Scientific and engineering applications frequently need to display large volumes of continuously changing data. Conventional charting components often struggle when processing millions of values or updating complex visualizations in real time.

NOV Chart addresses this challenge with a specialized set of Fast Series, including Fast Line, Fast Point, Fast Bar, Fast Area, Fast Surface, and others. These series extensively use GPU acceleration to perform many of the calculations required for rendering on the GPU, thus allowing applications to visualize millions of data points while maintaining smooth and responsive performance.

All Fast Series in NOV Chart store data in memory in interleaved format, which is optimal for direct rendering on the GPU, because all vertex information is stored together, resulting in excellent locality. Further, all Fast Series support two rendering modes. The first rendering mode relies on the fixed OpenGL pipeline, and the second one uses GLSL shaders. The fixed pipeline model is better suited for static data as additional vertex information such as face normals is computed once and then rendered many times by the GPU. The second model is better suited for continuously changing data as all additional vertex information and primitive assembly is performed entirely by the GPU.

Fast Series support both 2D and 3D visualization and can display individual colors for each data point, which optionally adds another dimension to the visualized data set. All Fast Series also support coloring using a developer-specified gradient palette.

All those features make them suitable for demanding applications such as signal processing, sensor monitoring, medical diagnostics, telemetry analysis, process control, metrology, and scientific simulations.

XY and XYZ Scatter Plots represent the relationship between two or three numerical variables using independent X, Y, and Z coordinates. They are widely used to visualize point clouds, experimental observations, mathematical functions, and others.

NOV Chart supports XY and XYZ variations for the Point, Line, Bar, Error Bar, Bubble, and Range series. The Fast Series variation of those series also supports direct import for LiDAR point clouds.

Vector charts represent quantities that have both magnitude and direction. Each vector is defined by a starting point and an ending point and is displayed as a directional arrow.

They can be used to visualize velocity, force, acceleration, displacement, magnetic fields, fluid flow, wind direction, and other directional measurements. NOV Chart supports Vector charts in 2D and 3D Cartesian coordinate systems, as well as Polar Vector charts.

Surface colors can be mapped to numerical values, making differences in elevation, temperature, pressure, intensity, or other measurements easier to identify.

NOV Chart supports uniform filling, palette-based elevation zones, and individual vertex colors. Surface frames can display mesh lines, contour lines, data-point positions, or a combination of mesh and contour lines.

Flat and smooth shading modes allow developers to choose between a uniform or interpolated normal per vertex triangle, resulting in faceted vs smooth appearance when lighting is applied.

Scientific and engineering charts often combine measurements expressed in different units or operating across different ranges, which requires scientific charts to support multiple axes. NOV Chart supports multiple X, Y, and Z axes that can be docked, crossed, or configured to share different parts of the same plot.

Each axis has an associated scale, and the control supports all common scales found in scientific charts, including linear, logarithmic, date-time, ordinal, timeline, and hierarchical scales. Axes can be docked to the plot area or positioned so that they cross another axis at a specified value.

In addition, all scales support many features typically used in scientific charts, such as:

• Scale breaks - they can exclude selected value ranges, thus making the effect of outliers in data less noticeable.
• Axis sections - used to highlight important ranges on the axis values.
• Reference lines and ranges - used to highlight operating ranges, warning zones, reference values, and others.

NOV Chart can be used to build scientific dashboards for real-time monitoring, signal analysis, engineering simulation, medical diagnostics, laboratory research, and industrial process control.

Dashboards can combine multiple synchronized charts with data grids, gauges, labels, and other widgets. This allows developers to implement dashboards that monitor live measurements and analyze large datasets.