USING UNITY AND VIRTUAL REALITY AS TOOLS FOR EXPLORING TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING DATA FROM BIG BAT CAVE, KENTUCKY

With the increasing availability of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), the use of 3D modelling in cave surveying has become a new standard. TLS allows for improved quantification of cave morphology and unlimited analysis of remote or difficult-to-access areas after collection of data by creating dense, high-resolution point clouds. Point clouds created by TLS are often detailed enough to distinguish features as small as fossils, fractures, and scallops.

The Big Bat LiDAR Project, coordinated by the Kentucky Karst Conservancy, has produced over 200 high-resolution point clouds of Big Bat Cave, Custer, KY over the past two years. This amount of coverage presents an incredible opportunity for sharing interactive cave imagery with both the public and interested researchers. However, processing and displaying these large datasets often involves a steep learning curve, complex software, and expensive hardware.

Our approach to this challenging opportunity is to employ software and hardware that have traditionally been used in the gaming industry. We imported LiDAR data from Big Bat Cave into Unity to display on traditional computer monitors, as well as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. We utilize the mechanics included in Unity to create immersive visualizations which are not limited to the immobile “bubble-view” style of visualizing point clouds. This allows users to navigate the point clouds using readily available video game controllers (e.g. XBOX or keyboard and mouse). Our preliminary results are promising; we have successfully imported three full-resolution scans (120 million points) into Unity and have viewed them in virtual reality on the Oculus Rift. We intend to incorporate a larger portion of the cave into our visualizations. In addition to building simple, walkthrough-style experiences, we will explore building tools for analyzing and subsetting point clouds in virtual reality. Taking advantage of techniques typically applied in the gaming industry could lead to new and innovative methods for geological visualization.