Press Room

Marathon Oil Company Upgrades Visualization Center
with Next Generation Projection Technology

July 7, 2003 - Houston, TX - Panoram Technologies, a leading manufacturer and integrator of advanced display systems, has announced the recent completion of their first curved-screen "DLP™ upgrade" project for an immersive visualization center at the headquarters of Houston-based Marathon Oil Company. The upgrade represents a key technological breakthrough in the area of blended multi-projector, stereoscopic display systems and marks the beginning of a much-anticipated transition for such systems from analog CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) to digital DLP (Digital Light Processing) projection technology. Referred to by the company as their "Visionarium"-Marathon's visualization center has been in operation since January 2000. The upgrade project was completed in May 2003. The newly upgraded system now offers significant improvements in clarity, sharpness, brightness, and stability, resulting in numerous benefits to Marathon's upstream oil/gas operations.

The Visionarium is primarily used by Marathon in the process of exploring for oil and gas, as it allows multi-disciplinary asset teams (including geophysicists, geologists, reservoir engineers, drilling experts and others) to view three-dimensional subsurface models and other data in a collaborative "virtual reality" environment. The environment provides a superior means of understanding information, facilitating better and faster decision-making. The performance improvements brought about by the digital upgrade are important on several levels. By seeing sharper, clearer images, users can better comprehend and analyze data with less visual fatigue. The increased brightness also improves the image quality and allows the lights in the room to be used (in contrast to the CRT-based system, which required near darkness for best performance). The upgraded system also provides more consistent image quality across the entire width of the screen.

Sharon Crawford, Marathon's Supervisor of Computer Aided Interpretation, directed the upgrade project. "After three years of use, the CRT projectors were at the end of their natural life, appearing dim and blurry and requiring significant tuning. Clearly, we needed to upgrade and we wanted the latest and the best value technology available," she explained. "With the clarity, the resolution and the brightness of the new digital projectors, we've really gained quite a bit with the upgrade. The increased brightness of the new system allows us to bring up the lights, which is important for group interaction, especially when working with a partner. The increased sharpness and clarity also helps with understanding detail in the data and reduces fatigue."

The upgrade involved changes to the system that extended far beyond simply swapping out the projectors. In fact, a whole new generation of image-processing electronics was required to handle the edge-blending between the three digital projectors. Also, CRT technology inherently allowed projected images to be aligned with great precision, even onto a curved screen. Digital projectors require a new form of signal processing called "warping", which bends the image digitally, allowing the projectors to be aligned to each other and onto a curved screen.

Though digital projectors are brighter and sharper than CRT projectors, they are also substantially noisier and create vastly more heat. This can be a real issue in collaborative environments where the projectors have typically been in the room with the users. Specialized new projector housings that dampen the noise were put to use in Marathon's new system. Protruding into the ceiling plenum, they require sophisticated temperature and safety monitoring systems as well as the ability to channel the heat directly through the HVAC system, reducing the extra cooling requirements to a highly localized issue.

Completely new mechanical and optical systems had to be adapted with dozens of detailed issues such as interfaces, switching systems, even the type of cabling and screen materials used. All had to be adapted to the new requirements of the DLP technology.

"This model facility has now set the standard for the next generation of high-end visualization centers in the oil/gas industry," said Theo Mayer, Panoram President and CEO. "We are proud to have worked with Marathon when the original system was installed in 2000 and again most recently with the DLP upgrade. Marathon has truly proven their commitment to staying on the leading edge of visualization and the benefits they will reap from it are well deserved."