Global Mapper and GM LiDAR SDKs v16.2 Released with Significant Export Processing Speed Gains

Hallowell, Maine - June 10, 2015 - Blue Marble Geographics (bluemarblegeo.com) is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 16.2 of the Global Mapper Base Software Development Kit (SDK) along with the Global Mapper LiDAR Module SDK. This update, released in conjunction with version 16.2 of the standard version of Global Mapper, includes numerous performance improvements, support for several new and updated file formats, expanded online data availability, and much more. Blue Marble's geospatial data manipulation, visualization 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 governmental and university organizations.

Global Mapper is an affordable and easy-to-use GIS application capable of displaying, converting, and analyzing virtually any type of geospatial data. The Global Mapper SDK provides software developers with a toolkit for accessing much of this functionality from within an existing or custom-built application. Recent SDK releases have also enabled the creation of custom toolbars and extensions to enhance the data processing and analysis functionality of the standard version of Global Mapper. This capability allows in-house developers to create a refined version of the software to meet the unique needs of their company without having to reinvent the wheel.

The 16.2 version of the SDK augments improvements made in preceding releases with the addition of several newly supported formats include GGM Gravity Grids, and Sketchup SKP files. Version 16.2 offers improved support for NetCDF scientific data sets, in particular 4D and higher grid data with time/depth-based data. Developers and designers working with 3D models can now export Collada DAE, OBJ, STL, and PLY files.

The extensive list of available streaming online datasets now includes the Atlas of the Cryosphere, which provides temporal polar data, such as snow and ice cover, for specific years using WMS and WFS protocols. Version 16.2 provides dramatically faster export speeds when working with high bit-depth/multi-band files, especially those contained in Global Mapper Map Catalogs.

"The worldwide reputation for Global Mapper's powerful data processing capability is growing exponentially and more and more software developers are finding ways to integrate these processing tools into a wide variety of applications," stated Patrick Cunningham, Blue Marble President. "The Global Mapper SDK is unrivaled in its ease of deployment, data format support, affordability, and in its adaptability, allowing it to meet the ever-changing needs of today's geospatial software development environment. There is no comparable product available today."

The version 16.2 release adds a new projection selection function to automatically choose the most appropriate zone. After providing the zoned projection setup (i.e. projection system, datum, and units) and the latitude and longitude bounds, the GM_SetProjectionEx function will automatically determine the optimal zone to use.

For developers using the Global Mapper LiDAR Module SDK, version 16.2 now offers access to LiDAR data that includes Near Infrared (NIR) values. Using this embedded information, NDVI or NDWI values can be automatically calculated for vegetation or wetland analysis and the display of the point cloud will represent these values using the preconfigured NDVI or NDWI shader colors.

For a complete list of new features and enhancements or to download the Global Mapper SDK today, visit www.bluemarblegeo.com.

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About Blue Marble Geographics: Blue Marble Geographics of Hallowell, Maine is a leading developer and provider of software products and services for highly accurate geospatial data conversion solutions. Blue Marble is known for their coordinate conversion and file format expertise and is the developer of the Geographic Calculator, GeoCalc SDK, Global Mapper, LiDAR Module for Global Mapper and Global Mapper SDK. The company has been writing GIS software tools and solutions for over twenty years and currently serves hundreds of thousands of users worldwide.

Contact Information:
Heather Poirier
Marketing Manager
Blue Marble Geographics
Hallowell, ME, USA
marketing@bluemarblegeo.com
800-616-2725
+1(207) 622-4622