Future Platform Support

According to the webpage, DIRSIG4 is currently only supporting Solaris/SPARC 2.9+ and Linux/x86 2.4 kernels.

The next set of releases (dirsig-3.6.5 and dirsig-4.0.7) will come with experimental support for the x86-64 platform. Internally, we have a cluster of Athlon64 machines running Fedora Core 5. The added registers on the 64-bit x86 architecture give a significant speed boost over the 32-bit counterpart.

The biggest issue with supporting new platforms is packaging the end product. Solaris is a particular pain because users are poor at keeping their installations up to date. There are still people out there using Solaris 8 when the current OS version is Solaris 10.

Another issue is which version of LAM MPI to use for the Linux builds. The key contenders are 7.0.6 and 7.1.2. Most of our userbase tend to have older OS setups, so we will probably use the former.

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LIDAR Point Cloud Visualization

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

Viewing and Importing DIRSIG Output Images

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Using MODTRAN6 with DIRSIG

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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