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A DIRSIG Blog

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I'm one of the three core developers on the DIRSIG project. This blog is simply an experiment in information dissemination. It's intended for both power users and developers. Hopefully, it will make our development process a bit more transparent.

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Using MODTRAN6 with DIRSIG

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It has been a pretty exciting year for the team at Spectral Sciences, Inc.  with the release of MODTRAN6 . This latest version marks a major milestone in the continued development of one of the most popular and trusted codes for simulating radiative transfer in the atmosphere. In addition to important science related advancements, this latest code also includes significant improvements to the general usability of the software. This includes a new graphical user interface (GUI) and the introduction of a formal application programmer interface (API), which let's codes like DIRSIG interact with MODTRAN in a far more robust way than previous versions allowed. New MODTRAN, new interfaces The major development in the interface area is a shift from the old "tape5" style inputs to a new JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) style input. In addition to improving the general readability of the input, the JSON document format is much easier to read in, modify and write back out. The...
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Viewing and Importing DIRSIG Output Images

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We are often asked what programs can view DIRSIG's image outputs and how to import the raw DIRSIG image data files into other tools for further processing. For basic image viewing, DIRSIG-4.4.0 now includes a very simple viewing tool. Launch it from the main simulation editor window by selecting the "Start image viewer" option from the "Tools" menu. If you run your simulation from the GUI simulation editor, new image files are automatically added to the list in the image viewer as they are generated. If you want to manually add files to the list, simply select the "Open" item from the "File" menu or the toolbar. Here is a screenshot of the main image viewer window. The top part contains the list of currently opened files and the bands within those image files. To view a single band as a gray-scale image, choose "Single Band Display" from the combo box and then click on the image band that you want. Finally, click "Load Band...
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LIDAR Point Cloud Visualization

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A common question we get asked is how to visualize the point cloud data produced by either the Linear-mode or Geiger-mode LIDAR simulations. First, you should remember that the point cloud files produced by the "APD Processor" are simple ASCII/text files. Each line is the entry for a single return or "point" in the point cloud, including the point location and some attributes that vary depending on whether you modeled a Linear-mode or Geiger-mode system. For a Linear-mode system, a point cloud file will generally look like the example below: 12.7388 -45.3612 -0.0256 5.0290 0 0 0 0 12.8169 -45.3612 -0.0264 4.8362 0 1 0 0 12.8950 -45.3612 -0.0271 4.8362 0 2 0 0 ... 32.4008 -25.5446 10.5945 4.6783 0 65533 0 0 32.4781 -25.5446 10.5953 5.8959 0 65534 0 0 32.5360 -25.5640 12.5408 5.9185 0 65535 0 0 The first three columns are the X/Y/Z location of the point return. The 4th column is the intensity (in photons). Since Linear mode can support multiple returns per pulse, t...
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