallel <#proc> <myid>" (see the parallel
  MFEM examples).

  The corresponding GLVis script command is "psolution <num_proc> <mesh_prefix>
  <attr_flag> <solution_prefix>", where <attr_flag> controls if the boundary
  attributes should be replaced with the processor number or if they should be
  kept unchanged (this option is also available from the command line as '-a').

  In all cases, GLVis will stitch the parallel results to show the global mesh
  and solution, but the subdomain data can still be examined through the F3/F4,
  F8, F9/F10 and F11/F12 keystrokes.

- Added the ability to directly visualize 3D VectorFiniteElement-based grid
  functions (e.g. from a Nedelec or a Raviart-Thomas space), by an internal
  projection onto the discontinuous piece-wise polynomial space of the
  appropriate order.

- Added new bounding box visualization mode (fourth state for the 'a' key) using
  red, green, blue colored main axes and dashed box.

- Added support for dynamic mesh and solution (grid function) update over
  sockets based on MFEM's new socket communication classes socketserver and
  socketstream. Both serial and parallel codes can use this capability.

- Switched to GLX 1.3 compatible mode selection and window creation. The old GLX
  calls are still available when GLVis is compiled with -DGLVIS_GLX10. The new
  functions allow for multisampling on Macs with ATI cards, though the X11
  server on OS X Snow Leopard gives a warning that "GLX 1.3 is not supported",
  but works fine in practice.

- Added functionality allowing GLVis to handle modifier+key input. As a first
  application, control + arrow keys can be used now to translate the view.

- Improved the handling of the boundary in 2D ('b' key) for curved meshes.

- The palettes can now be flipped by specifying a negative value for the number
  of times the palette is repeated (F6 key).

- Provided workaround for a bug in the NVIDIA driver on some 64 bit systems,
  where glX calls after a fork() close file descriptor 0.

- Various small fixes and styling updates.


Version 1.2, released on Apr 8, 2011
====================================

- If build with mfem version 1.2 (or later), glvis now supports unstructured
  meshes in VTK format, including quadratic curvilinear meshes.

- When viewing 3D vector field, 'F' will cycle the displayed scalar function
  between magnitude, x-component, y-component and z-component.

- Added a new command line option: '-gc' allowing visualization of a single
  component of a GridFunction, e.g: glvis -m mesh -g sol -gc 0. This is useful
  for grid functions describing tensors.

- Ensured that the shrinking of elements (F3/F4) and material subdomains
  (F11/F12) work in 2D/3D, with scalar/vector plots and on curved meshes. The
  latter are useful, in particular, to visualize the subdomains corresponding to
  different processors in a mfem parallel run.

- The palette update (key 'p') when using texture is now instantaneous.

- Added a new script command: toggle_attributes.

- Added a new palette: calewhite, from VisIt.

- Various small fixes and styling updates.


Version 1.1, released on Sep 13, 2010
=====================================

- Anti-aliasing (key 'A') now uses the OpenGL ARB_multisample extension (when
  available). By default, 4x multisampling is used. See file lib/tk.cpp. This
  value can be changed by setting GLVIS_MULTISAMPLE during compilation.

- When drawing subdivided elements, the real normals are now used (at least in
  some cases) to smooth the appearance inside the element, i.e. the surface in
  2D and the (curved) boundary in 3D.

- Enabled the shrinking of elements (F3/F4) and material subdomains (F11/F12)
  for 3D meshes saved using Mesh::PrintWithPartitioning(). This allows for
  better visualization of the interior of the mesh.

- Improved the hex-cutting algorithm to handle all cases of non-flat faces.

- Scripts now work with scalar 3D mesh/solution.

- Changed the makefile to recompile only files that have been changed and to
  allow 'make -j'.

- Various small fixes and styling updates.


Version 1.0, released on Jul 21, 2010
=====================================

- Uploaded to http://glvis.googlecode.com.

- Initial release.