The global luminescent oil-film, or GLOF, skin friction meter is a unique technique developed for the extraction of high-resolution skin friction topological data using the relationship between skin friction, oil-film thickness, and the luminescent intensity of the oil-film mixed with a dye. The GLOF skin friction meter is able to provide data with an extremely high spatial-resolution (one data point per pixel), which is critical for the study of complex separated flows. In the past, the GLOF technique has been successfully used to extract skin friction data from wind tunnel as well as underwater experiments in a variety of cases sch as blended wing models, ground vehicles, delta wings, airfoils, residential buildings, etc.

In addition to skin friction, the GLOF technique can also be used to extract surface pressure data, which is particularly useful for low-speed measurements.