For a comprehensive list of new features in ParaView 6.0.0, please see the ParaView 6.0.0 release notes hosted on ParaView’s GitLab project page.
A selection of notable new features is described on this page.
A new default background and color map
The default background has changed from “Blue Gray Background” to “Warm Gray Background”. The default color map has changed from “Cool to Warm” to “Fast”.
Top row: the new default color map and background color in ParaView. Bottom row: the previous default color map and background color.
Runtime selection between headless, offscreen, and onscreen rendering modes
The ParaView command-line executables pvserver, pvpython and pvbatch now support all three modes of rendering – headless, offscreen, and onscreen in one build. The rendering backend is automatically selected at runtime based upon the system capabilities such as availability of an X server or EGL drivers.
Use the new --opengl-window-backend command-line option to specify the OpenGL window backend used in these applications. Supported values are: ‘GLX’, ‘EGL’, ‘OSMesa’, and ‘Win32’. If not specified, the default backend is used. The default backend is determined by the build configuration and the hardware configuration of the machine automatically.
You can also force use of a specific backend by setting the environment variable VTK_DEFAULT_OPENGL_WINDOW to any of these values:
vtkOSOpenGLRenderWindow for software headless rendering with OSMesa on Linux and Windows.
vtkEGLRenderWindow for hardware accelerated headless rendering on Linux.
vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow for non-headless rendering on Linux.
vtkWin32OpenGLRenderWindow for non-headless rendering on Windows.
Note: the --opengl-window-backend command-line option and environment variable VTK_DEFAULT_OPENGL_WINDOW are not supported in the ParaView GUI client.
Improved Cell Grid support
Cell grids – which are an extensible new type of data in VTK and ParaView – now have an IOSS-based reader, hardware selection, CPU- and GPU-based interpolation using the same source code, and several new and improved filters.
The example rendering below shows how discontinuities at cell boundaries are allowed while simultaneously supporting spatial variation within each cell (unlike traditional VTK cell-data). You can see both smooth and sharp variations in this example mesh, colored by the Z component of the magnetic field variable (FACE_COEFF_B_Field) at time-step 2.
Cell grid that shows discontinuities.
The arrow glyphs show the overall magnetic field directions. The field itself is stored as a single coefficient per hexahedral face with a vector-valued Thomas-Raviart basis function. This, too, was previously unsupported by VTK.
To read more about these changes, please see this topic on VTK’s discourse forum.
C++17 is now required
ParaView now permits C++17 language features and hence requires C++17 compiler support. The minimum required compiler versions have been updated as well.
gcc 8.0 from 4.8
LLVM Clang 5.0 from 3.3
Apple Clang 10.0 from 7.0
MSVC 2017 from 2015
Intel ICC 19.0 from 14.0
IBM XL 17.1 from 16.1
Qt 6 is fully supported
ParaView 6.0.0 fully supports Qt6. The official ParaView 6.0.0 binaries available at paraview.org/download are built and packaged with Qt 6.
…and much more!
The features highlighted on this page are just some of what’s new in ParaView 6.0.0. For a comprehensive list of new features, please see the ParaView 6.0.0 release notes.
