Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, University of New Hampshire, Durham 03824, USA.
IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2013 Aug;19(8):1331-41. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2013.10.
Most professional wind visualizations show wind speed and direction using a glyph called a wind barb in a grid pattern. Research into flow visualization has suggested that streamlines better represent flow patterns but these methods lack a key property-unlike the wind barb, they do not accurately convey the wind speed. With the goal of improving the perception of wind patterns, and at least equaling the quantitative quality of wind barbs, we designed two variations on the wind barb and designed a new quantitative glyph. All of our new designs space glyph elements along equally spaced streamlines. To evaluate these designs, we used a North American mesoscale forecast model. We tested the ability of subjects to determine direction and speed using two different densities each of three new designs as well as the classic wind barb. A second experiment evaluated how effectively each of the designs represented wind patterns. The results showed that the new design is superior to the classic, but they also showed that the classic barb can be redesigned and substantially improved. We suggest that flow patterns with integrated glyphs may have widespread application in flow visualization.
大多数专业的风场可视化使用网格中的风向符号（风矢）来展示风速和风向。对流动可视化的研究表明，流线更能代表流动模式，但这些方法缺乏一个关键特性——与风向符号不同，它们不能准确地传达风速。为了改善对风场模式的感知，并且至少与风向符号的定量质量相当，我们设计了两种风向符号的变体，并设计了一种新的定量符号。我们所有的新设计都沿着等间距的流线布置符号元素。为了评估这些设计，我们使用了一个北美中尺度预报模型。我们测试了受试者使用两种不同密度的三种新设计以及经典风向符号来确定方向和速度的能力。第二个实验评估了每个设计代表风场模式的有效性。结果表明，新设计优于经典设计，但也表明经典风向符号可以重新设计并得到实质性改进。我们建议，带有集成符号的流线图案可能在流动可视化中有广泛的应用。
