Integration of the California faults into virtual reality: preliminary results using the gaming engine Unity

Saul Diaz, & Christodoulos Kyriakopoulos

Published September 11, 2022, SCEC Contribution #12448, 2022 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #281

Today we are living in the new age of information, and countless tools are being developed that change the way humans consume information. These tools are currently being utilized mainly by the private sector to create new forms of entertainment, unfortunately the education sector is often last to utilize these tools. Here we are presenting an educational experience generated using virtual reality and specifically the Unity (.com) platform. Our preliminary efforts focus on implementing the 3D California fault system (as represented in UCERF3) into the development environment provided by Unity. The framework of the project was originally created using Paraview (.org), a 3D visualization software specifically designed for numerical models that also allows for VR integration (Methvin et al., 2021; Pham et al., 2020). Paraview and Unity are two fundamentally different platforms the can both be extremely useful for educators using VR. While Paraview combined with the Steam VR libraries allows for a fast VR visualization of many types of numerical files, the Unity experience must have its foundation built beforehand. The implementation of the California faults in Unity required the preparation of several C# scripts. These scripts provide the user with the flight experience through the VR world (fault system) as well as the representation of earthquakes and color gradients. The final product is a Unity based VR experience that includes the California fault system, the regional digital elevation model, and clouds of seismicity. Our current work allows us to update the previously developed VR activity into a game like experience taking complete advantage of Unity’s capabilities.

Citation
Diaz, S., & Kyriakopoulos, C. (2022, 09). Integration of the California faults into virtual reality: preliminary results using the gaming engine Unity. Poster Presentation at 2022 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Communication, Education, and Outreach (CEO)