Global Mapper Version 15 Released with New Lidar Tools

Blue Marble Geographics has announced the release of Global Mapper version 15. This major release includes many powerful updates along with a new extension interface that provides add-on functionality capabilities including the COAST tool and a new Lidar module. Blue Marble's geospatial data manipulation, visualisation and conversion solutions are used worldwide by thousands of GIS analysts at software, oil and gas, mining, civil engineering, surveying and technology companies, as well as within governmental and university organisations.

Global Mapper is a GIS application that offers access to a broad variety of spatial datasets and provides just the right level of GIS functionality to satisfy both experienced GIS professionals and mapping novices. The new extension interface in Global Mapper 15 allows third parties and customers the opportunity to create add-on applications that can be part of the software with access to all the formats and tools that Global Mapper has to offer. As part of this release, Blue Marble has created three modules; The COAST tool for cost/benefit analysis of coastal flooding incidents, an Overview Map Window application, and a new powerful Lidar module. The Lidar module is available for the price of another seat of the software, while COAST and the Overview Application are free. Other new extension modules from key partners are expected over the next year.

This release also features a new Mathematical Raster Calculator for multi-band imagery analysis, the ability to edit and re-calculate multiple view shed layers, 3D PDF read/write support, scripting enhancements, such as passing variables to the script from the command line, and much more. The Lidar Module is a powerful toolbar that has totally new functionality on par with software that is many thousands of dollars more expensive. Leveraged through a toolbar for easier management and editing capabilities, the module features the ability to view, edit and reclassify points in the Path Profile viewer, robust gridding techniques for faster, extremely flexible creation of elevation surfaces, including smart decimation through binning, and other techniques. The tool also allows for automatic classification of ground points from unclassified point clouds, and support for reporting Lidar statistics via script to a text file to facilitate QA processes and new format support for E57 Lidar.