In addition, the multi-terabyte model is sub-centimeter accurate over a mile of passage, making use of normal maps, global dynamic lighting, and LODs to run in real time. “You can see anything larger than a fingernail,” Blase says. “People recognize the formations and rooms they’ve seen before. We compared it with photos, and made sure it was a good representation.”He adds that real-time technology has advanced so swiftly that his work is now approaching the limits of the scanner, not the software. “This is unprecedented,” Blase says. “I used to have to throw out most of the scanner data, because the software couldn’t handle it. With Unreal Engine, you don’t have to make those compromises.”

For interactive simulations, Blase made use of Unreal Engine’s VR and first-person templates. “It’s great to have the templates there, premade,” he says. Blase has produced VR experiences for Timpanogos, designed to be enjoyed on the premises—sadly, due to the pandemic, these experiences have not yet been made available to the public. But when he last tested them, Blase was delighted to find that these Unreal Engine projects ran at 90 fps on a GTX 1080 Ti graphics card with an Intel 6900K processor. “Just imagine how they’ll run on newer hardware,” Blase muses.

Blase appreciates that once the data is formatted correctly, Unreal Engine does most of the heavy lifting for him. “Between the templates, textures, and automatic LODs, it just works,” he says. “It’s terabytes of raw data, and Unreal Engine can ingest it and optimize everything automatically.”

Imagining the future of cave scanning

While scanning and real-time technology aren’t yet in wide use among geoscientists, Blase anticipates that they will become key tools to help them perform research and solve problems. “Being able to see and interact with the cave in three dimensions, you see things that you never thought you’d be able to see,” he says. “You can get right up close to a formation or a feature that might be out of reach in real life. You can come back as many times as you want without worrying about damaging any delicate formations.”

Source: Unreal Engine Blog