Sidi Bettache Virtual Geological Field Trip - Prototype and Documentation

Documentation and teaching materials for a desktop-deliverable virtual geological field trip of a synform fold in the Sidi Bettache basin, north-western Morocco (33°45′06.2″N, 6°46′03.5″W). The scene was authored in Blender 3.5 and SimLab VR Studio 11 Free Edition, and designed for the first year of Moroccan lower secondary science (1 APIC) as a four-hour sequence within the curriculum unit on external geological phenomena. This deposit contains the build specification, a full texture inventory, scene screenshots, a bilingual learner observation sheet, and a one-page teacher script. The terrain and fold are a visual reconstruction modelled from a photograph of the site. The model is not photogrammetrically derived, not georeferenced, and not survey-based; its geometry is not metrically accurate. It supports observation, lithological discrimination, and procedural rehearsal, but not measurement-dependent exercises such as strike and dip or true bed thickness. The scene was authored on a 2013-era computer with integrated graphics and no discrete GPU. No polygon or texture budget was set and no optimisation was applied. Only desktop delivery was verified by the authors; local-network and head-mounted delivery are supported by the toolchain but were not trialled. The prototype has not been evaluated with learners. No learner data were collected and no dataset underlies the findings of the associated manuscript.