VRGE: An Immersive Visualization Application for the Geosciences

The rapid onset of inexpensive, portable virtual reality (VR) devices has created opportunities for scientific visualization tools that harness this new, immersive modality. Researchers in the geological sciences, in particular those focused on earth resources (energy, water, minerals), are faced with significant challenges in building and understanding increasingly complex geological models. In this paper, we address these joint opportunities by introducing the Virtual Reality Geomodeling Environment (VRGE): a scientific visualization tool leveraging the Oculus Rift VR system, specialized for users involved in geological modeling. VRGE offers a number of features for viewing and interacting with geological models in VR, including human-centric navigation and manipulation, implicit surface editing, visual conditioning, and uncertainty analysis. Moreover, we examine how the design of VRGE meets current needs of the earth resources industry, in the context of reviewing the state-of-the-art, conducting an expert survey, and discussing performance.