Modeling geoscience data in a multisensory virtual environment

In this article, the author describes his ongoing efforts to combine high-quality 3D graphics, haptics (from the Greek word haptesthai, to grasp or to touch), and sonification (the use of sound for "visualization") into multisensory systems to interactively manipulate geoscientific data. These systems could facilitate many complex tasks that geoscientists in academia and industry face today, lead to new insights, and solve problems in less time. This research applies to many different geoscience branches, but here the author focuses on the oil and gas industry because he spent the last five years working in this domain. While many large oil companies are using interactive visualization (with large stereo screens in virtual theaters), the author focuses more on the application of haptics, a type of virtual reality, and briefly touches on geoscientific data sonification, an extensive topic by itself.