Floating Point Systems Ltd, Wokingham, Berkshire has launched an Environment for Visualising Images, or Envi, the first turnkey multi-spectral and hyper-spectral analysis package for satellite and aircraft remote sensed data. It enables the user to display, analyse, layer and manipulate multi-band data sets of any size, data type and spectral depth. It will compete with Erdas Inc’s eponymous product and PCI Inc’s ESI-Pace, both born out of the local network satellite technology of the 1970s and limited to seven-band data. Envi gives multiple image displays, in either eight or 24-bit, at full resolution, with zoom functions and full-colour capability. It is written in IDL 4GL, a scientific computing language from Reseach Systems Inc, Boulder Colorado. IDL is an array-based, structured programming language, with image processing and display capabilities and a graphical user interface toolkit. This enables users to add applications and customise their Envi package. Operating on Unix workstations, personal computers running Windows, and Macintosh systems, Envi requires a minimum of 16Mb and a 80486 processor. Floating Point, the sole UK distributor for Envi and IDL, is aiming the product at the mining and environmental industries and agriculture and has had an evaluation copy of Envi with Rio Tinto Zinc Plc, the mining company, for the last three months. It is immediately available in both development and run-time packages. Pricing for development systems starts at ?8,750 for the Unix version, and ?4,775 for the Windows version. The run-time versions, which lack program customisation capabilities, are priced ?5,750 for the Unix, and ?3,350 for the Windows and Macintosh versions.
