scientific visualization Scientific visualization ( also spelled scientific visualisation) is an interdisciplinary branch of science concerned with the visualization of scientific phenomena.Michael Friendly (2008)"Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, stat ...

, image-based flow visualization (or visualisation) is a computer modelling technique developed by

Jarke van Wijk Jarke J. (Jack) van Wijk (born 1959) is a Dutch computer scientist, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and an expert in information visualization. Biography Van Wijk recei ...

to visualize two dimensional flows of liquids such as water and air, like the wind movement of a

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...

. Compared with integration techniques it has the advantage of producing a whole image at every step, as the technique relies upon graphical computing methods for frame-by-frame capture of the model of advective transport of a decaying dye. It is a method from the

texture advection Texture may refer to: Science and technology * Surface texture, the texture means smoothness, roughness, or bumpiness of the surface of an object * Texture (roads), road surface characteristics with waves shorter than road roughness * Texture ( ...

family.

Principle

The core idea is to create a noise texture on a regular grid and then bend this grid according to the flow (the vector field). The bent grid is then sampled at the original grid locations. Thus, the output is a version of the noise, that is displaced according to the flow. Image-Based Flow Visualization

The advantage of this approach is that it can be accelerated on modern graphics hardware, thus allowing for

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

or almost real-time simulation of 2D flow data. This is particularly handy if one wants to visualise multiple scaled versions of the vector field to first gain an overview and then concentrate on the details.

References

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External links

Website of Jarke van Wijk with demo software and pictures
Scientific visualization Numerical function drawing Fluid dynamics