Immersive 3D Virtual Reality for Field Geological Practice: A New Paradigm in Geoscience Education

Abstract. Geology education, due to its deep reliance on the composition and evolution of the Earth’s material, is in dire need of practical knowledge to strengthen theoretical understanding. However, traditional field geology teaching has long been limited by space-time constraints, irreversibility of phenomena and multi-scale characteristics of complex geological processes, and the existing digital teaching tools are mostly limited to two-dimensional displays or static three-dimensional models, which lacks immersive presentations of dynamic evolution and interactive operations of geological phenomena, making it difficult for students to establish systematic geological thinking. For this reason, this study integrates the realistic 3D modelling and virtual reality technology, builds a realistic 3D field geological practice virtual simulation platform, and constructs a platform teaching system covering the whole process of “Preparation-Teaching-Examination-Evaluation”. By comparing the students’ practical scores before and after the use of the platform and collecting feedback, it was found that the students’ practical scores increased significantly after the application of the platform, and the proportion of high scores (90–100) increased from 13.8 % to 27.4 %, and more than 90 % of the students recognized the functions of the platform and expressed their willingness to use it continuously. The study confirms that the virtual-reality integration teaching mode effectively improves the cognitive depth of geological phenomena and the efficiency of practical skills transformation through realistic 3D roaming, stratigraphic dynamic evolution simulation and standardized assessment system. This study not only provides a feasible solution to solve the bottleneck of traditional geology teaching, but also lays a practical foundation for promoting the transformation of geology education to the direction of intelligence.