Virtual reality learning unveiled.

• Author: Ross, Ian

Mining engineers and medical students will be able to visualize what lies beneath rocks and skin when a virtual reality laboratory opens at Laurentian University this month.

As a valuable exploration and teaching tool, the school's Centre for Integrated Monitoring Technology (CIMTec) now employs the Iatest generation in high-resolution stereo projection equipment, one of the few simulators in use in Canada.

"This technology was really built for collaborations in getting people from different points of view together to discuss complex data," says Andrew Dasys, the startup director with CIMTec.

Dasys estimates there are between 200 to 300 virtual reality simulators in the world, but probably fewer than five in Canada.

Originally designed for research and development work in the mineral exploration field, CIMTech plans on using the facility for a variety of applications, including as a teaching instrument, for students with the Northern Rural Medical School, which will begin accepting undergraduate students in 2004.

Most international oil companies have at least one virtual lab in their possession, Dasys says, with Shell Oil scheduled to build nine such simulators over the next three years to better visualize seismic data in pinpointing below-ground oil reservoirs.

Able to slice the earth into 3-D sections, the simulator can lay out the topography of a property through computer-generated models by incorporating magnetic data, airborne surveys, air photos and drill-hole data displayed on a spherical 160-degree by 40-degree screen spread out over a 12-foot radius.

The software GOCAD package, which is basically GIS technology in 3-D, was devised by a consortium of North American oil and mining companies including Noranda, one of the technology's original sponsors. And with special 3-D glasses, the optics jump off the screen.

Like figuring out a Rubik's cube puzzle, he says the ability to see an ore body or a mineral property through a more realistic multidimensional medium rather than on...