Just in time for ILMF 2017 in Denver, the makers of the popular LiDAR processing software LAStools announce that the prototype for the “native LAS 1.4 extension” of their award-winning open source LASzip LiDAR compressor is ready for testing. An update to the compressed LAZ format had become necessary due to a core change in the ASPRS LAS 1.4 specification which had introduced several new point types.
A new feature of the updated LASzip compressor is the ability to selectively decompress of only those attributes of each point that really are needed by the application that is reading the LAZ file. Minimally this will be the x and y coordinate of each point and the return counts, which are sufficient to – for example – calculate the exact extend of the survey area. Most applications will also want to access z coordinate. However, the intensities, the GPS times, the RGB or NIR colors, and the new “Extra Bytes” are often not needed. As the updated LAZ format compresses these different attributes into separate layers, their decompression can then be skipped. Therefore sometimes only 40% of a compressed LAZ file needs to be decompressed to access the coordinates of points with many attributes.
The percentages of a compressed LAZ file used to encode different point attributes for two example LAS 1.4 files.
The new LASzip prototype is currently being crowd-tested. Interested parties who already have holdings of LAS 1.4 files with point types 6 to 10 may send an email to ‘[email protected]’ to participate in these tests.
The release of the new LASzip compressor comes more than a year late as development had been intentionally delayed to give ESRI an opportunity to contribute their needs and ideas to create a joint open format with the community and avoid LiDAR format fragmentation. Sadly, this effort ultimately failed.
About rapidlasso GmbH:
Technology powerhouse rapidlasso GmbH specializes in efficient LiDAR processing tools that are widely known for their high productivity. They combine robust algorithms with efficient I/O and clever memory management to achieve high throughput for data sets containing billions of points. The company’s flagship product – the LAStools software suite – has deep market penetration and is heavily used in industry, government agencies, research labs, and educational institutions. Visit http://rapidlasso.com for more information.
