Real-time Seismic Wave Modeling and Visualization

Current rising energy demand/supply ratio trends are forecast to continue into the foreseeable future. As a consequence, effective and efficient seismic surveying and processing techniques are required now more than ever. Unfortunately those outside of organizations with the resources to develop their own processing and/or visualization packages, or license proprietary third-party ones, must make due with text-based processing systems driven by shell scripts. While these systems perform many of the important algorithms in the seismic processing pipeline with adequate accuracy, the slow performance and limited 3-D processing support along with the learning curve associated with the command-line interface leaves much to be desired in terms of usability . To address these concerns, an interactive seismic simulation and visualization system has been designed and developed as a solution to enable geophysicists to process and manipulate seismic data in a more natural and intuitive manner. Seismic event simulations are accelerated on the graphics processing unit (GPU) to framerates suitable for real-time visualization, which permits fine control over simulation and visual parameters, allowing them to be modified by the user while the simulation is running. This allows the geophysicist to view the results of any modifications instantaneously, without having to re-start the simulation and generate a pre-computed video file as in prior systems. This paper will focus on the algorithms used to implement this system as well as the resulting improvements in geophysicist work-flow and data gathering efficiency that result from employing real-time simulation techniques; preliminary performance benchmarks will be given along with a brief conclusion.