dGB Earth Sciences says that OpendTect is now a completely free seismic interpretation system. Complete because with the release of version 4.0, OpendTect supports all functionalities needed in seismic interpretation projects. Free because the software is open source, and can be used at no cost as dGB has changed its licensing policy.

Henceforth OpendTect is released under a triple licensing strategy: 1) under the GNU / GPL license, 2) under a commercial license and, 3) under an academic license. Under the GNU / GPL license, OpendTect is completely free-of-charge, including for commercial use. The commercial license enables the user to extend the system with (closed source) commercial plugins that can either be purchased or leased. Under the academic license agreement universities can get free licenses for OpendTect and commercial plugins for R&D and educational purposes.

In version 4.0 amongst others a synthetic-to-seismic well tie module, a SEGY-wizard, pre-stack AVO attribute computation and Time-to-Depth conversion have been added to the list of supported features. Improvements include the updated step-wise horizon tracker, the enhanced cross-plot functionality and many others.

Several of the commercial plugins have been improved as well. SSIS, dGB's flagship product for sequence stratigraphic interpretation, now features a new workflow for the analysis of grids of 2D lines. The multi-2D work flow can be applied in faulted areas on 2D and 3D seismic data. ArkCls and partner Visual Technology Services have released a new plugin PDF3D. With this new plugin a 3D scene in OpendTect can be captured and saved in pdf-format. The saved file can be opened in the standard and free Adobe Acrobat Reader that nowadays supports 3D visualization. Here the user can zoom, rotate, change transparencies and toggle elements on and off. PDF3D is bound to change the way in which E&P work is reported to management, colleagues, and partners. Also new by Earthworks and ArkCls is a Connection plugin that allows bodies to be grown from one or more seed points. This plugin can be used e.g. to analyze the results of a stochastic impedance inversion run.

Paul de Groot, President & CEO of dGB Earth Sciences, said, "This new release is the result of many years of hard work by our dedicated team in close cooperation with ArkCls, Earthworks and Geokinetics with the support of many E&P companies. We are glad that we can now offer this complete and high level seismic interpretation system for free to the geophysical community. Why would anyone still pay for seismic interpretation software, when the same features can be had for free? Better spend your budget on the advanced interpretation techniques of the OpendTect plugins, which really add value to your data."