New LASliberator „frees“ LiDAR from Closed Format

PRESS RELEASE (for immediate release)
April 20, 2015
rapidlasso GmbH, Gilching, Germany

The latest product by rapidlasso GmbH – creators of LAStools and LASzip – is an open source tool aiming to liberate LiDAR points locked-up in proprietary „Optimized LAS“ – a highly controversial, closed LiDAR format. The new LASliberator can be downloaded here. It comes as both, a simple command line tool for scripting and with an easy-to-use graphical interface.

The LASliberator reads LiDAR points from closed „Optimized LAS“ files that use the „.zlas“ extension and converts them to open ASPRS LAS files that use the „.las“ extension. Alternatively, the points can be stored to compressed LAZ files – using the open source LASzip compressor – that use the „.laz“ extension. In addition, the tool creates tiny spatial indexing files that use the „.lax“ extension. These can then be exploited for accelerated area-of-interest queries via open source LASindex when using LAStools or the latest version of the LASzip DLL.

Note that the LASliberator cannot entirely be open source as it depends on a particular proprietry library. The closed nature of the „Optimized LAS“ format does not allow for a full open source implementation. It is therefore not possible to port the LASliberator to other operating systems or into other programming languages.

The new LASliberator comes on the heels of an outcry in the community over the LiDAR format fragmentation „Optimized LAS“ is creating. It provides an immediate solution to go from closed zLAS to open LAZ for people whose LiDAR got stuck in yet-another-proprietary-format.

About rapidlasso GmbH:
Technology powerhouse rapidlasso GmbH specializes in efficient LiDAR processing tools that are widely known for their high productivity. They combine robust algorithms with efficient I/O and clever memory management to achieve high throughput for data sets containing billions of points. The company’s flagship product – the LAStools software suite – has deep market penetration and is heavily used in industry, government agencies, research labs, and educational institutions. Visit http://rapidlasso.com for more information.