RIEGL New LASzip Sponsor for LAS 1.4 Extension

RIEGL has become a sponsor of the award-winning LASzip compressor. This contribution at the Silver level will kick-off the actual development phase of the so-titled native LAS 1.4 extension that had been discussed with the Lidar community over the past two years. This native extension for LAS 1.4 complements the existing compatibility mode for LAS 1.4 that was supported by Gold sponsor NOAA and Bronze sponsors Quantum Spatial and Trimble. The original sponsor who initiated and financed the open sourcing of the LASzip compressor was USACE - the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The existing LAS 1.4 compatibility mode in LASzip was created to provide immediate support for compressing the new LAS 1.4 point types by rewriting them as old point types and storing their new information as 'extra bytes'. As an added side benefit this has allowed legacy software without LAS 1.4 support to readily read these newer LAS files as most of the important fields of the new point types 6 to 10 can be mapped to fields of the older point types 1, 3 or 5.

In contrast, the new native LAS 1.4 extension of LASzip that is now sponsored in part by RIEGL will utilse the natural break in the format due to the new point types of LAS 1.4 to introduce entirely new features such as selective decompression, rewritable classifications and flags, integrated spatial indexing, and other functionalities that have been brain-stormed with the community since rapidlasso had issued the open call for input on native LASzip compression for LAS 1.4 in January 2014. RIEGL and rapidlasso invite Lidar professionals to follow the progress or contribute to the development via the discussions in the 'LAS room'.

For more information see here.