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What is GeoVisionary?

GeoVisionary is the result of a collaboration between Virtalis and the British Geological Survey. Combining a powerful data engine with a virtual geological toolkit enables geoscientists to visualise, analyse and share large datasets seamlessly in an immersive, real time environment.

KEY BENEFITS

Continuously stream geometry & photography in real time
Visualise 2D GIS data in immersive 3D stereo
Diverse datasets in a single environment
Designed for workstations, field-based laptops & immersive projection environments
Data securely held on your PC and/or network
"Fly" to any part of the data in seconds
Infinitely scalable
Prepare & evaluate before you begin fieldwork
Clearer communication of results
Enhance teamworking & increase efficiency in field operations
Off-the-shelf and a price to match

“What marks GeoVisionary out is the quality and detail of the images we have achieved and its speed. The result of all this hidden technology is a landscape that rapidly morphs before your eyes. It is visually stunning and highly useable.”
Andrew Connell technical director at Virtalis

Seamless Data Streaming

GeoVisionary software is the result of more than two years of collaboration between Virtalis and the British Geological Survey (BGS) and Virtalis is proud to be working with BGS on the launch and marketing of this ground-breaking technology.

The geological teams at BGS have relished being able to explore their geological data in full stereoscopic 3D using Virtalis’ tracked visualisation systems at BGS’ Keyworth and Edinburgh offices (see press releases in our Press Room).

GeoVisionary has been designed to rapidly gather data from BGS corporate databases in such an open way that it is not limited to British shores or BGS data. BGS has already used the application to validate and plan projects. During the UK floods of 2007, GeoVisionary was used to communicate the risks to stakeholders and the public. GeoVisionary was also used to visualise and interpret the unique Afar rift in Ethiopia - a new ocean being born in East Africa - forming a key part of planning a safe field visit to the rift by BGS and academic geoscientists.

Virtalis’ software development expertise means that your data source will be able to be fully integrated within GeoVisionary and its associated viewing and interaction hardware. Virtalis is an experienced designer and integrator of 3D projection systems with installations around the world. These range from single channel systems in small meeting rooms to large, multi-channel, tracked systems in corporate theatres or lecture theatres. Virtalis also supplies Virtual Reality products, such as head-mounted displays and tracking systems that allow you to “get inside” your data enhancing understanding.

Visualise as You Fly

The novel data formats give the ability to visualise as you fly, continuously streaming both geometry and photography to imperceptably update the world around you. The application takes advantage of the latest vertex and pixel shaders and uses the most advanced NVIDIA graphics cards and powerful SUN Ultra 40 PCs and X4500 storage servers.

In the UK demonstration data set alone, there are 70 billion triangles and 15 trillion pixels. The GeoVisionary data engine is infinitely scalable, because the system only remembers what it is looking at at any given moment. Each field view comprises 2 million triangles which are updated 100 times per second.

“GeoVisionary is the first full realisation of a BGS vision going back two decades. In the 1980s, field geologists knew that computers had the potential to unlock the power of the many datasets BGS holds, but were frustrated by limitations in the available technologies. In the 1990’s, progress was made for small datasets, but storage capacities and processing speeds were a barrier to national or regional scale implementation. GeoVisionary has broken through this barrier with spectacular results. It allows geologists to work collaboratively within a virtual field environment for anywhere in Great Britain before they begin fieldwork, based on the wealth of digital surface and subsurface data BGS holds. International work can be supported in the same way, simply by sourcing the appropriate local or satellite-derived data. The improved team working, increased efficiency of field operations and more consistent outputs please managers and scientists alike.’’
Professor Stuart Marsh, Head of Science, Spatial Geoscience Technologies at BGS

(Note re data in images: Aerial Photography © UKP/Getmapping Licence No. UKP2006/01; based on NEXTMap Britain elevation data from Intermap Technologies) [Pending inclusion of data providers' logos]