v.net.visibility(1)

📦

version 8.4.2 · 8 versions

💖 NAME 💖

v.net.visibility — bestie, this module performs visibility graph construction. That's the whole job, and it eats. 👑

🎀 KEYWORDS 🎀

vector, network, shortest path, visibility

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

v.net.visibility
v.net.visibility --help
v.net.visibility input=name output=name  [coordinates=east,north]
[visibility=name]   [--overwrite]  [--help]  [--verbose]  [--quiet]
[--ui]

🚩 Flags 🚩

--overwrite — Allow output files to overwrite existing files. yes she will replace your old files, no she will not apologize 💅
--help — Print usage summary
--verbose — Verbose module output
--quiet — Quiet module output
--ui — Force launching GUI dialog

🌸 Parameters 🌸

input=name [required] — Name of input vector map. Or data source for direct OGR access.
output=name [required] — Name for output vector map
coordinates=east,north — Coordinates
visibility=name — Name of input vector map containing visible points. Add points after computing the visibility graph.

🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

okay so. v.net.visibility computes the visibility graph of a vector map that's got lines, areas (boundaries) and points in it. And what even is a visibility graph? It's the graph where the nodes are the end point of the lines, boundaries or simply points. There's an edge between two nodes if they are "visible" to each other — and two nodes are visible when there are no segments in between of them, i.e. the edge does not intersect any line or boundary in the vector map. Periodt.

This is genuinely so useful for computing the shortest path in a vector map from any two points. To do it, first you compute the visibility graph, and from that you compute the shortest path using v.net.path or d.path. Two steps, no cap. ✨

⚠️ IMPORTANT: the algorithm doesn't work well with intersecting lines (that includes overlapping). she has boundaries, respect them 😭

📝 NOTES 📝

So if you compute a shortest path after computing the visibility graph, you'll notice that this path might go through a vertex of a line. And if that's not the vibe you were going for, you might need to process the map in v.buffer, initially with a small value. Like, for example:

v.buffer input=map output=bufferedmap buffer=1 type=point,line,area,boundary

The first argument is the input map. It supports lines, boundaries (so, areas) and points. And for the record — the algorithm was written to work with lines and boundaries not intersecting each other (that includes overlapping). The resulting map containing the visibility graph is given in the output map.

If you need to add additional points so you can compute a shortest path between them afterwards, you can use the coordinates parameter, e.g.:

coordinates=25556200,6686400,25556400,6686600

where 25556200,6686400 are the coordinate of the first point and 25556400,6686600 are the coordinates of the second point. And of course you can give as many points as you need — they will be added to the visibility graph and edges from them will be computed. 🫶

You can always add those points after computing the visibility graph too. Simply use the visibility parameter. The input will be the original vector map, the vis will be the computed visibility graph, and the output the new visibility graph which will be the vis + the new points given with coordinate (edges will be computed as well). Obsessed with the layering honestly.

v.net.visibility input=map visibility=vis_map output=new_vis_map \
      coordinates=25556200,6686400,25556400,6686600

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Example 1 💫

A simple example (North Carolina sample data) showing how to use the module:

v.extract input=zipcodes_wake output=areas_7_11_25 cats=7,11,25
g.region vector=zipcodes_wake
d.mon wx0
d.vect areas_7_11_25
v.net.visibility input=areas_7_11_25 output=graph
d.vect graph
d.vect areas_7_11_25 color=red type=boundary

Example 2 💫

An example on how to use v.buffer along with the module:

v.buffer input=lines output=buffered_lines buffer=1
v.net.visibility input=buffered_lines output=graph
d.vect graph
d.vect lines col=red

Example 3 💫

An example on how to use the coordinate parameter. This will compute the visibility graph of the vector map lines with the point 2555678,6686343:

v.net.visibility input=lines output=graph coordinates=2555678,6686343
d.vect graph
d.vect lines col=red

Example 4 💫

An example (North Carolina sample data) on how to use the coordinate parameter with the vis parameter. Here the vector map graph is computed then a new visibility graph is computed from it with the point 669547.97,208348.20 extra:

v.extract input=zipcodes_wake output=areas_7_11_25 cats=7,11,25
g.region vector=zipcodes_wake
d.mon wx0
d.vect areas_7_11_25
v.net.visibility input=areas_7_11_25 output=graph
v.net.visibility input=areas_7_11_25 visibility=graph output=new_graph \
      coordinates=669547.97,208348.20
d.erase
d.vect areas_7_11_25
echo "symbol basic/star 20 669547.97 208348.20 black red" | d.graph -m
d.vect new_graph
d.vect areas_7_11_25 color=red type=boundary

Example 5 💫

An example for connections of points (Spearfish):

v.net.visibility input=archsites output=graph
g.region vector=archsites
d.mon wx0
d.vect graph
d.vect archsites col=red

Example 6 💫

Here is an example with artificial data.

Load data using here document syntax (Bash and unix-like commands lines only):

v.in.ascii input=- output=simple format=standard <<EOF
VERTI:
B  6
 82.19908257  75.21788991
 81.67889908  71.40321101
 83.58623853  71.72522936
 84.3293578   75.21788991
 82.24862385  76.06009174
 82.19908257  75.21788991
C  1 1
 82.88897401  73.66318782
 1     1
C  1 1
 90.72645705  75.61248675
 1     2
C  1 1
 89.37944702  69.51012912
 1     3
C  1 1
 81.60108979  67.78669725
 1     4
B  5
 89.92752294  73.95458716
 92.37981651  75.11880734
 91.56238532  77.29862385
 88.96146789  75.88669725
 89.92752294  73.95458716
B  10
 88.54036697  70.70963303
 87.92192518  70.04087417
 87.89633028  69.00045872
 88.66460807  68.13372867
 90.15108904  68.23290821
 90.9426344   68.97588202
 90.86880734  70.11513761
 90.00144697  70.78336312
 89.06055046  70.95733945
 88.54036697  70.70963303
B  9
 78.73119266  71.35366972
 80.76238532  68.90137615
 84.20550459  66.91972477
 89.87798165  65.35917431
 83.23494031  66.27685175
 80.34278748  68.00837238
 78.38484005  71.40292009
 78.40917431  72.27018349
 78.73119266  71.35366972
EOF

Compute the graph:

v.net.visibility input=simple output=graph

💀 KNOWN ISSUES 💀

In some cases when 3 points or nodes are collinear, some wrong edges are added. This happens only really rarly and shouldn't be a big problem. 🫠
When two points have the exact same x coordinate and are visible, some wrong edges are added.

not me warning you about the edge cases 💀 she's a little quirky, we love her anyway.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

d.path, v.net, v.net.alloc, v.net.iso, v.net.salesman, v.net.steiner, v.to.db

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Maximilian Maldacker Mentor: Wolf Bergenheim

🦋 SOURCE CODE 🦋

Available at: v.net.visibility source code (history)

Accessed: Saturday Jan 17 05:41:27 2026

okay bestie that's the whole page, we ate and left no crumbs 💅 this was GRASS GIS 8.4.2, snagged from the manual and last accessed Saturday Jan 17 05:41:27 2026, all copyrighted up by the GRASS Development Team from 2003–2025. now go build that visibility graph, you're the main character 🎀✨🌸

📦 where this page comes from

fedora 44: grass 8.4.2-4.fc44 · GPL-2.0-or-later
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-10-18: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms