What's your favorite vector display representation
 

Howdy Folks:

I have always had this question in the back of my head ... but now I finally have time to put it forward. So here it goes.

When it comes to displaying vector quantities, what is your favorite technique?

Examples:

1) 3D glyphs (i.e. quiver plot)
2) Streamlines
3) Line integral convolution (LIC)
4) Spot noise
5) Anything I missed

Any comments are welcome.

Sincerely, Gerry.

Hello Gerry,

I've been thinking of an answer for this for several days and have finally mustered enough confidence to answer, seeing as well that no one has answered yet. I thought this was a good, thought provoking question I could learn things from, so in hopes of learning here it goes.

I personally prefer streamlines. I am studying vortical flows and vorticity, so streamlines seem the most common/accurate/easiest method to show these quantities with. I know quiver plots are used to show directional quantities as well, however.

Would it not depend on the vector quantity/application of what you are trying to visualise? For my area of research, horseshoe vortices are commonly what we look for, so I am not sure if another visualisation technique would capture these, at least to the point where they could provide meaningful results.

What is your favourite, Gerry?

Only used streamlines and quiver plots for my work.
I generally color the streamlines by something like velocity/pressure magnitude.
For quiver plots, I reduce the length of the vectors, color them, and make them semi transparent while setting the background as black. The semi transparent quiver plots actually look quite good.