Rhys pointing towards a dolostone cap with an eroded base in Short Hills Provincial Park 

Virtual reality has taken over at the OGSR Library. We are taking a deep dive into the Lockport Group with four new videos in the VR format. Here’s a preview of what’s in store. 

The Lockport Group is part of the Silurian Age and contains the Gasport, Goat Island, Eramosa, and Guelph formations. These formations are important in Ontario as they contain resources such as oil and natural gas, potable ground water, and are used as aggregates. Funded by the Ontario Geological Survey, each video covers a different aspect of this group of formations.

 
The first video focuses on the Niagara Escarpment’s surficial geology in relation to tourism. Using real world clips in the 360-degree format, this video will look at how the rocks of the Lockport Group outcrop throughout the escarpment and form the landscape that creates a unique climate for agriculture. Think about the beautiful scenery and the large number of vineyards and you’re halfway there!

 
The second video uses 3D renderings from the lithostratigraphic model to look at the Lockport Group from the surface to subsurface. Here we will be examining changes in formation thickness, distribution, geography, and features, including its most famous subsurface feature, the pinnacle reefs. This particular video has allowed me to learn animation using Blender, a powerful (and complicated!) open-source program that can handle complex 3D models.

 
Video three is a virtual core workshop featuring 3D scanned cores. The cores are being scanned using a technique called photogrammetry, where many photos covering every angle of each piece of rock are assembled into an exact 3D replica that can be studied in a virtual environment. Each piece of rock requires quite a lot of computer processing, but the results are impressive, and we will be able to use these 3D models for other projects later on, including for augmented reality.  

The final video is a tour of Short Hills Provincial Park, an area where rocks of the Lockport Group outcrop, displaying a number of small waterfalls. With our own geology gal Rhys as your guide, the video uses on location footage in the 360-degree format and high-resolution photos to focus on how the rocks appear and behave at the surface, including the process of erosion that created the landscape. 

All four videos will be available on YouTube in the near future. They will be best viewed on a VR headset, but will be good experiences viewed on any screen, including on your phone, where you can look around by moving your device. We will announce when they become available in an upcoming newsletter. 

Since January 2022 the Geology team has been focusing on core and drilling chip samples photography. Our main goal was to complete 3000 photos for core and drilling chip samples by end of March, and to be available for our clients directly in the same day the photos are taken.

This goal was accomplished by photographing more than 3000 photos by end of March. We have chip photographed 24 wells (2111 vials). All vials were taken in three zooms 10X, 30X and another 10X to show the diversity of minerals in a vial (Fig 1). Also, we photographed cores of 76 wells (1294 photo). All photos were taken in three modes Wet, Dry and UVF (Fig 2). Photos can be found on Google Earth using PXTOOLS under Geological Imaging layer, which is called Microscope Chip Photos and Rock Core photos (Figures 3 and 4).

Core and chip samples photos were uploaded to Google Earth same day that they are taken. The following table is showing some photographed wells during the last 3 months with core and chip samples. The table contains wells that have both core and drilling chip samples that are available in the library. However, some wells will only have drilling chip samples photos.

Table 1. Example of some rock cores and rock chips recently made digital by OGSR Library

Figure 1: An example of photographed chip sample vial is in three zoom modes

    Figure 2: An example photographed core in three modes UVF, DRY, and WET

Figure 3: Screenshot showing drilling chip samples in Google Earth using PXTOOLS

       Figure 4: Screenshot showing core photos in Google Earth using PXTOOLS