Frequently Asked Questions about
the OpenDragon Software
How does OpenDragon differ from the commercial
Dragon/ips® software?
OpenDragon has the same functional capabilities as
Dragon/ips Academic Edition. However, Dragon/ips has
stricter mechanisms to enforce licensing and
copy-protection. (Note that Dragon/ips Professional,
currently at version 6.2, has significantly greater
capabilities that OpenDragon at present.)
What classification capabilities does OpenDragon provide?
OpenDragon includes three supervised classification
algorithms: boxcar (parallelepiped), minimum distance
to mean, and maximum likelihood. It also includes an
iterative clustering option based on a minimum
distance to mean similarity metric, as well as simple
one-band slicing, and an implementation of the NOAA
Agroclimatic Assessment algorithm, used with AVHRR
images to quickly identify vegetation health.
What image formats can OpenDragon read?
OpenDragon can read images produced by earlier
versions of Dragon/ips as well as by OpenDragon. The
software can directly import TIFF and GeoTIFF, USGS
7.5 minute DEM, and ESRI BIL, as well as most other
binary data formats in either band sequential or band
interleaved format. Starting with Release 5.10, the
software also includes utilities to transform
OpenDragon vector files to and from ESRI Shapefile
format.
How can I extend OpenDragon?
OpenDragon includes object code libraries and
documentation that you can use to write your own image
processing and GIS analysis routines. These routines
can read and write OpenDragon-format files. In the
near future, OpenDragon will include mechanisms for
integrating your routines into the OpenDragon user
interface.
Is the OpenDragon source code available? How can I
get it?
In the past, OpenDragon was not open source. Currently
we plan to make all Dragon source code available as
open source. However, it will take significant time
and work to prepare it for public use. This will
require that we can get some funding.
What programming language was used to implement
OpenDragon?
The analysis, control and display components of
OpenDragon are written in ANSI C/C++. The user
interface is written in Java.
What platforms does OpenDragon support?
OpenDragon currently runs on Windows NT, XP, Windows 7
and all later versions that we have tested.
It does not run on Windows 95,
Windows 98 or Windows ME.
What are the minimum hardware requirements for OpenDragon?
OpenDragon requires a personal computer with a
Pentium- or Athlon-class processor and at least 256
MBytes of memory, a graphics board capable of
sixteen-bit color at 1024 x 700 resolution, a pointing
device, and approximately 200 MBytes of free hard disk
space.
What is the biggest image that OpenDragon can handle?
Unlike Dragon Professional, OpenDragon only processes
images up to 1024 lines x 1024 pixels.
Larger images can be processed as subsets.
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