On Apr 7, 2011, at 10:24 AM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote: > Do you use libLAS in your products, or would you if it had some additional > features you need? If so, please read on. > > > libLAS has been a success, but the world of point cloud support for > geospatial applications goes well beyond just reading and writing the LAS > format -- we want support for other formats, spatial index integration, a > suite of core command line tools, database integration, and so on. To that > end, as some of you may have already heard, the lasLAS team has begun work > on "version 2" of libLAS, known as libPC. The project goals are: > > 1. libPC is a library which provides APIs for reading, writing, and > processing point cloud data of various formats. Additionally, some > command line tools are provided. As GDAL is to 2D pixels, libPC is to > multidimensional points.
I would add that I expect the scope of libPC is to focus almost *exclusively* on being a "GDAL for Point Cloud data" too. It is going to try to hand off where appropriate to PCL <http://www.pointclouds.org>, GRASS/Fusion, and LAStools where appropriate. libPC is going to start out focussing on format conversion and processing pipelines. The immediate format support will include Oracle, MG4, LAS/LAZ, BAG, and XYZ. > > 2. From a market perspective, libPC is "version 2" of libLAS. The actual > code base will be different, however, and the APIs will not be > compatible. I would say that libLAS : Shapelib :: libPC : GDAL. It didn't make sense to keep gunking up libLAS with things like Oracle drivers and such, which may or may not have applicability for people doing LAS. libLAS is also a point-at-a-time affair, and libPC works chunk-at-a-time (with variably-defined schemas). This has some performance benefits but adds a little bit of complexity. Source code is at http://hg.libpc.org/main if you're interested in a look :) Howard_______________________________________________ Liblas-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/liblas-devel
