[Gerry Kan]

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.

[aero_head]

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?

[aerosayan]

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.