Virtual Fieldwork in Immersive Environments using Game Engines

TL;DR

This paper presents a virtual fieldwork software developed in Unreal Engine that enables geoscientists to perform immersive, quantitative analysis of inaccessible outcrops using virtual reality and real-world datasets.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel virtual fieldwork platform in Unreal Engine supporting immersive environments, virtual reality, and quantitative measurements for geoscience applications.

Findings

Successful visualization of three real-world datasets

Initial positive feedback from domain experts

Supports immersive virtual reality and quantitative analysis

Abstract

Fieldwork still is the first and foremost source of insight in many disciplines of the geosciences. Virtual fieldwork is an approach meant to enable scientists trained in fieldwork to apply these skills to a virtual representation of outcrops that are inaccessible to humans e.g. due to being located on the seafloor. For this purpose we develop a virtual fieldwork software in the game engine and 3D creation tool Unreal Engine. This software is developed specifically for a large, spatially immersive environment as well as virtual reality using head-mounted displays. It contains multiple options for quantitative measurements of visualized 3D model data. We visualize three distinct real-world datasets gathered by different photogrammetric and bathymetric methods as use cases and gather initial feedback from domain experts.