34 
  
  
  
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2.3 Software 
The Planicomp software, which has been very comprehensive, powerful and 
reliabTe from the outset, has been improved and expanded continuously in 
cooperation with the users. The modular design, documented program and 
data interfaces and comprehensive personal consulting by Zeiss personnel 
have enabled many users to create their own special-purpose application 
programs and to modify existing programs, i. e. to tailor the Planicomp 
to their specific requirements. 
This application programming work, which is presented mainly at regional 
meetings, covers such topics as 
- implementation of existing background programs, 
- management and manipulation of individual files, 
- formatted data I/0, 
- inter-computer communication, 
- automatic prepositioning and checking of specified series of points, 
- following and checking given lines or areas e. g. for power line plan- 
ning, airport obstacle checking, or "photogrammetric" setting-out for 
lot consolidation. j 
Zeiss will also in the future devote much energy to program care and main- 
tenance in general fields such as calibration and orientation, data collec- 
tion for aerotriangulation, digital elevation models, planimetric mapping, 
further processing and data management. The major software innovations for 
the Planicomp are described in the following. 
2.3.1 Calibration 
  
Under the name B198 EXTENDED CALIBRATION, a new program package developed 
for Zeiss by the Institut fiir Photogrammetrie (Prof. Kupfer) of the Uni- 
versity of Bonn is presented here for the first time. It enables real-time 
planar correction of systematic errors after the measurement of a grid com- 
prising up to 625 points. This optional program package not only allows 
increasing the "normal" real-time precision of the Planicomp from about 2 
micron to 1.5 micron or less but also enables reseau photography (taken 
with the part-metric Rolleiflex SLX-Reseau camera, for example) to be 
corrected for planar film distortion. The stored correction parameters 
derived from grid measurement afford mesh-type correction with finite 
elements with a bilinear algorithm /5/. This expanded real-time correction 
function can be activated and deactivated at option and can also be per- 
formed during coordinates storage by the corresponding transformation 
routines, if desired. 
2.3.2 Orientation 
  
The C007 BUNDLE ORIENTATION program, which was presented in the fall of 
1983 already, provides a versatile single-step orientation option. Even 
though it was developed (also at the University of Bonn) especially for 
orienting close-range photo pairs, it can also be very useful in special 
cases of orienting aerial photo pairs. This program package offers the 
following special performance features: