A Panoramic Geology Field Trip System Using Image-Based Rendering

Geology field trip is an important teaching step for the majors of geology, natural resources prospecting engineering and geographical sciences to learn geology knowledge and grasp field working skills. There are some problems in the traditional geology field trip teaching. Inspired by the Google Maps Street View, the author proposes applying the Image-Based Rendering (IBR), a branch of Virtual Reality (VR), to the field of geology field trip teaching. In this paper, the author designs and implements a panoramic geology field trip system for College of Earth Sciences of Jilin University, in which students can preview the geology field trip location by roaming in the three-dimension (3D) virtual environment. The practice shows that not only can the system help teach 3D thinking, but also reduce the teaching cost, improve students' learning efficiency and enhance learning interest.