A one-meter resolution image covering 40,000 square miles of Southern California is now viewable at www.earthtec.com. Believed to be the largest image on the net, the image was created with ER Mapper 6.0 from a mosaic of 2,980 USGS Digital Ortho Quarter Quads. Enhanced Compressed Wavelet (ECW) image compression technology compressed these from 150 down to 5 GB.
free download
ECW compression is included in ER Mapper 6.0 and available as a free download. Serving such large image mosaics over the Internet is possible with ER Mapper’s Image Web Server (IWS). IWS allows multiple, simultaneous users to view images from an intranet or Internet - eliminating storage, network traffic and data distribution problems. Stuart Nixon, President of Earth Resource Mapping, noted "The free ECW plug-ins for GIS, CAD, Office etc. mean you can use this imagery from within your application via the Internet".
infringement?
A fly in the ointment however is a complaint for patent infringement filed by LizardTech over the ECW process. ERMapper denies such infringement and is defending its use of the technology. More from www.ermapper.com.
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