Old news

18 March 2005 As an intermediate release, version 0.3.3 of the DSpatial kernel was released on Sourceforge today. The kernel has seen some minor changes, but they are interesting enough to justify this release:

• Improved caching of tiled raster data. Slashing a straightforward but clumsy algorithm and replacing it with a one-liner means that access speed to tiled raster data sources has improved tremendously.
• Better distinction between types of data contained in raster bands (e.g. continuous data, surface, angular data). This makes it possible to avoid applying analytical procedures on unsuitable data.
• Pixel access provider. Comparable to the windowed kernel access, the pixel-based access is optimized for accessing a single pixel at a time.
• Driver for GeoTIFF data. View and analyze thousands of satellite images and other geospatial data from different sources. Support for saving as GeoTIFF and complete parsing of coordinate system information will be added in release 0.4.
• Driver for SRTM data. A global DEM at 90m horizontal resolution (30m for the USA), from radar observations aboard the Space Shuttle.

A new release 0.3.2 of the gridmath module is out today as well. Below are the new features. Also check out the online documentation here.

• Kernel filters. The kernel data access method that was introduced in release 0.3.2 has now been extended to support kernel filters, which means that you can define a filter and apply that filter to a kernel of 3x3 to 49x49 pixels.
• Kernel statistics. Building on the previous new feature, a bag full of statistics are being offered such as mean, standard deviation, maximum value, or variety of values, among others.

The next release will be version 0.4 with support for coordinate system transformations and resampling, probably a handful of new analysis functions in modules, write support for GeoTIFF (and possibly HDF), and a brandnew demo. Stay tuned.