A survey on visualization of vector elds by texture-based methods

Running Title: A survey on texture-based visualization methods. ABSTRACT Visualization of vector data produced from application areas such as computational uid dynamics (CFD), environmental sciences , and material engineering is a challenging task. Traditional visualization approaches, such as vector plot, particle tracing, stream surfaces, volume rendering, and so on, often provide a rather coarse spatial resolution. This problem is tackled by texture-based algorithms, which can provide the ow visualization by high resolution output texture. Texture-based methods reveal to be eeective, versatile , and suitable for a large spectrum of application. In this paper we review, outlining advantages and drawbacks, the most important texture-based techniques known in the literature for: 2D and 3D, steady and unsteady, regular and curvilinear vector grids.