Vector field animation with texture maps

Vector fields can represent magnetic, electrical, fluid, and gas velocity fields in engineering applications, as well as various displacement and strain fields. They implicitly contain a large amount of data not directly or easily observable. Computer graphics has several techniques to assist scientists and engineers in understanding the phenomena behind the analyzed data. The paper discusses a technique that uses time-dependent textures to animate vector data in 2D and 3D spaces. It can visualize large data sets when conventional methods are too slow or generate too cluttered a display.<>