1 What's New?

In this section, we highlight the latest additions to map3d in the (vain?) hope that people will read at least this much of the manual and be able to quickly make use of the latest and greatest that the program offers.

1.1 Version 6.1: July, 2004

This is the second version of the ``new'' map3d with a GTK-based GUI. We are getting very very close to the complete functionality of the old GL based version and have gone well beyond it in some features, especially the user interface. This is a ``dot'' release but is not a minor release for it contains some important new features and the usual set of bug fixes.

Some of the specific additions that you should notice over previous versions include:

Mac OSX port:

map3d now works on the Mac OSX system. See mac install instructions in Section 3.6

MATLAB files:

map3d can now read geometry or data files saved in MATLAB format. See MATLAB file specs for geometry in Section 6.1.4 and for scalar data in Section 6.3.3.

Settings files:

map3d now has the ability to read/write settings and script files. See Section 8.5.2.

Image saving bug fix:

map3d is no longer based on platform-specific image saving code, and thus all bugs associated with it in the previous version have been eliminated.

Gouraud shading:

map3d uses a new style for the gouraud shading. Instead of plain shading (which resulted in darker shading marks where there was more drastic interpolation), we now use a texture map of the colormap. If your hardware doesn't support texture mapping, this may be toggled with the g-key.

Bug fixes:

not that the previous version had any bugs, but we found a few(!) things to fix.

1.2 In the works (``vapourware'')

A small sampler of things that are in the works:

• Reading of Time Series container files.
• Proper reading of the container files in the graphicsio file system.
• Dynamic menus that indicate the current parameter selections (in progress).
• Remote Control of the animations and user interventions for making videos.
• New display modes for the display of vectors.
• We are trying to fix the bugs listed on the bugs page (see Section 10).