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ULTRAMAP: THE ALL IN ONE PHOTOGRAMMETRIC SOLUTION 
Alexander Wiechert, Michael Gruber, Konrad Karner 
Vexcel Imaging Austria / Microsoft Photogrammetry 
Anzengrubergasse 8/4, 8010 Graz / Austria 
falwieche, michgrub, kkarner] tümicrosoft.com 
III/2: 3D Point Cloud Processing 
KEY WORDS: Photogrammetry, Digital, Camera, Large Format, Mapping, Dense Matching 
ABSTRACT 
This paper describes in detail the dense matcher developed since years by Vexcel Imaging in Graz for Microsoft's Bing Maps 
project. This dense matcher was exclusively developed for and used by Microsoft for the production of the 3D city models of 
Virtual Earth. It will now be made available to the public with the UltraMap software release mid-2012. That represents a 
revolutionary step in digital photogrammetry. The dense matcher generates digital surface models (DSM) and digital terrain 
models (DTM) automatically out of a set of overlapping UltraCam images. The models have an outstanding point density of 
several hundred points per square meter and sub-pixel accuracy and are generated automatically. The dense matcher consists of 
two steps. The first step rectifies overlapping image areas to speed up the dense image matching process. This rectification step 
ensures a very efficient processing and detects occluded areas by applying a back-matching step. In this dense image matching 
process a cost function consisting of a matching score as well as a smoothness term is minimized. In the second step the resulting 
range image patches are fused into a DSM by optimizing a global cost function. The whole process is optimized for multi-core 
CPUs and optionally uses GPUs if available. UltraMap 3.0 features also an additional step which is presented in this paper, a 
complete automated true-ortho and ortho workflow. For this, the UltraCam images are combined with the DSM or DTM in an 
automated rectification step and that results in high quality true-ortho or ortho images as a result of a highly automated workflow. 
The paper presents the new workflow and first results. 
1. Introduction adjustment functionality into the existing image processing 
workflow. 
Digital aerial cameras require specific software to process 
the raw images collected by the camera. Since its 
introduction in 2003, UltraCam has been shipped with a 
software package called OPC to perform the UltraCam 
specific image processing. A revolutionary step has been 
undertaken with the announcement of UltraMap Versionl.0 
in 2010, introducing new software for the image processing 
for the UltraCam camera series. 
  
  
2003/2004 2010 2011 2012 
Figure 1. OPC/UltraMap Software Roadmap. 
UltraMap supports all UltraCam cameras and extends the 
workflow into a full photogrammetric workflow by a 
seamless integration of aero triangulation and bundle 
UltraMap is designed to handle all kind of projects ranging 
from projects with a few hundred images up to projects 
with ten thousands of images and it is optimized for 
UltraCam images. For this, it implements a new, 
revolutionary technology and concept of image handling, a 
direct spin off from the latest available Microsoft 
technology. Outstanding features such as automated 
distributed processing, automated tie point matching, 
monolithic stitching and project based color balancing have 
been implemented since its release. The figure below 
shows the basic modules and the basic workflow of the 
current UltraMap software.