The new features, increased performance, and greater ease-of-use are the result of six months of internal and beta testing, according to Kent Misegades, CEI's president.

"This release consolidates a huge number of features requested by our customers over the past year," says Misegades. "It's all about being able to do a whole lot more in less time and with less hassle."

• easy adjustments to reduce polygon counts for faster rendering;
• pop-up controls for rotational visual symmetry with little loss of rendering speed;
• collaboration features for up to eight participants in both EnSight and EnSight Gold;
• 3D arrowheads, offset parts, and labeling of contour values for better display of complex problems;
• 1D texture coloring for greater speed and accuracy;
• smoother animation through keyframe timeline, acceleration and spline controls;
• dynamic hidden lines; and
• optimizations and an Intel compiler that generate up to four times faster performance on Windows versions.

• new default settings that help users do the right thing the first time;
• undo/redo and autorecovery functions;
• better scripting through parameters in the command language; and
• user-defined API that enables users to write code for custom EnSight output.

EnSight and EnSight Gold now include user-defined readers for HDF5, an important NCSA and DOE format for large-scale scientific applications, and netCDF, an environmental application from the University of Wisconsin. Version 7.6 also supports the HP Space Mouse and Space Ball 3D input devices.

EnSight and EnSight Gold 7.6 are available immediately through CEI and its worldwide distributors. Free evaluations are available to those who qualify, along with a complete display of new features.