Welcome To FieldView 2025

Table of Contents

Release at a Glance
Other Updates & Improvements
List of Resolved Issues
Discontinued Features
Platform Support
- Platform End of Life Updates
Copyright

Release at a Glance

This release introduces our new Vulkan-based graphics engine, a major step forward in performance, visual quality, and platform longevity. As simulation sizes continue to grow and engineers demand more responsive visualization, we’ve built a modern rendering engine that makes post-processing faster, smoother, and more future proof.

With this update, users can expect 3x to 400x faster graphics, especially with large, complex datasets. New Physically Based Rendering (PBR) for materials Image Based Lighting (IBL) unlock more realistic visuals, improving both technical analysis and presentation quality. This is the foundation for years of innovation to come.

This new graphics engine has been designed and tested to operate on all environments supported by FieldView, whether you have a discrete, integrated or virtual GPU. Or even if you’re running software rendering on a CPU. For best performance, we recommend that you run FieldView on a system equipped with a discrete GPU, and that you keep your driver updated.

More Realistic Materials with Physically Based Rendering (PBR) and Image Based Lighting (IBL)

A significant improvement has been made to FieldView’s Material Rendering with the adoption of Physically Based Rendering (PBR). It’s a modern graphics technique that more accurately simulates how light interacts with real-world materials. Instead of relying on simplified shading models, PBR uses physically accurate calculations to reproduce how surfaces reflect, absorb, and scatter light. With PBR, surfaces such as metals, glass, and plastics are rendered with greater realism, maintaining their distinctive appearance under different lighting conditions.

This release also introduces Image-Based Lighting (IBL), a technique that uses high-dynamic-range (HDR) images of real environments to illuminate your models. Unlike traditional lighting, which relies on fixed light sources, IBL captures the complexity of natural light with more realistic highlights. 6 default environments are being provided to cover a variety of applications (see image below).

Material “Shiny Plastic” shown using the 6 predefined environments provided in this new release.

For our users, this means that visualizations look more natural and consistent, improving both the interpretability of results and the quality of images used in reports and presentations. The combination of PBR, IBL and HDR environments makes your simulation results clearer, sharper, and more impactful.

Faster Graphics

The most significant benefit of the new Vulkan-based rendering engine is a substantial increase in graphics performance across all platforms. All users should notice faster, smoother visualization, especially when working with large datasets or complex scenes that previously pushed the limits of GPU performance.

These improvements can be felt in many aspects of interaction, such as rotating, zooming, and panning views. An easy way to quantify them is by measuring frame rate performance during view transformations. A quantitative comparison has been performed for various datasets and compared to the previous release. Some speedup examples are summarized in the chart below.

Faster Transparency with OIT

This release introduces Order Independent Transparency (OIT), a modern rendering technique that not only produces accurate transparency for high numbers of overlapping surfaces but also delivers substantial performance gains.

In traditional rendering, overlapping translucent surfaces require sorting and rendering the same scene multiple times (once for each layer). OIT eliminates this requirement, ensuring that transparent surfaces are always rendered correctly, regardless of their order or dataset complexity. The performance gain often exceeds an order of magnitude.

Comparison between transparency in previous versions of FieldView (left) and with the new OIT technique (right). Note how the previous limit in number of transparent layers could cause incorrect representations.

Unfortunately, no rendering technique is perfect, particularly when designed to succeed on the wide range of environments supported by FieldView (discrete, integrated or virtual GPU, software rendering on the CPU). When rendering scenes that are pushing your system to its graphics limits (very large resolution, hundreds of overlaid faces, etc.), transparency artifacts may appear, taking the form of “noisy” or “grainy” rendering, with pixels showing what could seem like arbitrary colors (see example below).

Such artifacts are more likely to appear during view transforms, as FieldView will temporarily reduce the number of transparent layers being ordered to prioritize performance. Once the view transform is complete, the number of sorted layers will be raised to prioritize image quality again.

Another artifact can look like portions of a transparent surface are disappearing.

If you’re experiencing any of these problems, adjust FieldView’s OIT settings with the three new environment variables listed below. Their value will be checked by FieldView at startup. If not set, FieldView will use default values (mentioned below):

FV_OIT_MIN_SORTED_FRAGMENT_COUNT: The number of fragments sorted during interactive view changes. Default: 128. Valid range: 1 to 1024. Must be less or equal to FV_OIT_MAX_SORTED_FRAGMENT_COUNT. Lower this setting for smoother view changes. Raise it for higher quality.
FV_OIT_MAX_SORTED_FRAGMENT_COUNT: The number of fragments sorted when the view is stationary. Default: 1024. Valid range: 1 to 8192. Lower this setting for faster fixed view. Raise it for higher quality.
FV_OIT_FRAGMENT_BUFFER_SIZE: size of the memory buffer (in MiB) used to sort fragments. Default: 512. Valid range: 10 to 10000. If portions of transparent surfaces are disappearing or if raising FV_OIT_MAX_SORTED_FRAGMENT_COUNT has no effect, try increasing the size of the memory buffer. As a general rule, it is recommended to keep it well below the dedicated memory of your GPU.

Note that both transparency techniques supported by previous FieldView versions (“Standard” and “Quick Transparency”) have been deprecated.

Smoother Shading

When View → Presentation Quality is ON, a specular highlight is rendered on all surfaces with display type set to Smooth Shading. The technique now used for this shading (called Phong) provides a smoother highlight than the one used in previous FieldView versions (Gouraud). The improvement is particularly visible when zooming in closely on a surface or when working with coarse meshes.

New Presentation Rendering mode (right), showing a smoother highlight than previous FieldView versions (left).

Anti-Aliasing

This release upgrades our anti-aliasing technology by replacing the older Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) method with Multi-Sampling Anti-Aliasing (MSAA). While SSAA produced smooth edges, it did so at a significant performance cost by rendering scenes at higher resolutions and then downscaling.

MSAA achieves similar edge-smoothing quality with a far more efficient approach. The result is sharper, cleaner images with much lower GPU load, allowing users to enjoy smoother visuals without sacrificing rendering speed.

By default, the same MSAA sampling level (4) is used for both interactive and offscreen rendering (used to save images and animations). It provides a good balance of performance and quality and is therefore always ON and the menu entry View → Anti-aliasing has been removed. For users who still want control over the MSAA sampling level, two new environment variables have been introduced: FV_MULTISAMPLE_LEVEL and FV_OFFSCREEN_MULTISAMPLE_LEVEL. They accept the values 1 (no anti-aliasing), 2, 4, 8 and 16.

The figure below shows their effect on a close-up view. Values above 4 produce only a very subtle change, which is why it has been selected as the default. Note that only higher-level GPU will have support for a sampling level of 16.

Close-up view of MSAA in the rectangular area show at the top. In clockwise order from top-left: MSAA level 1, 2, 4 (default) and 8.

Vulkan Support Across Various Configurations

Built on the Vulkan API, the new graphics engine delivers consistent performance across multiple platforms and hardware configurations. Vulkan’s wide industry support—from GPU and driver vendors to operating systems—ensures reliable rendering whether running on Windows, Linux, or macOS. We recommend keeping your graphics drivers up to date, as Vulkan continues to evolve through active development.

Windows systems support Vulkan out of the box. On macOS, FieldView uses a runtime library that maps Vulkan to Apple’s Metal graphics framework. On Linux, Vulkan support depends on the distribution—if it’s not already installed, you may need to add the appropriate Vulkan packages or drivers manually.

To help you quickly confirm Vulkan compatibility and version details, the Help → About FieldView panel now displays your system’s runtime environment information.

Software Rendering is supported on Linux through Mesa’s Lavapipe driver, which will need to be installed separately from FieldView.

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, a custom-built Mesa Lavapipe driver is shipped with FieldView. This driver requires certain dependencies to be satisfied—most notably, llvm version 18.1—which are essential for correct operation. FieldView will issue a warning if any critical dependencies are missing or improperly configured. To force FieldView to use this driver, start FieldView with the -use_fv_mesa command line option in combination with the -batch and -software_render flags.

Software rendering is not supported on Windows and macOS.

Modern remote desktop technologies support Vulkan, making the old -srg (Software Remote Graphics) and -hrg (Hardware Remote Graphics) obsolete. They have been deprecated.

New Depth Adjustment Setings

Two new environment variables, FV_DEPTH_OFFSET and FV_DEPTH_BIAS , have been added to control rendering of coincident/coplanar surfaces. These variables can help alleviate z-fighting for users experiencing issues related to graphics drivers.

FV_DEPTH_OFFSET: Shifts the depth of filled geometry by a fixed amount to help separate overlapping surfaces.

FV_DEPTH_BIAS: Adds a small bias that depends on the angle of the surface relative to the camera. This can be used alongside FV_DEPTH_OFFSET for more precise control.

To see all FieldView environment variables, see the User’s Guide

Drag and Drop for Restarts and Scripts

FieldView now supports loading Restart files and Scripts by dragging and dropping them onto the graphics window, making it faster and more intuitive to apply a Restart or a Script.

Depending on the type of Restart file you’re dropping, FieldView will respond differently:

For a .dat Restart, FieldView will apply a Complete Restart.
For a .scr or a .fvx script, the script will be executed.
For all other Restarts (View, Formula, Boundary Surfaces, etc.), the specific Restart will be loaded.

Native Support for Apple Silicon

This release brings native support for Apple Silicon (M-series) processors, enabling FieldView to take full advantage of Apple’s high-performance, energy-efficient architecture. Previously, users on macOS ran FieldView through Rosetta 2 translation; now, the software runs natively, delivering faster performance, smoother interaction, and improved memory efficiency.

New HTML Documentation is Easier to Search and Navigate

This release introduces a new HTML-based documentation system, replacing the previous PDF manuals. The shift to HTML provides a faster, more accessible, and more interactive experience for users seeking help or technical reference material. With the new online documentation, users can now search more efficiently, with keyword-based navigation and integrated cross-references.

Other Updates & Improvements

Demotion during interactive view changes has been simplified to only allow two modes.
- OFF (default)
- ON: Only bounding boxes will be rendered.
A new demotion icon has been created and added to the Transform Controls toolbar and the Viewer Options panel.
New icons have also been added to the Transform Controls toolbar and the Viewer Options panel for Axis Markers and Running Mouse.

List of Resolved Issues

A problem has been addressed that was causing MP4 videos to drop some frames when inserted into Microsoft Powerpoint.
A problem has been addressed that could cause a crash when multithreading was used to compute formulas for a mesh with arbitrary polyhedra.
The transparency input is now reliably taking user input.
The VTK reader has been improved to support datasets containing the VTK_ID_TYPE variable.

Discontinued Features

As part of our transition to the new Vulkan-based graphics engine, a small number of legacy features could not be ported and will be discontinued starting with this release. Removing them allows us to focus on delivering faster, more stable, and forward-looking visualization capabilities.

Here is a list of deprecated or removed features:

Image export to the TIFF, PS and EPS formats
Printing an image to a post-script compatible printer
Export of 3D PDF format files
Quad-buffered stereo
The old so-called “Quick transparency”
Fade in and fade out of surfaces and lines in keyframe animations
Software rendering on Windows and macOS
The scripting command ANTIALIAS will be ignored

Accordingly, the following environment variables have been deprecated: FV_DPI, FV_MULTISAMPLE_ENABLE, FV_PDF_VIEWER, FV_PRINT_DIR, FV_PRINT_NO_AA, FV_RF_GRAPHICS, FV_SCREEN_GRAB, FV_STEREO_ENABLE, FV_TRANSP_LAYERS, FV_USE_FV14_GL_MODE, FV_MAX_TRANSPARENCY_LAYERS, FV_FORCE_VISTA, FV_LINE_OFFSET

Fieldview with Python is no longer supported on macOS.

Platform Support

FieldView 2025 is supported on the following platforms:

Linux:
- RedHat 8, 9, and 10
- Rocky Linux 8, 9, and 10
Windows: 11
macOS: 14, 15, and 26

Platform End of Life Updates

Windows 10 support ends October 14th, 2025. Tecplot software released after this date will not be supported on Windows 10.

Enjoy FieldView 2025 and master the view.

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