Plans for Future MB-System Development
Listed below are some notions for the future development of MB-System.
We include these here not as a promise of what we will do, but rather
to
encourage discussion with MB-System users regarding what we might do.
Comments
and suggestions are welcome: email
us at the MB-System Discussion
List!
- MB-System architecture changes we would like to achieve:
- Move installation method from install_makefiles script to a configure script using autoconf or something similar. This will probably result in significant changes to the structure of the source code package.
-
Data formats we would like to support:
-
Atlas SURF format (Fansweep and Odom sonars) - Atlas released
the
source code for an API to read and write SURF data under the GNU
GPL some years ago. However, the SURF format is supported read-only, which means
that SURF format data may be plotted, gridded, and mosaiced, but not
reprocessed. We will fuly support the SURF format when we find
time. A large amount of German and Australian government mapping data
are in the SURF format.
-
Caris HDCS format (the result of processing swath bathymetry data with
the Caris HIPS software package) - this is another propritary format. A
large amount of multibeam data collected by and for NOAA's hydrographic
groups are in this format. These data will not be available to the
general
public until the format is known or the data is translated to an open
format.
-
Triton-Elics XTF format (produced by the Triton Isis datalogging
systems). This is an open, but poorly documented, widely used mapping data collection format.
Supporting XTF is unlikely to become a priority for the core MB-System team, but some MB-System users have expressed interest in developing the capability. We shall see...
- Conversion to GSF. We should enable mbcopy to translate a wide
variety of data formats into GSF. Some work on this is planned for 2009.
- Capabilities we would like to add to MB-System:
-
Improved mblevitus. We need an updated tool to deliver water sound
speed
models based on more complete and recent databases than the 1982
Levitus
database used now.
-
Graphical project management tool. With the release of version 5.0,
MB-System
now has most of the low-level elements in place to enable efficient
processing
project management. Now we need to make a tool that uses the underlying
structure provided by mbprocess and the related programs.
-
Improved sidescan processing. We currently use amplitude-vs-grazing
angle correction tables derived by averaging the raw data. We would
likely do better to model the correction functions as piecewise
analytic functions. We also need an interactive
tool for developing sidescan correction parameters.
-
Extended grid format including sums and weights so that grids can be
updated
when that is more efficient than recreating from scratch.
-
Realtime survey visualization tool. We would like a flexible tool for viewing
swath data during surveys
with interactively controlled scales and map styles.
Last Updated: $Id: mbsystem_future.html 1813 2009-12-26 23:33:19Z caress $
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