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MINERALS INDUSTRY EDUCATION AND TRAINING II

Figure 6: AVIE at the School of Mining Engineering, UNSW

Unity game engine and interactivity added via programming in the C#
language. The textures used for mapping the 3Dobjects were constructed
using Adobe Photoshop .
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The School of Mining Engineering at UNSW has advanced visualization
and interactive environment (AVIE) facilities that provide a virtual learning
platform for mine safety training and mining engineering education
modules developed over the years (Figure 6). The mineral processing
interactive module runs in the AVIE. The module is also able to run on a
single computer, on a smartphone using VR glasses or similar technologies,
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and on an Oculus Rift VR headset using a computer. The VR glasses will
enable the module to be used on site without the need for a VR theatre.
Conclusions

Mineral processing education can be greatly enhanced and facilitated by the
use of VR. This paper presented the design and development of an interactive
base metal concentrator module developed at UNSW, Australia. The main
goal of the virtual reality module is to bring a virtual mineral processing
plant to the university environment, where students can experience a real
plant, and visualize unit operations in 3D and the interrelation between the
sub-unit processes. The module presented is not driven by dynamic process
simulations. Future work includes implementation of dynamic simulated
processes by importing real data into the module to improve the realistic
representation of the actual systems.

Innovative Practice in Mineral
178 Section 5
Processing Education