Techniques for Graphical Data Presentation

Low level:

• Point (position, color, size)
• Line (location, length, width, color, style)
• Polygon (location, shape, size, orientation, color, texture, translucency)
• Image (pattern, range of values, colormap, size, scale)

Medium level:

• Image (2-D or 3-D scalar fields)
• Point plots (position components)
• Wire frames (connection components)
• Isosurface (contours, surfaces extracted from field)
• Rubber sheet (3-D surface from 2-D scalars)
• Streamline (path of particle through static vector field)
• Streakline (path of particle through dynamic vector field)
• Ribbons and Tubes (additional parameters added to above flow visualizations)
• Icons and Glyphs (arrow, sphere, box, star, stick figure, face)
• Parallel Coordinates (multivariate points map to polyline across N vertical axes)
• Dimensional Stacking (multivariate points positioned based on recursive space partitioning)

High level:

• Multiple objects of like type (streamlines, slices, glyphs) differentiated by style, position, or color
• Mapping data onto objects (e.g. a surface)
• Translucent surfaces with glyphs, slice
• Multiple simultaneous views
• Surface geometry with streamlines