Interaction with geoscience data in an immersive environment

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has had a growing impact on business in the oil and gas industry. In 1997, there were only two VR visualization centers in the oil and gas industry, but now there are more than 20 visualization centers using VR technology. However most VR software systems in use are customized to perform specific tasks, and though some positive results have been reported, no systematic evaluation has been performed to quantify the benefits of using VR to interact with geoscience data. Therefore, we designed and implemented a VR application for the geosciences and then invited geoscientists and software developers to evaluate this application. The results show that VR provides a significantly enhanced visualization environment. Our results also suggest that the major challenge to the successful implementation of VR involves the improvement of VR interaction techniques.