Australia's miners can look even further into the future, and save millions of dollars in the process, with the help of new 'virtual reality' equipment acquired by the CSIRO-industry alliance, Fractal Graphics.
The equipment - a virtual reality workbench - is the first of its kind in Australia and one of only a small number in the world. It will be used to further advance Fractal's innovative use of 3D graphics to provide the best geological models to the mining and exploration industries.
The Perth-based Fractal Graphics is a collaborative partnership between the CSIRO Division of Exploration and Mining and structural geology consultancy Port Mineral and Mining Services.
According to Fractal's Dr Nick Archibald, "the system has the potential to provide information miners crave - knowing many years in advance which way the ore body runs, how big it is, the grade of the ore, and how many tonnes of superfluous rock and debris will have to be moved to get to it, all in a virtual environment."
Fractal's 3D modelling services are used by some of the nation's biggest miners, including Western Mining, Delta Gold, North Ltd, and Yilgarn Star, to improve the geological understanding of their mining environments. The Awak Mas gold project in Sulawesi leads Fractal's recent step into overseas marketing.
"Our models have the technical excellence of the latest computer games and Star Wars-type movies, but instead of intergalactic battleships twisting and turning through space, we portray things like gold lodes meandering through the subterranean landscape. What's more, the lucrative images are fact not fantasy - virtual reality!" says Archibald.
"The mine's geological environment can be layed out before the manager's eyes - in vivid colours, able to be turned this way and that as you'd inspect a diamond, and all before a single tonne of overburden is moved."
The images are created by feeding into the computer all of the drill survey results and information from geological logging of the drill holes.
"We have the potential to add and integrate all types of disparate information. Ultimately we will be able to display a fully synthetic mining simulation based on mathematic modelling of physical systems," Dr Archibald said.
Editors note: Vivid pictures of minesite models available on request from Fractal Graphics.
Media contact: Nick Archibald, Fractal Graphics (09) 386 7917 or a/h (09) 335 2628