The core goal of IDP was to improve the safety and efficiency of directional well planning. An immersive visualization environment was used to enable better understanding of the data, and to facilitate group collaboration more effectively than was possible at the time using VR goggles.

IDP also used algorithmic constraints on the planned wells, which allowed the user to manipulate the well-path easily using interactive widgets, while at the same time, ensuring that the end result could actually be drilled. My contributions were mostly focused on these tools, rather than the 3D visualization.

When an oil well is being drilled, it is often desirable to send it through the largest span of a potential reservoir in order to maximize exposure, but this can come at the expense of making the well more difficult and costly to build. This feature allowed the user to drag a simple slider widget that automatically adjusted a region of the planned well between maximized exposure (preferable, but more costly) and targeting only the center of the geobody (not ideal, but cheaper). The screenshot here shows a very unlikely--but technically possible--scenario.

IDP included visualization that would show how close a planned well approached an existing well, since avoiding well collisions is absolutely imperative for safety. Taking this concept a step further, this prototype allowed the user to define an envelope around a well (shown here by the yellow orbs) that specified a minimum safe distance, and automatically adjusted the planned path if it got too close to an existing well.