Update on "native LAS 1.4 extension" of LASzip at OGC Point Cloud DWG Meeting

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

There is a meeting of the OGC Point Cloud DWG scheduled during the upcoming TC meetings in Dublin tomorrow Tuesday, June 21st at 8:00 - 9:45 AM local time (= Tuesday, June 21st at 3:00 - 4:45 AM EDT). I will give an brief update on the current design of the "native extension" of LASzip for the new LAS 1.4 point types. The full agenda of the meeting and the GotoMeeting details were published by LiDARnews:

http://blog.lidarnews.com/ogc-point-cloud-dwg-meeting/

Regards,

Martin @rapidlasso

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

as I was attending the point cloud meeting remotely I pre-recorded my presentation on video and uploaded it on YouTube to avert any technical difficulties (although that did not work nearly as smooth as I had hoped). But at least I can now also share my 16:15 minute presentation with you ... (-:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucY3WPQKP6o

Regards,

Martin @rapidlasso

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

One of the most interesting parts of the OGC Point Cloud Meeting in Dublin was the result of the OGC Point Cloud Survey that had 13 questions ranging from storage, transfer, size, tools, etc. and got 188 responses from 175 different organizations. I have attached the two detail slides showing results to question #2 "What formats do you use to store point clouds?" and question #13 "What tools do you use?".

Fortunately only four of the seven "zLAS" answers are independent users but as more content in this closed format goes online we can expect this number to growin future surveys . The three other "votes" come from employees or triple gold business partners of the company that created "zLAS".

http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_6389UlkIblWyneY5WbbONMMJ-ZiNaeUmcs_iG6olS0/edit#gid=663760835

Scrutinizing this survey makes it seem as if there are "agendas". You may remember that I was a bit at odds with Lewis Graham - the chair of the ASPRS LAS Working Group - on his lack of leadership in the controversy surrounding ESRI's use of the well established "LAS" moniker to promote the opposite of the open LAS format (i.e. a proprietary "lock-in" clone) calling it "Optimized LAS". In the survey Lewis states that he has managed/processed/stored/etc. more than 1 trillion (10^12) points in the last 12 months. But apparently he has only used zLAS and not LAZ. This does surprise given how widespread LAZ is in federal agencies across the US, many of which I would think are his clients.

I wrote "agenda" because Lewis once used his regular column to make - and I am still not sure why - very erroneous claims on the LASzip compressor (and open source licenses in general) that was quickly rebutted as an "uninformed rant" ...

http://odoepner.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/lidar-news-publishes-uninformed-gpl-rant/

Regards,

Martin