🌟 GLVis 4.5 Released

[tzanio]

Dear GLVis community,

Version 4.5 of GLVis was released on February 6, 2026. Some of the new additions in this release are:

• Starting with this version, GLVis 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 Alt + Enter / Alt + 0.

• 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.

• 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.

To download, and for more information visit https://glvis.org.

Try the web version: https://glvis.org/live.

We welcome any and all feedback at https://github.com/glvis/glvis/issues.

--the GLVis team

cc: @GLVis/everyone