Vapor Documentation Release 3.4.0.Prerelease
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Vapor Documentation Release 3.4.0.preRelease John Clyne, Scott Pearse, Samuel Li, Stanislaw Jaroszynski Sep 24, 2021 CONTENTS: 1 We need your feedback! 3 2 Vapor 3.4.0 is now Live! 5 3 Vapor 3 7 3.1 Downloads................................................7 3.2 Quick Start Guide............................................ 11 3.3 Getting Data into Vapor......................................... 13 3.4 Using Vapor 3.............................................. 18 3.5 Contributing to Vapor.......................................... 43 3.6 License and Citation........................................... 53 4 Indices and tables 57 i ii Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease August 4, 2021 Download here Vapor’s release cycle is accelerating, and now 3.5.0 is live. New improvements include: - New particle data reader: Data Collection Particles (DCP) - New raw data reader: Brick of Values (BOV) - Easily, and visually save your state with the new Bookmarks feature - Further improvements that streamline Vapor’s GUI - Faster data access with OpenMP As well as many other reported issues, including the 1/4 canvas bug on BigSur. Thanks to users ViggoHanst and Fortran for reporting this. Thank you to everyone who has helped steer us by filling out our survey for 3.6 features. The survey is still live,so please fill it out if you have 5 minutes. Please engage us on our forum. Thank you! -The Vapor Team CONTENTS: 1 Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease 2 CONTENTS: CHAPTER ONE WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! May 21, 2021 We are trying to prioritize new features for Vapor 3.6. Our goal has always been to support scientists and help them produce superior visualizations of their simulation data. We can’t do this without the feedback of the people in our user community. Please help us by providing your feedback in the 5 minute survey below, which outlines new features we are considering for Vapor 3.6 and beyond. New Feature Survey Each feature in the survey is linked to an issue on GitHub (https://github.com/NCAR/VAPOR), so feel free to comment there if you’d like to track our progress, or discuss the issue further after the survey. And please let us know if you have new ideas that we haven’t considered yet. Thank you for helping us produce better open source visualization software. -The Vapor Team 3 Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease 4 Chapter 1. We need your feedback! CHAPTER TWO VAPOR 3.4.0 IS NOW LIVE! April 5, 2021 Download here Version 3.4 is Vapor’s first usability-focused release. See some of the new features in the following demo: Major usability improvements include: • Improved algorithm for the Flow renderer’s random seeding bias variable • Data-independent settings (e.g. Cache size) can now be modified before data is loaded • Restructuring of Vapor’s top-level tabs • New and improved Colorbars • Improved functionality of the Geometry tab • Better space management of the Renderer Table Other notable issues include: • Addition of clang-format linter, and git pre-push hook • Fixed weekly builds on all platforms A comprehensive list of fixes can be viewed in the 3_4_0 release milestone. 5 Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease 6 Chapter 2. Vapor 3.4.0 is now Live! CHAPTER THREE VAPOR 3 VAPOR is the Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers. VAPOR provides an interactive 3D visualization environment that can also produce animations and still frame images. VAPOR runs on most UNIX and Windows systems equipped with modern 3D graphics cards. The VAPOR Data Collection (VDC) data model allows users progressively access the fidelity of their data, allowing for the visualization of terascale data sets on commodity hardware. VAPOR can also directly import data formats including WRF, MOM, POP, ROMS, and some GRIB and NetCDF files. Users can perform ad-hoc analysis with VAPOR’s interactive Python interpreter; which allows for the creation, modi- fication, and visualization of new variables based on input model data. VAPOR is a product of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Computational and Information Systems Lab. Support for VAPOR is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (grants # 03-25934 and 09-06379, ACI-14- 40412), and by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information 3.1 Downloads Note: If you are looking for our legacy version of Vapor 2.6, follow this link to the bottom of the page. 7 Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease 3.1.1 Weekly Build Vapor builds installers on a weekly basis. These have new features that have not been tested, and may be unstable. Download here 3.1.2 Vapor 3.5.0 is now Live! August 4, 2021 Download here Vapor’s release cycle is accelerating, and now 3.5.0 is live. New improvements include: - New particle data reader: Data Collection Particles (DCP) - New raw data reader: Brick of Values (BOV) - Easily, and visually save your state with the new Bookmarks feature - Further improvements that streamline Vapor’s GUI - Faster data access with OpenMP As well as many other reported issues, including the 1/4 canvas bug on BigSur. Thanks to users ViggoHanst and Fortran for reporting this. Thank you to everyone who has helped steer us by filling out our survey for 3.6 features. The survey is still live,so please fill it out if you have 5 minutes. Please engage us on our forum. Thank you! -The Vapor Team 3.1.3 Vapor 3.4.0 Download here Major usability improvements include: • Improved algorithm for the Flow renderer’s random seeding bias variable • Data-independent settings (e.g. Cache size) can now be modified before data is loaded • Restructuring of Vapor’s top-level tabs • New and improved Colorbars • Improved functionality of the Geometry tab • Better space management of the Renderer Table Other notable issues include: • Addition of clang-format linter, and git pre-push hook • Fixed weekly builds on all platforms A comprehensive list of fixes can be viewed in the 3_4_0 release milestone. 8 Chapter 3. Vapor 3 Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease 3.1.4 Vapor 3.3.0 December 17, 2020 Download here Release notes for VAPOR-3.3.0 • Introduced new flow rendering algorithms, including pathlines and streamlines rendered in 3D, as wellasthe option for density colormapping • The Flow renderer can now sample any set of data values along a pathline or streamline, and write those samples to a text file • Included a prototype Volume Renderer using Intel’s Ospray engine, allowing for 3D rendering of unstructured models like MPAS • Improved Vapor’s GUI components and architecture for more consistent behavior and improved usability • Vapor’s sliders no longer have pre-set limits, and can now have their range of values adjusted through a menu opened with a right-mouse click • Multiple performance optimizations to Vapor’s internal data management system, and the Flow and Image ren- derers • New colormaps, taken from MatPlotLib’s cmocean package • Updates to Vapor’s third-party libraries 3.1.5 Vapor 3.2.0 February 3, 2020 Download here Release notes for VAPOR-3.2.0 New Features: • Flow Renderer • Model Renderer • New Transfer Function Editor • Off screen rendering • Performance optimization to Vapor’s DataMgr class • Added support for stretched grids to vdccreate • Added ability to color Volume Renderings with a secondary variable • Increased Volume Rendering sampling rate maximum setting • Updated 3rd party libraries 3.1. Downloads 9 Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease 3.1.6 Installation Instructions We encourage users of Vapor to install with the methods described here. If you’re a developer and would like to contribute, see the Contributing to Vapor section. Linux Run the downloaded .sh script in a terminal window. It will prompt you as to where the binaries will be installed. For example: % sh VAPOR3-3.0.0.beta-RH7.sh A demonstration for installation on Linux systems can be viewed here: OSX Double click on the downloaded .dmg file. Once the Finder window pops up, drag the Vapor icon into the Applications folder. A demonstration for installing on OSX systems can be viewed here: Windows Run the downloaded .exe file. A wizard will step you through the installer settings necessary for setup. A demonstration for installing on Windows systems can be viewed here: 3.1.7 Sample Data Dataset Model Grid Resolution File Size DUKU WRF 181 x 166 x 35 734 MB Kauffman ROMS 226 x 642 x 43 495 MB Note: Users can download a 500 meter resolution image of NASA’s BigBlueMarble for use in Vapor’s Image Renderer. 10 Chapter 3. Vapor 3 Vapor Documentation, Release 3.4.0.preRelease 3.1.8 Previous Releases Vapor 3.1.0 July 5, 2019 Download here Release notes for VAPOR-3.1.0 New Features: • 3D Variable Support • Direct Volume Renderer • Isosurfaces • Slice Renderer • Wireframe Renderer • Python variable engine • Geotiff creation from Vapor renderings • Support for MPAS-A and MOM6 models Vapor 2 Vapor 2 is deprecated, and we strongly encourage users to download the currently supported releases of Vapor 3. If you are interested in using Vapor 2, it can be downloaded after filling out a short survey. Legacy documentation for Vapor 2 can be found here. Please note that this website is no longer supported, and some links may be broken. Use at your own discretion. Vapor 2 source code can be found here. Download python example here 3.2 Quick Start Guide Install the version of Vapor3 for your computer’s operating system from our downloads page. Updating your system’s graphics driver if you’re not sure that it’s current. If you don’t have data that’s supported by Vapor3 yet, you can download a sample to get started with.