Mineralogists, in particular, are interested in morphological appearances of individual crystals, as defined by the actually formed crystal faces (tracht) and their relative sizes (habit). More advanced visualization capabilities allow for displaying surface characteristics, imperfections inside the crystal, lighting (reflection, shadow, and translucency), and 3D effects (interactive rotatability, perspective, and stereo viewing).
Crystal physicists, in particular, are interested in anisotropic physical properties of crystals. The directional dependence of a crystal's physical property is described by a 3D tensor and depends on the orientation of the crystal. Tensor shapes are more palpable by adding lighting effects (reflection and shadow). 2D sections of interest are selected for display by rotating the tensor interactively around one or more axes.
Crystal morphology or physical property data can be stored in specialized databases or added to more comprehensive crystal structure databases. [https://web.archive.org/web/20091219215419/http://nanocrystallography.research.pdx.edu/search.py/search?database=cmd The Crystal Morphology Database (CMD)] is an example for a web-based crystal morphology database with integrated visualization capabilities.