LIDAR processing in Linux

The main LIDAR processing software is all Windows based, but parts can be run under ​the WINE windows emulator in Linux. The parts that work are:

• ALS Post Processor
• FugroViewer (LAS file viewer)

Bentley Microstation (and thus TerraScan) currently do not work under WINE. This functionality can be partially replaced - see the notes below.

Set up

To set this up, do the following under your own userid: arsf_winesetup.sh

You can now run the ALS PP with alspp.exe and the FugroViewer with fugroviewer.exe

General operation

This is the same as the normal processing procedure.

CAUTION: The C: drive you'll see in wine will be stored in your homespace on the RSG disk - if this fills up, everything breaks and you buy beer for the whole group! Please save files to your normal scratch space.

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Workarounds for Bentley functionality

Differentiating flightlines by color

• Add a different classification number to each LAS file, using knpa's classification utility:
  • run las_single_class.py -i INPUTNAME -o OUTPUTNAME -c CLASSIFICATION_NUMBER (classifications can be 0-255)
  • if you have a directory full of las files to classify, cd into it and paste the following:

    mkdir classified_las
    counter=1
    for lasfile in *LAS ; do
       echo $counter $lasfile
       las_single_class.py -i $lasfile -o classified_las/$lasfile -c $counter
       counter=$(( $counter + 1))
    done
    

  • if you have more than 3 flightlines it is helpful to start with counter=5. Class 3,4,and 5 are vegetation and default to varying shades of green - this makes it difficult to differentiate between flightlines.

• Load the classified files into FugroViewer
• Colour points by classification (settings menu -> point color -> classification)

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Troubleshooting

FugroViewer 3D doesn't work

If you're on a 64 bit machine (type arch and see if it says "x86_64") and you get the message below, you're missing the 32 bit OpenGL libraries.

err:rebar:REBAR_MaximizeBand Illegal MaximizeBand, requested=1, current band count=1
fixme:msg:pack_message msg 14 (WM_ERASEBKGND) not supported yet
fixme:heap:RtlCompactHeap (0x110000, 0x0) stub
fixme:msg:pack_message msg 14 (WM_ERASEBKGND) not supported yet
err:wgl:internal_SetPixelFormat Invalid iPixelFormat: 0
err:wgl:X11DRV_wglCreateContext Cannot get FB Config for iPixelFormat 0, expect problems!

To fix it, get someone with root to run yum install -y xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i386