Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

 
 
Session Overview
Session
Case study - Applications of virtual reality in Geoscience: Geological field trip in virtual reality to the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas
Time:
Tuesday, 25/Aug/2020:
1:30pm - 2:50pm

Location: Room 4.01

Session Abstract

Patricio Desjardins will be taking us to a fantastic virtual field trip in 3DGaia, to the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas. Patricio is a Senior Regional geologist, expert in Unconventional Reservoirs in Shell, based in Houston. 3DGaia is a virtual reality platform for Geoscience, developed by Imaged Reality.

The field trip will take us through key locations of the Eagle Ford, integrating different subsurface data sets from basin scale to the pore scale. We will demonstrate remote collaboration in Geoscience, using virtual reality. This project was part of a pilot developed jointly by Shell and Imaged Reality.

Field trips are essential for geologists and engineers to develop interpretation skills and to get a sense of scale. Unfortunately, attendance to field trips has become less frequent due to cost, with only a handful of team members attending a field trip once or twice a year. Sometimes access to key outcrop analogues can be difficult or too hazardous. COVID-19 has made attendance to field trips even more challenging.

Remote collaboration in virtual reality provides a valuable alternative. In virtual reality, the user is placed in the digital and surrounded by data in the 3D space. This immersive experience increases cognition, speed of analysis and retention. One of the key advantages of adopting Virtual Reality to support learning is that entire teams can have access to areas that would normally be too hazardous or too expensive to reach. Virtual reality also makes geological field trips more inclusive, giving the opportunity for people with disabilities to attend more field trips. Virtual reality also improves knowledge capture, by creating the option of field trip repeatability. This technology has a wide range of applications in subsurface learning, reservoir characterisation, environmental assessments, infrastructure planning, etc. Users have the ability to ‘fly’ over outcrops or ‘walk’ along these at real scale.

3DGaia is the first in virtual reality platform for immersive learning and remote collaboration in Geoscience.  For more information please get in touch at info@imagedreality.com.