GEX time surface: how the wall was built through the session
The time surface stacks the successive price profiles of the session: time across, price up, exposure in colour, with the underlying drawn over the map. One column is recorded per minute, so a wall that appears at eleven and grows all afternoon looks nothing like one that was there at the open and melted.
Senzoukria · Documentation · Updated September 2026
Where to find it
- Where
- GEX workspace → By price page, below the profile
- Cadence
- One column per minute
- Rows
- 33 price bins across the profile's ±8% window — a step of about 0.5%
- Mode default
- Relief; the flat map is the alternative, and the choice is remembered
- Minimum window
- Four columns
- Retention
- 180 columns at one a minute — three hours; older columns are dropped
What it does
A snapshot never shows a difference; it shows the same wall. Stacking the profiles recorded through the session does show it, and that is the whole purpose of this panel: a ridge that rises minute after minute is a wall being built, a hollow that deepens is negative gamma piling up.
Each profile has its own price window centred on the spot of that minute, and spot moves during the day. Stacking the columns as they are would put different prices on the same row. A common price grid is built instead, each column resampled onto it, and a column whose window does not reach a row leaves an explicit hole — never a zero, because "no data" and "no gamma" are different statements.
Settings and navigation
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Mode | Relief | Relief draws the map with depth; Flat draws the same values as a plain heat map |
| Whole session | Active until you navigate | Returns the window to every column still held — at most the last 180 minutes |
| Pan | Drag left or right | Moves the visible window through time; leaving the right edge stops the view from following new columns |
| Zoom | Wheel | Narrows or widens the window around the cursor, not around the centre, with a floor of four columns |
| Tilt | Shift-drag | From nearly face-on to seen from above |
| Reset | Double-click | Back to the full session at the default tilt |
| Panel height | Floor of 240 px | Below it the relief has no room to exist |
How to use it
Leave it on the whole session until something stands out, then zoom into that stretch. The colour scale is recomputed on the visible window on purpose: keeping the whole-session scale would turn a quiet half-hour into a flat rectangle, so zooming would magnify the drawing without revealing anything.
The price of that choice is that two windows cannot be compared by eye, which is why the foot of the panel always prints the value the current maximum stands for. Read that figure before comparing two periods.
Limits and pitfalls
The history is built during the session: the panel says how many columns have been recorded so far and fills at one per minute, so an application opened at midday has no morning. It keeps the last 180 columns — three hours — and drops the oldest beyond that, which is why "whole session" means the columns still held. Each column is a compacted profile — 33 bins sampled at the nearest value rather than averaged, because an average would smooth away the very peak the panel exists to reveal.
Everything on the map inherits the price profile's assumptions and its ±8% window, so a move that leaves that window leaves the map. The white line over the surface is the underlying at each recorded minute, not a traded price series.
Related pages
This page in other languages
Frequently asked questions
- Why is my time surface almost empty?
- It records one column per minute from the moment the workspace is open, and keeps the last 180 of them. The panel prints how many columns exist so far; before a few dozen there is little shape to read.
- Why does the colour scale change when I zoom?
- It is recomputed on the visible window, so entering a calm stretch reveals its own relief instead of showing a uniform block. The value of the current peak is printed at the foot of the panel so the two windows can still be compared numerically.
- What is the difference between relief and flat mode?
- Only the drawing. Relief gives the map depth, flat draws the same values as a plain heat map. The choice is remembered between sessions.