21 July 1995
Wes Bethel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Project Summary

The three partners, LBNL, BP-Exploration and Western Atlas Software,
seek collaborate to the ends of having better software tools for the
visual analysis of "flux", or petroleum reservoir, simulation output.

LBNL has significant experience in applying visualization techniques
to a wide variety of data, as well as applying so-called "virtual reality"
technology to the visualization process and scientific computing.

BP-Exploration has a significant knowledge base in interpretation
of flux data, hence is in a good position to evaluate the efficacy of
visualization techniques.

WAS develops and sells software to the oil industry, including reservoir
simulators and visualization tools for post-processing simulation data.

A short description of the FY95 project is as follows:
	a. apply vector field visualization techniques that have been
		successfully used in the aerospace industry to flux data.
		These techniques have been published in that forum since
		the late 1980's.
	b. as a group, evaluate the efficacy of these techniques when
		applied separately and in various combinations, using
		both synthetic and live data.
	c. based upon recommendations of (b), the software company will
		use this information in upgrading its product to include
		these visualization techniques.

For FY96:
	a. apply VR technology in conjunction with visualization
		techniques.  Again, these techniques have been published
		in various forms since the early 1990's.
	b. the group evaluates the efficacy of these techniques
	c. the software company builds its product.

The contributions of each of the partners is as follows:

BP:
	1. provide test data for use in evaluating techniques
	2. provide experience in use of visualization tools
LBNL:
	1. build initial prototypes of the (already published)
	visualization techniques in our own software environment.
	2. provide experience in the development and use of vis. tools.
WAS:
	1. provide a real-world software environment which will 
	facilitates prototypes which conform to reasonable software
	engineering constraints
	2. provide experience in the use and development of vis. tools.


We are taking techniques which have been successfully used in the 
aerospace industry and applying them to a different discipline.  LBNL
is not writing software for WAS.