Visualizing Vector Information in Ocean Environments

Great efforts have been made to ensure that the field of scientific visualization lives up to its name. In particular, the challenge has become one of finding the appropriate method or suite of methods to best portray the meaning of the given data. Determining these methods relies on information such as the structure of the data, the scale of the problem, and the questions to be answered. This paper provides an overview of several vector visualization techniques in the context of visualizing global--scale ocean model data. A comparison of the techniques is given, and conclusions for appropriate uses are made. INTRODUCTION Meaningful scientific visualization of time--varying, three--dimensional flow fields remains a challenge -- not only because visual paradigms for rendering volumetric data are nontrivial [1], but also because what is "meaningful" varies widely across applications. For example, the choice of scale greatly influences the suitability of visualization techniques [2,3]. ..