Norcross, GA -ERDAS strengthens its commitment to open standards through LPS eATE's support of the ASPRS LASer (LAS) Format using the libLAS library.

LPS is a versatile software product for digital photogrammetric workstations, providing accurate production-oriented photogrammetric tools for triangulation, generating terrain models, producing orthomosaics and extracting 3D features. LPS eATE is an add on module for LPS that produces exceptionally accurate digital terrain surfaces by utilizing a mixture of photogrammetric and computer vision algorithms to derive clouds of terrain points from imagery.  LPS eATE enables complete use of all spectral data, edge constrained processing, multiple ray processing and extensive attribution in LAS output files. It also leverages all hardware resources and can be scaled by using an easy interface to set up a distributed system.

"ERDAS is committed to open standards that facilitate the flow of geospatial data so organizations can make more effective business decisions and public policy. LPS eATE support for the LAS format is just another example of this," said Bruce Chaplin, Senior Vice President, Product Development, ERDAS.  "LPS eATE brings power and flexibility to our customers, in part because of LAS support, and the upcoming 2011 release will be an exciting continuation of those trends."

LPS eATE incorporates the libLAS library to save classified 3D point clouds in LAS format, developed and distributed by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) as an alternative to proprietary formats and ASCII. By supporting this alternative, LPS eATE eliminates the collaboration barriers inherent to proprietary formats and enables users to store raw data, LiDAR-specific information, classification classes and RGB encoding in a single file.  LPS eATE also expands user flexibility since the LAS files contain enough information to enable creation of different products, from stripping away surface features like vegetation and man-made structures to produce a terrain surface, to associating RGB values from imagery with terrain points so it can be visualized in 3D.

In ERDAS' upcoming release, LPS eATE 2011 will extend existing LAS support. This will be done by adding coordinate systems to files and including attributes to store the file ID and the number of rays used in matching. Users will also see significant performance increases.  In addition to the eATE improvements, LPS 2011 will feature an improved Terrain Prep Tool and the ability to distribute orthoresampling jobs to achieve faster results.

For more information about LPS eATE, visit the product web site at erdas.com or see the latest webinar, Point Clouds from Imagery: Model Your World Like Never Before!  ERDAS 2011 software will be released later this year.

For more information about ERDAS or its products and services, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS, or visit www.erdas.com.