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• The base system requirements for Landmark due to the Oracle database are very large. Minimum configuration to just install Landmark requires 128 meg of ram and 800 meg of swap space. SeisX will run on systems with 64 meg of ram and 200 meg of swap. Project size and required speed dictate what the user will configure the system with.
• SeisX software occupies about 80 meg of disk space and takes less than 15 minutes to load and install. Landmark modules equaling SeisXs functionality, requires approximately 1.5 gig of disk space and can take even Landmark representatives days to install. Landmark requires their own window environment requiring an additional 150 meg.
• SeisX runs on a variety of platforms and operating systems: Sun OS, Sun Solaris, SGI, DEC, HP, IBM and PCs windows NT. Landmarks software runs on Sun OS, Solaris only and their visualization on the SGI. They also have an out of date AIX version.
• SeisX NT has binary compatibility with the Unix SeisX for seismic, horizons, faults, templates and parameter files. In an upcoming release there will be full binary compatibility. This will allow SeisX clients to add on inexpensive workstations.

• SeisX uses a very simple file and directory structure. Entire projects can be located in one directory or linked in from other directories if space is required. SeisX users can archive projects with standard OS backup commands. Landmark uses a very complex naming scheme for their files. There are project files, separate data files, and separate Oracle well data base files. The data file names are too long (100 characters, with path 100+) to be archived with standard tar commands. The Oracle database requires separate archive commands which cant be included with the standard projects archive.
• Typical Landmark 2d projects can easily contain over 10,000 files. Often special disk partitioning is required to increase the amount of inodes (files) allowed on the disk.

• SeisXs relative ease of use is a major selling point. All SeisX functionality is found within one menu system and a user never gets more than two menus deep. Almost all major functionality within SeisX can be accessed through window icons or hot keys. All menus have the same look and feel. Landmarks software has been built over time. Many menus are remnants of their old MSDOS background. Some use the new windowing capabilities. Many menus and interfaces have been adopted from the company that they purchased the functionality from. There is very little effort made to standardize their GUI. They use many layers of cascading menus, making software navigation difficult. Still have 80 character export limitations.
• The SeisX user can easily switch between projects without leaving the software. To switch projects, attach lines, remove horizons, do stratigraphic analysis, or do well data loading, the Landmark user must exist the software and run separate standalone utilities.
• SeisX handles all data that is in SegY format in one project. This means 2d, 2d and 3d, multiple 3ds, gathers and AVO as 3ds, VSPs, etc. Landmark has always separated 2d from 3d functionality. They have just released a combined 2d and 3d product, but from user feedback it involves batch conversion tasks and is not very usable.
• Data loading is another strong point for SeisX. Landmark sells the Panther software to get data into their system which they charge extra for. Ours is very easy and interactive, providing very powerful utilities to analyze and correct data. Because of these utilities, SeisX is substantially faster to get data into; magnitudes faster. Several Landmark sites use SeisX to prepare data for loading into SeisWorks.
• Landmark can still not pick on a wiggle trace display. All displays and scales in SeisX can be interpreted on. On decimated displays, SeisX goes to disk and picks non-displayed traces. Landmark does a straight interpolation. SeisX extracts amplitudes while picking at the bit resolution of the data. Landmark uses an extraction module as a separate process.

• The data grid balancing , correcting for phase, gain and static, is far superior in SeisX. SeisX can balance multiple 3ds, 2d and well information simultaneously. SeisXs balancing is interactive. The user only has to process the data once. All intermediate calculations are very fast because they only involve a mistie table, not the entire dataset. Landmark only handles 2d data. They have very cumbersome user point analysis with no basemap error checking. The user usually has to process the entire data set and then visually check the resultant ties. SeisX weights the strength of the data correlation at each point. Landmark weights all points the same, regardless of quality. SeisX keeps track of all processes done to the data; total static, phase, gain. The original EBCDIC and trace header information from the processor is also maintained.
• SeisX can raster and display data at user defined scales. The user can specify the data to be displayed at 7.5 in/sec and 12 TPI, or the user can specify a map scale, 1:10,000 to display the data. SeisX gets its screen resolution information for display purposes from the systems xdpyinfo; this adjusts for graphics card resolution and screen size. Landmark uses only integer decimation and interpolation, both for initial display and zooming. Landmarks zooming is just a simple pixel replication. Landmark can not display to map scale. SeisXs zoom rerasterizes and displays a smooth curve.
• Landmark restricts the user to 150% of the screen size for window scrolling. If a line is longer than this the user can only pick what is displayed. A separate menu is used to reselect and redisplay in Landmark. SeisX allows the user to display the whole line which it will pick the entire length. Zig-zag or multi panel displays can be picked in one button press in SeisX. Landmark forces the user to stop and restart the pick in each panel.
• SeisXs multiframe arbitrary 3d lines can be edited, combined with other displays, and selected to project outside of the 3d boundaries. Landmark doesnt allow editing of selected line locations and can not follow data trends off the project. 
• Basic horizon and fault interpretation options are similar between the two packages. SeisX uses far less key clicks to switch modes and make edits. Fault contacts in SeisX are automatically projected from 2d to 2d, 2d to 3d, and 3d to 3d. Fault heaves in SeisX are also automatically calculated. Horizons do not have to come in contact with the faults to have a heave calculated. Horizon contacts to fault planes are projected and automatically updated after an edit. Landmark uses batch jobs to initially calculate or recalculate heaves. During horizon picking, SeisX has an option of automatically stopping at fault contacts. Landmark does not.
• SeisX allows for the projection of horizons and faults from line to line of a 3d or to be projected from a user defined distance. As the SeisX user selects a horizon or fault to be active, the requested projection is then displayed. Landmark actually copies the active horizon from the previous line and overwrites the current line. It can only do one horizon, no faults, and it is not just a user guiding projection.
• Our gridding and contouring accesses our internal data directly. Horizons 2d and 3d, tops, grids, contours or ascii data can be gridded and contoured separately or together right within SeisX. The resultant grid and contours can be displayed on the basemap as color infilled contours with annotation. The Landmark user must convert all data types into a common mapping data set. These datasets have predefined size limits so decimation of data is usually done. Only colored contours can be created, no infill. For more final presentation quality maps, Landmark sells you a $26,000 Zycor product. SeisWorks still does not completely interact with Zycor. Data conversion is still required.
• Planimeter calculation in SeisX is done with a single button click. The bounding constraints can be overlapped from any number of culture layers; contours with lease boundaries. Landmark forces the user to retrace to boundaries with a temporary polygon on a very small scale map. This leads to very inaccurate results.
• Oracle, although flexible, is very time consuming to bring data into the database. SeisXs well database is designed specifically for the Geophysicist. Our data loading is several thousand times faster. Initial project loading to memory is also very slow for Oracle and takes substantial memory resources. Posting changes, or value modifications in SeisX are changed on the seismic and basemap displays dynamically. SeisX handles well bores that are horizontal or deviate back toward surface.
• SeisX stores the calculations used to create a horizon. These calculations or expressions, can be recalled for ease of use, or used in a batch process to select several horizon to be recalculated. Landmark can only perform one operation at a time and doesnt allow for recalculation. This can be a big time saver when doing complex depth conversions.
• Grid to grid operations or calculations can be performed in SeisX. Landmark can only do horizon computations. This means that the user must always convert a gridded surface from a grid to a horizon, perform the operation, and then convert back to a grid. Very labor intensive. SeisX grids to not have to have the same extent or grid cells dimensions in order to perform the calculations.
• Our time depth module is limited in its usability but it is incorporated into the base functionality. We provide an interactive stretch and squeeze synthetic generation module that ties directly to the seismic. The resultant tied velocity information from this synthetic matching is used in our depth conversion. SeisWorks itself does not have any of this functionality. It can only import synthetics from other sources, provides only bulk shifting for synthetics, and time depth pairs are only used for placing well top information, not depth conversion.

• Hardcopy is very poor in Landmark. They rely heavily on third party products to improve their output. SeisX has near presentation quality displays from all windows.
• SeisX can differentially post SP spacing and horizons on 2d based on line by line, or by vintage. Landmark can only do this in Zycor.

• VoxelGeo on all accounts is better that Landmarks EarthCube. If a company is looking for a combined standard interpretation and visualization package, SeisX - VoxelGeo is far superior in functionality and linkage than Landmarks SeisWorks - EarthCube. They still require importing and exporting. We provide dynamic linkages.
• SeisX now links to GeoSec 2d and 3d via ihf import export facilities. Cogniseis has shown that new products brought into our product line, are integrated much faster than Landmark. In Beta form, GeoSec 3d now integrates completely with the shared memory volume of VoxelGeo.

• Landmark has a large install base. They were the first into most markets and through great sales and marketing have built up a strong following. Our greatest hurdle is the internal politics in the oil and gas companies. How to convince them to turn off their investment? In the past when we have been compared head to head with SeisWorks, we have never lost on technical merit. The times that we have lost, was due to Landmark selling their corporate vision. "Let us do everything for you". They have the ability to provide a complete integrated solution backed up by a very strong services and support group; we do not. Although, their individual point products do not measure up against Cogniseis, their complete solution approach has served them well.