Vienna University of Technology Releases OPALS v 2.1.5 – A Airborne Laser Data Processing Software

by GIS Resources , 2015-07-06

The Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation, Vienna University of Technology announces the release of OPALS version 2.1.5.

OPALS stands for Orientation and Processing of Airborne Laser Scanning data. It is a modular program system consisting of small components (modules) grouped together thematically in terms of packages. For instance, the derivation of a hypsometric map of a single ALS flight strip is achieved using three different modules: import of strip point data, DTM grid interpolation and derivation of the colour coded raster map, facilitating the re-usability of the respective components in different application environments.

The aim of OPALS is to provide a complete processing chain for processing airborne laser scanning data (waveform decomposition, georeferencing, quality control, structure line extraction, point cloud classification, DTM generation and several fields of application like forestry, hydrology/hydraulic engineering, city modelling and power lines).

The OPALS program system is mainly designed for automatic processing. Thus, a sophisticated graphical user interface and interactive editing steps are omitted deliberately.

Main Features of  OPALS version 2.1.5:

• New module: ICP: The aim of opalsICP is to perform the orientation (co-registration) of multiple point cloud datasets using the Iterative Closest Point algorithm.
• New module: Rasterize: Aim of this module is to create a raster file out of an ODM file.
• Wild card support: Modules capable of dealing with multiple input datasets (i.e. Vector<Path>) now support wild cards (*,?). The following modules support wild card input: Module Import , Module Export , Module Algebra, Module AddInfo, Module Histo and Module ICP
• New OPALS Common Parameter lineBufferedScreenLog. If true, then the screen log stream (stdout) is flushed each time a log message has been emitted. This is useful for watching progress when stdout has been redirected to a file.
• Module Grid and Module Cell: Output of multiple features in a single multi-band raster file enabled (parameter multiband)
• Module Info: The module now also reports statistics about grid/raster data sets.
• Bug fixes + improvements

Download OPALS version 2.1.5