- points with only a (3D) coordinate
- potentially enriched with attributes like radius, velocity, etc.
- scattered data Data Structures
- lack of topological information (neighborhood)
- typically many particles (e.g. atoms, galaxies)
- Atomistic visualization
- via glyphs (i.e. spheres)
- explicit (geometry) or implicit Raycasting
- Surface-based visualization
- extract surface geometry
- particles: point samples describing a surface (e.g. in fluids or molecules)
- Volume-based visualization
- particles: point samples of a volume
- Raycasting and hierarchical Data Structures