IMPROVEMENT OF DIGITAL MAPPING WITH GRAPHICS IMAGE SUPERIMPOSITION 
Volker Uffenkamp 
Carl Zeiss 
Oberkochen, West Germany 
ABSTRACT 
The Zeiss VIDEOMAP system superimposes digital data onto the photo of 
a stereo model. The VIDEOMAP hardware and software are described. Three 
major tasks can be named in which optical superimposition plays an 
important role: Data acquisition, data revision and project planning. 
0f particular importance for digital mapping is the combination of 
PLANIMAP (Zeiss Digital Mapping System) and VIDEOMAP as an integration 
of photogrammetry and interactive graphics. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
In the last three years, considerable efforts have been made to put 
graphical plotting on a digital basis. As digital mapping with 
photogrammetric stereoplotters was quite new for mostly all 
photogrammetrists, Zeiss step by step developped a system which 
has been tailored specifically to the requirements of everyday 
photogrammetric work with the aim of continuously improving 
practice-oriented features. 
In 1983 PLANIMAP was introduced, a system for geometrical graphical 
data acquisition. Then VIDEOMAP was presented at the Río convention 
in June 1984 and superimposition has established itself fast as the 
ideal solution to real-time logging. In 1985 major improvements were 
made to simplify the command entry and to support 2-dimensional 
(plane) digitization: Voice input and a panel were introduced as well 
as DIGI-AS, a digital mapping system for existing analog maps. This 
year, at the ACSM-ASPRS annual meeting, Zeiss presented novel editing 
functions, based on a high-resolution, large format graphical screen, 
for editing photogrammetric data during or after the data collection 
with the PLANICOMP stereoplotter. 
This paper presents the advantages and possibilities of graphical 
superimposition as an universal tool to integrate photogrammetry 
and interactive graphics. 
2. VIDEOMAP DESCRIPTION 
The method of digital mapping gives the possibility to put out the 
graphical data either simultaneously (in real-time) or at a random 
later time (playback) on any graphical output device supported by 
the workstation computer. Within a digital mapping system super- 
imposition acts like a graphical output system with special features. 
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