Flow Surface Probes for Vector Field Visualization
Claudio T. Silva, Lichan Hong, Arie E. Kaufman · 1994
We present a technique called flow surface probes for interactive visualization of 3D steady vector fields. The user places in the flow field an arbitrarily-shaped seed surface, which is then deformed over time by the local or global 3D vector field, producing an animation sequence. This sequence and individual frames are used to probe the behavior of the flow field. 1 Introduction In 2D fluid flow visualization, techniques such as stream lines, arrow plots, and the like are commonly used to visualize vector fields with satisfactory results. However, in the 3D case, they usually generate cluttering displays that convey little, if any, useful information. As pointed out by Hesselink, Post, and van Wijk [HPv94], the problem seems to be a fundamental one, as there is no intuitive and psychologically meaningful representation of 3D vectors. Even though we can use arrows to represent single vectors, there is no such simple metaphor for 3D vector fields. Without any obvious visual represe...