Stereoscopic observation is not a bygone gimmick from the 50's! It has been around for five hundred million years for good reasons! Today's lightning-fast computers are bringing amazing new capabilities to this old technique.

If you are familiar with aerial photos, you are probably aware of the advantages of stereoscopic vision. If you are not sure, close one eye and observe the objects in front of you. Everything flattens and it becomes difficult to appreciate the position of objects. Try also to play billiard with one eye or think of the two rovers on Mars and their stereoscopic equipment.
Even if you do not have good stereoscopic vision, you still may use TopoMorpher with the stereoscopic rendering turned off and still benefit from using incredibly, innovative tools.

Like HawkEye, TopoMorpher uses Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) to produce simulated, stereoscopic three-dimensional (S3D) renderings. TopoMorpher and HawkEye can also display conventional stereoscopic pairs of pictures and offer S3D tools to navigate or perform measurements, such as distances and dimensions, inside these pictures.They can create multimedia shows with images, sound, and animations too! TopoMorpher and HawkEye both come with very large databases of the Earth and Mars.

However, TopoMorpher offers many more capabilities than HawkEye for civil engineers, professional geologists, or researchers. Although the HawkEye mode is still available for teaching or learning purposes, with TopoMorpher, the emphasis has been placed on engineering geology, geomorphology, and hydrogeology.
Professionals who are accustomed to working with ordinary 3D images of DEMs are quite surprised when they discover the power of stereoscopic 3D images. Here, the real shape of the ground pops up, and many new features that an experienced eye can interpret are revealed immediately. The stereoscopic cursor moves on the ground and offers a continuous display of elevations or slopes, depending on preferences. You may zoom in, zoom out, tilt, and rotate. You can add contours with adjustable intervals (meters or feet). You can add a grid of coordinates (metric or geographic). All computations and renderings are extremely fast and even data interpolation is handled smoothly and swiftly.

One of the main strengths of TopoMorpher is its power to specifically highlight and emphasize geomorphic irregularities. These features are often not visible from aerial photographs or from ground searches. The ability to enhance at will the stereoscopic 3D rendering (relief exaggeration, shading, orientation, scale) is unmatched.

Types of watershed analysis can be performed thanks to unique tools. For example, it is possible to select several channels on the ground to highlight their paths and plot their longitudinal profiles side by side. This plot displays the junction angle between tributaries and the trunk stream. S3D mapping of channel convexity with adjustable thresholds is quick to carry out, and an easy way to spot irregularities. The delineation of watersheds is done with a few clicks of the mouse.
A powerful command delimits the watershed, or more generally all up-slope points, corresponding to any location indicated by a click of the mouse. This preliminary watershed can be expanded progressively with new clicks. At each step, the area of the current catchment is measured. The same analysis can be conducted automatically at hundreds of location along a stream. Statistical measurements, including the plot of hypsographs, can be performed instantaneously. All these tools can be applied to delineated areas (Domains) that can be restricted at will to an entire watershed or to a simple creek.
All results are easily exported to any spreadsheet program. These are invaluable tools for the hydrologist.
Click here to see an example.

Ground stability may be assessed through the help of innovative means. Several modes of shading are available: simulated sun shading (with adjustable inclination and azimuth), slope shading (with adjustable threshold), or Laplacian shading. Each of these shading modes has a specific, interpretative advantage. One powerful capability is the display of adjustable classes of slope, that can be defined by the user in degrees or percent, directly on the S3D images. Fourier analysis is used to visualize in S3D the potential runoff (zones of convergence) or to implement low and high pass filters to enhance topographic details.
The use of TopoMorpher for stability assessments of terrain hazard rating, including debris landslides or debris flows, allows a very unique and powerful analysis to be performed. No commonly available digital technique other than TopoMorpher's capabilities has the flexibility and ease for accomplishing these tasks. When combined with LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data, it is believed to surpass any of the present techniques for identifying sites of potential debris landslides an flows. In addition, this same combination (TopoMorpher plus LIDAR) can be uniquely utilized to define and map 'impact zones' of all forms of channel confined events: slides, flows, and avalanches.

It is possible to define and display, in S3D, the intersection of planes (faults, fractures, old structural surfaces) with the ground, using different modes. In one mode, two points (indicated with two mouse clicks) and the dip of the plane are used. Another mode uses three points (three mouse clicks) to define the plane. These tools are useful when a fault trace must be interpolated or extrapolated from known or interpreted locations. One key application of the extrapolation of faults is for determining the location of drilling sites targeted on fractured zones needed for good production of water wells.

It is possible to exchange "shapefiles" with other GIS applications. TopoMorpher is able to convert data between many different types of projections and to use different Datum references. It is easy to overlay bitmaps, such as satellite images, topographic maps, aerial orthophotos, etc... onto the DEMs. The overlay of topographic maps can be performed in various ways: total overlay, but also selective overlay limited to a few basic markers such as roads and trails. Commands to print in high resolution or to produce high resolution S3D bitmaps are available, allowing the creation of remarkable documents and images.

TopoMorpher can deal not only with DEMs but with stereoscopic pairs of photos. Take two pictures of your project from two slightly different positions and enter a few parameters into TopoMorpher: you are now able to display it in S3D and measure distances or relative elevations!

Many more capabilities come with TopoMorpher, like the editing in S3D of banners, polygons, dots, or arrows, the placement of different types of coordinate grids or the ability to compare areas with "snapshots". It is possible to select a range of elevations or to simulate the filling of a basin.
One of the most powerful tools is the possibility to create "Scenes" that contain all the parameters needed to recreate a working environment, for yourself but also for anyone with whom you want to exchange observations. You may create a Scene specifying a certain area, its orientation and shading, the vertical exaggeration, banners, polygons, dots, coordinates, a selection of highlighted streams with profiles, a Domain, etc... This is the best way to save archives so that you can quickly restore an entire environment, for the next day, but also for years to come. You may even add an audio to your Scene.

TopoMorpher comes with a huge database and it is simple to import new data from many different formats and sources (USGS, SDTS, Arcinfo Grid Format, binary files, etc...). Many tools are provided to allow the stitching of DEMs together, to correct data, to change the system of projection, to change the horizontal resolution, etc... Topomorpher is able to quickly handle huge gigabyte files.

So make your work easier, more productive and effective. Order now and get started!

Prices

For one computer $ 2999.

For five computers ¹ $ 9999.

¹ Please consult us for different packages.

These prices do not include shipping and handling.

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