The power of AVC is the ability to generate, “occupy,” and share an information-rich environment. With AVC the benefits of multiple information sources as experienced in the physical world are available to the virtual user. (Image courtesy of Hewlett Packard)

Technological advances originally developed to satisfy the rapidly expanding online gaming industry are making inroads in the workplace. The same technology that drives the gaming industry provides the vast, almost instantaneous computational power and 3-D visualization capabilities needed to drive advanced virtual collaboration (AVC) for oil and gas E&P applications.

The power of AVC (used interchangeably in this article with the term 3-D virtual collaboration) is the ability to generate, “occupy,” and share an information-rich environment. With AVC the benefits of multiple information sources as experienced in the physical world are available to the virtual user.

A relatively new development for E&P operations, 3-D virtual collaboration essentially allows hydrocarbon engineers and geoscientists working from different regions, countries, or continents to plan and troubleshoot projects as if they were in the same room. Individual “players” from anywhere in the world can interact in real time to see, discuss, assess, and manipulate complex data.

Advanced 3-D virtual collaboration handles both structured data from varied technical software applications and unstructured data such as that found in word processing documents, spreadsheets, and even e-mails. These unstructured data can prove valuable in analyzing structured data, maps, and other graphics.

Anytime/anywhere collaboration in 3-D, with computational power and full integration of software applications, becomes a reality that saves delays and costs associated with bringing together technical teams from widely scattered parts of the world into the same physical location.

With advanced 3-D virtual collaboration, teams of players the world over can meet in cyberspace, confer and work collaboratively using 3-D images, almost as if they were meeting in the same actual room.

Advanced 3-D virtual collaboration can be very cost-effective, particularly when companies have projects requiring collaboration between remote oil and gas field sites far from the home office. Avoiding the delays of travel can make operations vastly more efficient, in some cases yielding millions of dollars worth of production savings.

How it works

AVC combines advanced digital audio-visual teleconferencing capabilities with the rapid integration of E&P technical and commercial (e.g., SAP) software to give engineering and geoscience teams the ability to conduct secure, collaborative meetings from distant geographic locations.

The technology provides the fully dimensional sensation of being in a live conference room. All team players can confer about real-life E&P challenges while viewing realistic 3-D images. AVC includes a sophisticated data integration platform that is capable of presenting any type of information in real time. These data can be graphs, charts, diagrams, and tables generated by E&P

specialized technical software to spreadsheets, text documents, and email. In other words, all information that bears upon a given situation under discussion ? regardless of format or whether all users employ the same software applications ? can be viewed and worked with simultaneously.

Meeting participants can even revise dynamically the graphical rotations and calculations that affect the outcome of a given E&P scenario. As a result, all of the participants can see, interpret, and rework data, regardless of the technical complexity of the information being assessed or how far apart the team members are located physically.

3-D virtual collaboration: key applications

3-D virtual collaboration provides an immersive, information-rich collaborative environment that can be mapped to support a wide variety of functional models. At present, the models demonstrated to deliver the most value to E&P organizations are virtual operations rooms, data or well rooms, training and visualization rooms, and open space models.

• Virtual Operations Rooms extend the information available from existing collaborative operations to a virtual room, allowing personnel who are not physically present at a meeting to be “virtually” present so they can collaborate in real time. This includes personnel who are traveling, working on projects in distant locations from a home office, or those who are working from home.

• Data or Well Rooms display large amounts of related technical data together for the purpose of reviewing and planning specific E&P challenges. By providing a visual front end to multiple data sources related to a specific object (such as a given well, drilling path, geologic formation, etc.), the data or well rooms enhance master data and information management toolsets for larger-scale, multiregional, or multinational collaboration.

• Training Rooms provide specialist training courses that rely upon illustrator-led sessions that simulate a practical learning exercise. These rooms enable remote participation with access to live or recorded data along with audio and visual feeds that support any engineering or geologic and geophysical tools.

• Open Space Models expand the visual effect beyond the confines of a virtual meeting room to include large-scale models ? from rigs to refineries ? to provide personnel with training and familiarization of planned operations prior to deployment.

Data integration is a key functional capability of AVC and a primary focus in ongoing enhancements. The integration approach involves “templating” specific functional models so that new collaboration spaces can be set up quickly to address specific tasks, as exemplified by the data room concept derived from well data reviews. Rapid assessment is enabled by the ability to extract and populate virtual spaces with all pertinent data from a variety of supporting applications and data sources.

AVC runs in the corporate environment and is fully under the control of the operating company. Access across the corporate network and via the Internet is governed by existing access tools and procedures. This ensures that the operating company’s security policies and procedures are incorporated into the overall management of a given AVC solution.