3.2. Rake

This visualization technique is a simple extension of the colored Streamlines technique, that provides the user to better understand the global behavior of the system. It is also quite similar to the Streamsurface approach, but there are some differences.

Here not only one streamline is computed and shown, but several streamlines, all starting at startpoints arranged on a straight line, the so called startline for the Rake. The streamlines are all computed for the same length (either in time or space), they are colored streamlines, which means, that additional attributes are visualized by their color. The rake can be changed by the user by choosing the length of the startline, the number of startpoints on this startline, the direction and position of the startline, and the length of the streamlines and the assigned ColorMapping.

This approach is especially very valuable, as the divergence or convergence of streamlines of nearby startpoints is visualized very simple and efficient, but also very impressiv. When looking at the following pictures, the advantages over an (often selfintersecting, or at least selfhiding) streamsurface, as well as over simply just using one streamline to visualize the global behavior of the dynamical system can easily be understood.