Spatial Integration

Spatial Integration uses Vulkan, the most modern, high performance, cross-platform graphics API available. This is what the big games are using!

High quality transparency lets you look through your data to see the relationships that matter and anti-aliased graphics keep edges smooth.

Standard file formats allow you to easily load data you already have and continue to interoperate with your favourite applications. There are no proprietary format lock-ins. Drivers and importers for Geosoft GDB & GRD files, plus Micromine block models makes using your existing data a breeze.

QGIS is our GIS of choice and we regullarly work with both simultaneously. We have therefore gone to some effort to make SI and QGIS interoperable as much as possible:

• Stream your QGIS canvas directly to Spatial Integration as an image overlay. Toggle layers or edit vectors in QGIS and the changes show up in SI within a couple of seconds. Initiate in QGIS via the free Geoscience plugin.
• QGIS and SI styles are cut & paste interchangeable in both directions. SI will also pick up a qml sidecar file from QGIS and apply the style automatically to GIS layers.
• If you manually define a coordinate reference system in either SI or QGIS, then that will be mutually recognised via the qpj file.

Drag and drop from your file manager. Drop one file or fifty, straight from Explorer, Dolphin or Finder. Where you drop determines what happens: onto the Height Sources tab and a raster becomes a height source; onto the 3D view and SI inspects the file — by opening it, not by trusting the extension — and routes it to the right loader. While you drag, the target under the pointer is outlined and a label at the cursor tells you exactly what the drop will do. Dialog file path boxes are drop targets too.

Custom streaming imagery: WMS, WMTS, TMS and XYZ (Pro). Define your own tile sources in Configure. WMS servers are set up via GetCapabilities — SI reads the published layer list, you tick the layers you want and drag to reorder them. Sources are saved with the project, support transparency, keep server credentials protected, and fall back to cached tiles when a server goes down rather than blocking the rest of the scene. Caches are listed with their disk usage in the Configure dialog and can be deleted individually.

Volumes are an area of space that has been discretised into cells, each containing a value, for example grade block models and geophysics inversions.

You can visualise your volume using a series of isosurfaces (3D contours) at defined values or as blocks within a threshold. Both can be controlled using real-time sliders to get the perfect display to describe your volume. Colours are automatically updated using your favourite colour scheme and adjustable transform, plus the transparency of each isosurface or block threshold can be set individually to see through nested shells.

Volume layers also support an Outline (bounds) visualisation and Cell Edges so you can see exactly how the volume is split up.

Native Support for 5 Core Topologies

To maintain 100% data integrity without forced resampling, Spatial Integration natively mirrors the exact mathematical structure of your source grid:

1. Image: Uniform, regular grids where every cell is identical.
2. Rectilinear: Variable cell sizes per row, column, and level (Tensor meshes).
3. Structured: Regular, connected cells of irregular shape to model curvilinear geology.
4. Unstructured: Arbitrary topologies and irregular layouts (including Tetrahedral meshes).
5. Tree: Adaptive refinement where large cells subdivide into smaller child cells for high-resolution detail (such as VTK HyperTree grids, sub-blocked models, and Octrees).

Broad Interoperability & Industry Formats

Load your data directly without painful format conversions. We support a wide range of standard file types:

• Modern VTK (XML): .vti (Image), .vtr (Rectilinear), .vts (Structured), .vtu (Unstructured), and .vth (HyperTree).
• Legacy VTK: Standard .vtk wrappers and ASCII grids.
• UBC / SimPEG: Direct loading of Tensor and Octree meshes.
• Geophysics: Loke XYZ IP/Resistivity inversion exports.
• …with more formats on the way!

Note that formats can be converted to modern VTK formats right from the layer opening dialog.

As with all Spatial Integration layers, you can apply one or more clipping planes to your data and you can mix any coordinate reference systems. Transparency can also be applied at layer or visualisation levels.

Volume visualisation is a Professional Edition feature.