Download LIME now
LIME has been developed by the VOG Group through our ongoing activities at the forefront of virtual geoscience. It is currently available for Windows, though further platforms are planned to be supported in the future.
A free 30-day trial will start when you run LIME for the first time. If you are a returning user, valid keys will be picked up automatically. If your key has expired you can activate online here. Major efforts are made in adding features and fixing issues, bringing LIME to a professional standard. For v2, we decided to add a small annual charge for academic users (see our post on this).
System requirements (read this if you get a missing dll error when you run LIME the first time)
LIME requires Microsoft's Visual C++ Redistributable to be installed on your system. After installation, if you receive a warning that vcruntime140.dll (or similar) is missing then there is a good chance that your system does not have this installed. Please download and install the Visual Studio 2015-2022 X64 runtime from Microsoft's official pages.
Hardware requirements
LIME will run on most laptops and workstations running the 64-bit Windows operating system. However, the following hardware recommendation will help you increase performance, especially with larger datasets.
- Dedicated GPU for running the 3D graphics (NVIDIA recommended, e.g. Quadro series >2GB).
- >4GB RAM (recommended 16GB or more) is needed to load larger 3D model data
- A multi-core processor is beneficial for multi-threaded data loading
- High-speed hard drives for faster out of core data loading for level of detail (LOD) datasets
- Plenty of hard drive space for those large 3D datasets, and/or:
- A good Internet connection if using cloud 3D data connections (e.g. V3Geo)
Of these, the first and second items are most important to get the best performance.
How to cite and acknowledge LIME
Buckley, S.J., Ringdal, K., Naumann, N., Dolva, B., Kurz, T.H., Howell, J.A., Dewez, T.J.B., 2019. LIME: Software for 3-D visualization, interpretation, and communication of virtual geoscience models, Geosphere, 15(1): 222-235. doi:10.1130/GES02002.1.
In addition to the citation, if you find LIME useful in your work, please recognise the great efforts the development team make, by acknowledging the VOG Group in any publication, presentation or other dissemination based on use of the software.
Test dataset and getting started
See the LIME Resources page for tutorials, a test dataset and FAQs useful when getting started with the software.
LIME Newsletter
Would you like to receive info on updates and new releases in the LIME project?
You can sign up for our newsletter here.
