| Geoscientists have used data visualization to assist in the difficult task of modeling the subsurface. One of the goals of this dissertation is to show that Virtual Reality (VR) has significant potential for improving geoscientists' ability to analyze their data and to collaborate on its interpretation. The VR application described in this dissertation was designed, not only to permit the user to manipulate interpreted geological surfaces or interfaces, but also to support the simultaneous manipulation of the three-dimensional seismic data from which the interpretations were derived.; Another goal of this VR application was to provide an environment which could function, not only as a manager's display tool but also as a functional daily working tool for geoscientists. Therefore, better interaction and visualization techniques were developed and implemented in this application. For improved visualization, 2D texture images and geological surface models can be created at run time. Based on the observation that most scientific visualizations are contained within a closed world, a novel user interface paradigm called the Closed World Interaction (CWI) technique was developed. This interaction technique can be applied to fine-grain selection, manipulation, and navigation within the virtual environment.; User studies were conducted to evaluate the implementation of the CWI technique in this VR application. The results indicate that two-handed manipulation helped in the CWI technique and that CWI could improve accuracy and speed for specifying desired portions of the dataset. Geoscientists and software developers were invited to evaluate this application; the results demonstrated that this application fulfills the necessary requirements for the interpretation of geoscience data. |
