Good news, LiDAR users. Our friends at GeoCue Corporation have announced that they’re integrating support for the MrSID Generation 4 (MG4) format into their popular LP360 software applications. GeoCue is the parent company of QCoherent Software LLC, the makers of the LP360 product line.
 
This means that geospatial professionals using LP360, a LiDAR software extension for the Esri™ ArcGIS environment, will be able to efficiently input and decode LiDAR data that has been compressed using LizardTech’s LiDAR Compressor™ software. MG4, the latest version of the MrSID format, accommodates new GIS technologies by supporting multi- and hyperspectral imagery, LiDAR point cloud data, multiterabyte datasets, and other innovations.
 
GeoCue’s customers have asked them for tools to input, decode and view compressed LiDAR point clouds, says Lewis Graham, the company’s president and CTO, noting that now they’ll be able to do so easily.
 
We’re excited about the integration, too, because one of our objectives is to ensure that MrSID files can be used in the widest possible array of applications used in our industry. Now LP360 users will be able to handle compressed LiDAR datasets in ArcGIS, which adds to the number of applications that support MG4. (You can find a complete list under “Third Party Integrations” at http://www.lizardtech.com/products/lidar/.)

The newly released MrSID Decode SDK is really two sets of libraries and tools in one package. And part of it was released more than a year ago under another name. Hopefully, geospatial professionals have more to do than wonder why this is, but for those with light workloads or long memories, here’s some background that we hope will address any confusion you may have.

In 2009 LizardTech introduced an updated version of the MrSID format that the geospatial industry has been relying on for years. We called it MrSID Generation 4 (MG4) and we released a “decode SDK” so that developers could begin building supporting for MG4 into their applications.

What was most unusual about MG4 was that it was a version of the format specifically updated to support the compression of LiDAR data. That is, the SDK enabled support for files compressed to MG4 using LizardTech’s LiDAR Compressor software. MG4 (and its SDK) would not support raster imagery for another year, during which we returned our attention and energies to GeoExpress, our raster image toolset and compression engine, to evaluate and implement the features our customers most wanted in the way of new features.

GeoExpress 8, with its support for alpha bands and multispectral imagery and its improved mosaicking, is a product we’ve long been excited about releasing. It came out in November of last year, and it looks as though our customers have once again steered us straight about the features that are most important to them, because the response to the new release has been very enthusiastic.

In the wake of the GeoExpress 8 launch, we’ve just released the decode SDK that combines MG4′s LiDAR capabilities with support for the new raster advancements in GeoExpress, bringing the MG4 story into full resolution, as it were. The updated SDK is called the MrSID Decode SDK, and as we noted at the beginning it’s really two toolsets in one. However, the toolsets are designed to work together. For instance, we include a sample application that shows you how to easily determine whether a file is composed of raster or LiDAR data and then shunt off the processing to the correct section of the SDK.

When you download the MrSID Decode SDK you have everything you need to integrate support into your applications for either LiDAR data or raster imagery in the MG4 format. It also enables support for viewing and decoding imagery compressed to both of the classical versions of the format, MG3 and MG2.

It’s an exciting season to be working with compressed LiDAR and raster image data. We’re happy to be making tools that developers can use to make their applications more useful to more geospatial users. The MrSID Decode SDK is available for download on our developer website.

Last July we unveiled the MrSID® Generation 4 Decode SDK to coincide with our release of the first groundbreaking version of LiDAR Compressor™ software. The new version of the MrSID format (MG4) supports LiDAR compression. We released a plug-in for using MG4 in ArcGIS 3D Analyst last October and unveiled our own MG4 Decode tool for decoding MG4 back out to LAS or ASCII text format earlier this year, but we’ve obviously been just as eager to see third parties use the SDK to integrate MG4 support into their own products.

Late last year, Merrick & Company and Global Mapper Software announced support for MG4 in their products, MARS® (Merrick Advanced Remote Sensing) software and Global Mapper 11.01. We were very excited about those early integrations.

Last week another important integration of the MG4 technology was announced, this time by Overwatch, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a provider of imagery and geospatial solutions to Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and the intelligence and forestry communities. Overwatch is the maker of LIDAR Analyst, a plug-in for ArcGIS and ERDAS IMAGINE that provides tools for automatically extracting bare earth terrain, 3D buildings, trees and forests, contour lines, and terrain characteristics.

LIDAR Analyst is used for feature extraction by user groups requiring high-resolution terrain information. With the release of version 5.0, LIDAR Analyst customers will be able to process LiDAR data that has been compressed using LizardTech’s LiDAR Compressor.

We’re excited because, as our director of marketing Jon notes, our customers in the Department of Defense and elsewhere have frequently requested MG4 support in LIDAR Analyst, and this integration will provide them with the ability to efficiently compress their LiDAR files and use them in one of their most commonly used applications.

Overwatch is excited because, according to LIDAR Analyst’s product manager Matt Morris, “The MrSID format is best in class for raster imagery compression and we are quite pleased with LizardTech’s specific innovations in point cloud compression.”

We’re blushing, but it’s true.

Several of us just returned from the ILMF 2010 conference in Denver, Colorado. What was near and dear to my heart there was the interest in LiDAR compression. Several presentations focused on this (linked items below are PDF documents):

• “Storing and Managing LiDAR Data” by Jon Skiffington (LizardTech)
• “Compressing LiDAR Waveform Data” by Dr. Charles Toth (Ohio State University)
• “laszip: Lossless Compression for LiDAR in LAS Format” (poster) by Dr Martin Isenburg (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
• “LiDAR Compression with MrSID Generation 4” by Michael Rosen (LizardTech)

My sense from talking with the other presenters is that this is something for which the industry is hungry. Dr. Toth is researching ways to compress waveform data (as opposed to the spatial and other attributes of the point cloud itself). He presented two approaches:  one based on a wavelet transform and another based on compressive sensing.

Dr. Isenburg presented a poster session describing laszip, a compression mechanism for LAS files. He described it to me as being primarily focused on archiving LAS data and so rather orthogonal to our efforts, which emphasize accessibility and integration. Also, laszip is free.

Mr. Skiffington’s presentation focused on our LiDAR Compressor product while your author’s presentation gave an outline of the motivation for and an algorithmic explanation of the underlying MG4 technology.

I had several people asked for copies of my presentation so I’ve provided the link above.

Michael Rosen
LizardTech, Engineering Mgr
mrosen at lizardtech dot com

We’re pretty excited. Last week we announced that version 11.01 of Global Mapper supports LizardTech™ MrSID™ Generation 4 (MG4) among its many supported elevation formats. Mapmakers who use Global Mapper will now benefit from being able to load point clouds compressed using LizardTech Lidar Compressor™ into Global Mapper.

Earlier this week we were able to announce that Merrick & Company has similarly integrated MG4 support into its MARS^® (Merrick Advanced Remote Sensing) software application. Users of MARS 6.0, available now, can load MG4 files into MARS for visualizing and managing LiDAR terrain datasets.

How are they doing this? They’re using LizardTech’s MrSID Generation 4 Decode SDK, a free download.

Oh, and we should remind any ArcGIS 3D Analyst users that MG4 files are supported via LizardTech’s free MrSID Plug-in for ArcGIS 3D Analyst (http://www.lizardtech.com/download/dl_options.php?page=plugins), so you can work with MG4 files the same way you work with LAS files to create contours and surfaces.

The way we feel about all this is: The more the merrier.