Goal

As the demand for energy continuously grows, The University of Wyoming understands that innovative technology, training, and problem-solving is necessary to safely develop energy solutions. With support from various energy companies, including Shell Oil Company, the university created a computational energy research center that is crucial to researchers and academics in finding the best places to mine for minerals, analyzing and interpreting spatially related data, and finding maximum value from resources. Due to the complex simulations required in today’s energy research, researchers and academics needed a way to both analyze and visualize the complex data.

Solution

Mechdyne partnered with Wyoming to design, engineer, and integrate a four-sided CAVE, a video wall, and three portable “mini-cave” systems, combined into what the university calls the Shell 3D Visualization research laboratory. By using the visual platforms in the Shell Center, researchers and academics can view modeled data from oil, gas, and water movements and interactions.  Not only do researchers and students collaborate in the virtual and immersive environment—providing much more interpretation and understanding—when viewing simulations from computational data, they gain experience through more interactive and visual education.