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The VAPOR team is happy to announce the release of the VAPOR 1.5.2
desktop visualization platform. This is primarily a bug fix release,
however a few minor features have been added as described below. Of
particular interest to WRF users is the support for overlaying multiple
semi-transparent geo-referenced images such as political boundaries and
rivers over a satellite terrain image.<br>
<br>
The VAPOR Team<br>
<a href="http://www.vapor.ucar.edu/">www.vapor.ucar.edu</a><br>
e-mail: <a href="mailto:vapor@ucar.edu">vapor@ucar.edu</a><br>
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<div>1.5.2 Release Notes:</div>
<h4>New Features</h4>
<em>Improved support for transparency<em>
</em></em>
<p><em><em>VAPOR now provides limited support for display of
semi-transparent surfaces. Multiple two-dimensional semi-transparent
surfaces (Probe, 2DData, and Image) will correctly display in a scene
provided:
</em></em></p>
<ul>
<em><em> </em></em>
<li><em><em>The surfaces do not intersect each other</em></em></li>
<em><em> </em></em>
<li><em><em>All the surfaces do intersect the line from the camera to
the scene rotation center</em></em></li>
</ul>
<p><em><em>This capability enables users to apply multiple images upon
a terrain surface image (e.g. political boundaries, rivers, etc.) by
positioning the partially transparent surfaces slightly above the
terrain image. If there are additional semi-transparent shapes in the
scene (volume rendering, isosurface, flow lines) they may not render
correctly. Best results are obtained by keeping semitransparent objects
separated from one another and in the center of the view.
</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>Improved diagnostics for OpenGL and for application startup.
If the user sets the VAPOR_DEBUG variable, the console will report more
extensive information about the graphics capabilities and the initial
progress of the application. This can be useful in understanding many
VAPOR failures. On Windows, these messages are reported to the log
file.
</em></em></p>
<h4><em><em>Bug Fixes</em></em></h4>
<p><em><em>This patch release fixes several significant bugs:</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>2895315 VAPOR crash on launch with some older graphics cards.</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>2884062 Failed conversion of NCL images, particularly on
Cygwin-X platforms.</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>2861792 Failure to load some semi-transparent tiff images.</em></em></p>
<em><em> </em></em>
<p><em><em>2873771 Memory overflow with long sequences of
terrain-mapped images</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>2877208 Corrupted images when probe and 2d images displayed
together</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>2841152 OpenGL errors when probe is rotated.</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>A complete list of bugs fixed by this release may be found
on the SourceForge VAPOR project web site: <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/vapor/support">http://sourceforge.net/projects/vapor/support</a></em></em></p>
<h4><em><em>Known Bugs and Workarounds</em></em></h4>
<p><em><em>2210024 Unsteady flow integration results are incorrect if
the domain is moving in time.</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>2877268 Changing region position can change its size as a
side-effect (if position changed with slider in gui)</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>Various problems occur with older or less capable graphics
cards. For example, many Intel cards will not render isosurfaces
correctly.
</em></em></p>
<p><em><em>A full list of known bugs can be found on the SourceForge
VAPOR project web site: <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/vapor/support">http://sourceforge.net/projects/vapor/support</a>.</em></em></p>
Alan Norton<br>
National Center for Atmospheric Research<br>
303-497-1260<br>
<a href="mailto:alan@ucar.edu">alan@ucar.edu</a><br>
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