This is a free web-based data searching service for sources of downloadable GIS data as opposed to map images. Sites with qualified data can register their web location with the service so GIS users can find data products. This will be a very powerful search engine to cut through the web to find preprocessed data if the GIS community participates. I would recommend registering our site once ArcView IMS is up and running. The key functions will be data access, rapid display, enhancement tools, geoferencing, spectral classification and automated analysis.
Data access is by a direct read of the native format, no conversion is performed.
Some of the supported formats include Imagine, ArcGRID and Geotiff. Automated feature mapping can be done from like-feature groupings and saves to ArcView shapefiles using parallelpiped or unsupervised categorization techniques. He programmed a DLL to connect navigation output from a navigation desktop PC to a laptop running ArcView. Vehicles were scaled to a percentage of the screen display until zoomed into a meaningful scale where vehicles could be represented at their true size. After his talk, Gerry gave me a demo of his system using a hand-held GPS receiver input into the laptop.