OSSIM Report 2008

OSSIM

 * Contact name: Mark Lucas

ossim core libraries
The OSSIM core library system is fairly mature and has only scene some minor internal refactoring and bug fixes over the last year. Initial discussions have begun on what is desired for the OSSIM 2.0 library

ossimPlanet
The ossimPlanet application was the focus of most of the development for 2008. A few of the functionality improvements for ossimPlanet:

UAV video geocoding and processing
Support for the MISB standards, the video stream is processed for the internal metadata embedded in the KLV stream. The positioning information is used to place the video geographically. ffmpeg is used for video playback in the 3d environment

Synchronization Support
Communications channels and protocols were integrated to allow multiple instances of ossimplanet to synchronize on data and navigation. External applications can now drive the planet

GUI enhancement
Ability to enable and disable layers, move them around and general GUI improvements

OpenGL Shader support
OpenGL shaders can compare and fuse multiple texture layers in the 3D environment. This includes swiping, masks, blending and arithmetic operations

imagelinker
Minor maintenance on the imagelinker application. Much discussion on the list about major improvements and possibly integrating in with ossimPlanet. Activity has not commenced in that area.

omar
OMAR is an online provisioning and processing system for geospatial assets. It integrates and OSSIM processing engine with relational databases, OpenLayers, and other related web technologies. It is in very active development and is currently staging, indexing and processing large stores of data in prototype evaluations. This will be one of the main areas of focus in the upcoming year.

Areas for Improvement
We are still struggling with the incubation process and will make continual improvements until we get there. Improving communications, quality assurance, testing and build processes is a never ending challenge. We are always looking for ways to expand our community of interest and link up with other projects.

Opportunities to Help
The project is always looking for users, contributors, and testers. We are especially interested in working towards integration with other OSGeo projects. Over the last year we have refined APIs and interfaces to Java to help enable this.

Outlook for 2009
We have been working towards OSGeo incubation graduation for the last couple of years - brief flurries of activity followed by long periods of inactivity because everyone concerned is occupied with other things. I've recently picked up the task and am trying to address the final comments and reviews so we can get it before the OSGeo Incubator committee. Richard Gould has been our OSGeo mentor and we have been recommended for graduation. We are still trying to track down the status of some minor details and I've moved it up close to the top of my list so we can get everything accomplished.
 * this is the motivational part that is meant to inspire readers to keep their eyes open for great stuff in 2008 :)

OSSIM Incubation status: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSSIM_incubation_status

OSSIM Provenance reveiw: http://trac.osgeo.org/ossim/wiki/ossimprovenance

are places to look if you want to find out more.

The PSC tries to meet every one or two months and discuss the overall direction of the program. We are in initial discussions of pulling together ideas for refactoring towards an OSSIM 2.0 baseline.

Garrett Potts (RadiantBlue) and Norman Vine (RadiantBlue) are going to be focused on API and improvements to ossimPlanet for the next couple of months. Some of the improvements they are working on are a new dual queue elevation management system, an improved ossimPlanet API, new manipulators, and better support for overall annotation.

Dave Burken (SPADAC) has been the primary maintainer of the classified plugin for OSSIM. This plugin handles classified data sets and formats and is maintained at the SECRET level. It is used mostly within the US Defense community and a few coalition partners. This plugin has recently been upgraded and a new version was released for those that have access to it. It is open source within the appropriate security communities.

Bill Watkins (RadiantBlue) will be adding Community Sensor Model (CSM) support to the OSSIM baseline, this effort will also refactor some of the code within OSSIM to provide enhanced support for 3D models, LIDAR, and cleaner image to ground and ground to image transformations.

Scott Bortman (RadiantBlue) is focused on OMAR which is getting a lot of attention on several government projects. Omar integrates several open source technologies with an OSSIM processing engine to enable dynamic geospatial processing and viewing on the web. The system is currently indexing very large numbers of (10s of thousands) of  geospatial data sets and UAV videos for searches, queries, playback and processing. Rodger Palko and Jeremy Filizetti from SMS Fed are actively supporting development and integration of the OMAR system.

We continue to get long term feedback and support from James Hopper at SAIC, the Optics team at Ball Aerospace (Vance Saunders and co), and the ORfeo toolbox (Jordi Inglada) - all users of OSSIM in their solutions. Also, would like to recognize Massimo Di Stefano from Italy, Bill Clark (Boeing), Phil Lipscomb (SAIC), and Adam Gurson and his crew from IAI for their support.

OSSIM is now being supported by a number of government agencies and international corporations. Many of these projects and customers prefer to remain anonymous, but they all are enthusiastically supporting the open source model and the project by funding key contributors and development efforts. Part of the mission of the OSSIM team is to prove that you can make a living working on open source projects and doing what you love.

As to those anonymous agencies and companies, Al, Willie, Vic, Tom, Martin, George, Jim, Glenn, Fritz, Terry and Sue - thanks for your continued support.