GE (General Electric) are celebrating the launch of a brand new $500 million facility in Rio, Brazil dedicated to researching the future of ‘subsea factories’ to mine oil and gas. The company decided to commission virtual experience auteurs Kite & Lightning (of Senza Peso and other well-known VR experiences) to build a VR experience to illustrate some of the extreme challenges involved.

Fathoming the Depths

71% of our planet’s surface is covered by oceans, the vast majority of which is unexplored. This means that huge amounts of potential energy lie waiting to be tapped. The problem, of course, is that when I’m talking ‘depths’ I mean it. The term ‘subsea’ is used by the Oil and Gas industry to describe underwater exploration in pursuit of untapped fuel. The suffix ‘deepwater’ means that exploration has to go really deep, over 600ft deep and beyond.

GE of course realise the potential that lies beneath and have just launched a dedicated ‘subsea’ research centre. The lab will be pitched at finding ways to descend to extreme depths and how best to extract these precious resources once there. Specifically, how might the company construct subsea, deepwater factories, capable of extracting and shifting the huge quantities of oil. From GE’s website:

Some of the biggest commercial opportunities in the oil industry today are in offshore exploration and production and particularly in the so-called “pre-salt” layers that dominate the deep water off the coast of Brazil. The pre-salt is a layer of sedimentary rocks formed by the separation of the current American and African continents. It comprises large accumulations of valuable high quality light oil.

The challenges involved in constructing undersea factories to work at these depths are difficult to imagine for most of us. So GE decided to utilise virtual reality to try and illustrate what it hopes to achieve. They commissioned renowned virtual reality pioneers Kite & Lightning to create an experience which plunges the player to the sea floor at depths of 4 miles in a futuristic submersible. The journey is filled with snatches of information and facts on the kinds of pressures underwater equipment has to withstand at these depths and ideas on how the underwater factories might function in the future.

See Also: Senza Peso is a Stunning, First of Its Kind, Virtual Reality Mini-opera for the Oculus Rift

As is standard for K&L virtual reality applications, this is a premium experience with impressive visuals throughout. [Editor’s note: the transition from above to below the surface plane of the water is one of the best I’ve ever seen inside of a game.] This is ostensibly an educational ‘on rails’ theme park ride and its subject matter could have potentially erred on the side of dull if handled poorly, but by plunging the the player’s virtual body miles below the sea, it somehow focuses the mind wonderfully. The busy interior of the pod buzzes with snippets of video as augmented reality style heads-up information is overlaid atop the scene beyond the submersible’s glass. It’s all rather effective.

See Also: Kite & Lightning’s ‘Genesis’ is an Immersion-machine That Takes You on a Reality-bending Ride

It’s a subject we’re seemingly writing about more and more on Road to VR, but it bears repeating. Virtual reality’s innate ability to focus the mind and present information in new and hitherto unimaginably effective ways really shouldn’t be underestimated. Kudos to GE for recognising that potential and of course to those chaps at Kite & Lightning for realising it.

For more information on GE’s Brazil-based Research Lab, head here. You can check out more of K&L’s work at their content portal here.