Immersive virtual reality for earth sciences

This paper presents a novel immersive Virtual Reality platform, named ARGO3D, tailored for improving research and teaching activities in Earth Sciences. The platform facilitates the exploration of geological environments and the assessment of geo-hazards, allowing reaching key sites of interest (some of them impossible to be reached in person) and thus to take measurements and collect data as it can be done in the real field. The target audience of ARGO3D encompasses students, teachers and early career scientists, as well as civil planning organisations and non-academics. The overall workflow for real ambient reconstruction, processing and rendering of the virtual ambient is presented, as well as a detailed description of the VR software tools and hardware devices employed.