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ULTRAMAP V3 — A REVOLUTION IN AERIAL PHOTOGRAMMETRY 
B. Reitinger, M. Sormann, L. Zebedin, B. Schachinger, M. Hoefler, R. Tomasi, M. Lamperter, B. Gruber, 
G. Schiester, M. Kobald, M. Unger, A. Klaus, S. Bernoegger, K. Karner, A. Wiechert, M. Ponticelli, M. Gruber 
Microsoft Photogrammetry, Graz, Austria 
bernhard.reitinger@microsoft.com 
Commission IV, WG IV/3 
KEY WORDS: UltraMap, dense matching, semi-global matching, ortho mosaicking, ortho processing. 
ABSTRACT: 
In the last years, Microsoft has driven innovation in the acrial photogrammetry community. Besides the market leading camera 
technology, UltraMap has grown to an outstanding photogrammetric workflow system which enables users to effectively work with 
large digital aerial image blocks in a highly automated way. Best example is the project-based color balancing approach which 
automatically balances images to a homogeneous block. UltraMap V3 continues innovation, and offers a revolution in terms of ortho 
processing. A fully automated dense matching module strives for high precision digital surface models (DSMs) which are calculated 
either on CPUs or on GPUs using a distributed processing framework. By applying constrained filtering algorithms, a digital terrain 
model can be derived which in turn can be used for fully automated traditional ortho texturing. By having the knowledge about the 
underlying geometry, seamlines can be generated automatically by applying cost functions in order to minimize visual disturbing 
artifacts. By exploiting the generated DSM information, a DSMOrtho is created using the balanced input images. Again, seamlines 
are detected automatically resulting in an automatically balanced ortho mosaic. Interactive block-based radiometric adjustments lead 
to a high quality ortho product based on UltraCam imagery. UltraMap v3 is the first fully integrated and interactive solution for 
supporting UltraCam images at best in order to deliver DSM and ortho imagery. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
  
In the last years, Microsoft has often demonstrated innovation in 
the photogrammetry community. The latest innovation was the 
launch of the new flagship the “UltraCam Eagle” (Wiechert, TI NE 
Gruber, & Ponticelli, 2011). UltraMap, which is the software $4 
workflow system for the UltraCam, has also shown cutting edge 
technology in the past. One example is the project-based colour 
balancing, which is able to automatically remove physically 
based colour artefacts taking a block's geometry into account. 
RawDataCenter 
Aerial 
Triangulation 
= 
With the new UltraMap v3, we introduce a fully automated 
processing pipeline which allows processing UltraCam imagery 
to a digital surface model (DSM) including a DSMOrtho (ortho 
mosaic based on an automatically generated DSM). In addition, 
we offer a traditional ortho mosaic, which we call a DTMOrtho. 
A further output of our pipeline is a 3D point cloud, which is DSM Generation m 
able to deliver a very high point density per square meter. 
Radiometry 
e 
+ 
  
By exploiting the latest Microsoft’s developments, we are able 
to deliver a very high quality DSM which strives for high 
accuracy without any manual interaction. Since our ortho 
mosaicking approach takes into account all available inputs (i.c. 
a DSM and also an automatically generated DTM), UltraMap 
v3 is able to generate seamlines at desired paths (i.c. avoid 
passing through houses); remaining seamline editing for 
challenging regions are fixed by exploiting our DragonFly 
technology (Reitinger, Hoefler, Lengauer, Tomasi, Lamperter, 
& Gruber, 2008). DragonFly is a responsive visualization 
engine for quality control and interaction with user experience 
for working with large image blocks. Figure 1 UltraMap v3 processing pipeline. 
Ortho Generation 
  
  
  
  
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