Feature Emphasized OLIC for 2D Flow Visualization

Abstract

In order to emphasize features in flow textures while preserving the orientation of flows in 2D fields, a new method to generate flow textures with non-uniform streamlets is proposed in this paper. In the method, a control grid is built and divided into different regions that reflect the complexity of the underlying flow field. The resulting regions are then used to control to the distribution of droplets and the corresponding calculation of streamlets involved in OLIC. By this means, streamlets are dense around salient flow features, while in other areas they are sparse. The disparity of streamlets highlights features in flow fields. Test results show that our method can achieve pleasing visual effect. It is flexible and superior to the original OLIC.