A new version of the GLEAMviz simulator has been released today: version 7.0 features a major rewriting of all the data handling components, together with some additional functionalities.

The output format for the results generated by the computational engine and managed by the client has been changed to a standard format, the Hierarchical Data Format version 5 (HDF5), developed by the NCSA; this change brings various advantages, in terms of scalability and extension of the output data, performances, and usability. Along with this modification we performed a significant architectural refactoring of all the data manager modules, adjourning the data retrieval process (which is now much faster) and setting the basis for future improvements and extensions in handling the simulations’ output.

The new software application is not compatible with the old custom data format, so we developed a simple conversion tool to allow users adjourn their existing simulations to the new format, and then open them in the Client version 7 for visualizing and analyzing. The conversion tool is distributed together with the GLEAMviz client and is called GLEAMconverter; its usage is straightforward: you just need to select one or more simulations (up to version 6.9) and an output directory.