Managing point data sets is already a concern for clients. Now the surveying industry promotes its efficiency at the cost of best practices with a million-point-per-second milestone. Check out the article, “Optech Breaks 1m/sec Barrier,” in the Oct. 5, 2010, issue of SparView. I liken this announcement to Chuck Yeager’s aircraft, “Glamorous Glennis,” the tool that broke the sound barrier at a speed of Mach 1.015 (or about 772.63 miles per hour). The race for faster came at the expense of many pilots and aircraft just to reach that milestone. Although I don’t see faster and bigger data sets as a sonic boom, it does seem to be making a lot of noise even among users of existing 400,000 point systems. Do we really need more?

“I’m not sure that we as end-users need to be at a million points per second,” says Gordon Perry, senior project manager at Surveying and Mapping Inc. in Austin, Texas. “We’re quite happy with 400,000 points per second. And we’re producing some really great products for clients with that.”

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