Volumetric Test Data

Here are two screenshots of my 512x512x512 generated volume.  The one on the left is formed by generating random points in rough bands along the y axis with a higher noise factor towards the top - hopefully representing less dense material. Hidden inside the volume is a cube of much lower density than the surrounding regions.

The one in the centre is the same volume after the 3D Gaussian kernel was applied although it is at a slightly different angle. The right hand side screen capture is using a higher transparency function to show the little hidden cube.

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I did run into a problem with the watchdog timer generating a timeout when running the kernel on the full 4kx4kx4k data set. Strangely switching the device to my non-display card didn't help at first. It turns out that Win XP had decided that my second 8800GT had a monitor attached to it, which seems to have activated the watchdog timer for the video driver. Something worth looking out for if you get watchdog timeouts on secondary cards.

Oil and Gas

Oil and Gas: What a fascinating industry! With all the different technologies and processes involved there is so much to learn.

Why the sudden interest you may ask? Well I may have an opportunity to work for a company involved in supplying software to the oil and gas sector in a part of the UK in which we would very much like to live and doing a job with such a wide variety of interwoven fields is rather appealing. As I have no oil industry experience I have been reading and googling as much as possible.

It seems like the software and technologies required revolve around:  3D visualization and analysis of volumetric data (seismic), construction of data based on field measurements, Geographic Information Systems, GPS, fluid / gas flow simulations in porous media or in hollow volumes, visualization of the strutures (rigs etc), drilling planning and plotting. And I'm sure there are even more things to discover.