Reservoir characterization and modeling is a multi-disciplinary task with many experts from different fields involved. Virtual Environments (VEs) can support such kind of collaborative tasks.

Central to VEs for co-located collaboration are display systems that can be used by multiple users. However, it is not only about the bare hardware, but it is also about the combination with special rendering techniques and interaction concepts that makes a system a real collaboration environment. Since 2001, we have developed two different projection-based systems especially with co-located collaboration in mind. One system is a wide panoramic display called i-Cone™ with enhanced multi-user properties such as omni-directional stereo and multi-viewpoint images. The other system is a multi-viewer display called TwoView which projects an individual stereoscopic image for each of two users, enabling the sharing of the physical as well as the virtual space for precise collaborative work. We also did research in coupling on-site nearby displays running one application spanned over two VEs.

Co-located Collaborative Use of Virtual Environments

Thorsten Holtkäemper, Sascha Scholz, Armin Dressler, Manfred A. Bogen - AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Long Beach-CA, 2007