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I am wondering if anyone has worked with Pictometry in GIS and their .pmi files. I recently acquired imagery from them for my area and have discovered that I cannot add the pmi files to the webmap, I presume I would have to export them. The problem is that there are literally thousands of images and the export would be unrealistic (I'm not very happy with their deliverables, wasn't involved in the acquisition process). Has anybody worked much with their imagery and have any insights in how to best use it in GIS?

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3 Answers 3

We use pictometry, and in terms of web mapping they provide no good solutions (that I have seen at least). I ended up writing a very simple tool in javascript that finds the coordinates of a clicked point on the webmap. Once you have the coordinates I pop a new browser window and go to the Bing Maps api with the coordinates in the query string. Using the birds eye view methods it is easy to get your oblique imagery.

As you have found, working with Pictometry's pmi files will not help you with webmapping. To me, by far the quickest way to a solution was using bing: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb429561.aspx

Let me know if you need some help with the actual code. Its short and both employees and citizens like the feature. The page is live, you can check out how it works if you like

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If you are just using Bing to view the data, I don't see why you would need a Pictometry license in the first place. –  jvangeld May 24 '11 at 16:17
You dont. Just a solution I used. Pictometry plugin worked well for Arcmap and some people are using their viewer I beleive called EFS. But in terms of webmapping last time I looked they only provided an IMS solution. Also, in our area Pictometry actually flew the obliques for Bing so we are essentially getting the same images that are sitting on our server we paid for... –  badkins May 24 '11 at 16:26
My imagery isn't in Bing at this time, maybe it will be in the future? I actually created a Flex webmap that uses the Streetview widget that allows viewing this but viewing the obliques isn't what I want anyways, I want to show the orthos. –  ksjosh82 May 26 '11 at 15:45

They do have a plugin for Arcmap. It is a seperate license though.
I believe they also have a method to serve the images through arcgis server or ims (for more cost).
I have heard that the folder structure is very diffficult to decipher, so trying to reverse-engineer your own solution is probably not going to happen.

Probably the biggest use in gis is with 911/ law enforcement. Application page

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I tried to deciper the folder structure too and quickly gave that up. I'm trying to figure out why they are the only imagery provider that does this that I have found, I really don't want to use them again. –  ksjosh82 May 24 '11 at 19:12
they are cause they can. They are about the only game out there. (for oblique aerial photos) And for what it is it is definitely the best. 3"pix can make an emerg/manager say wow! Some of the other posts are viable workarounds –  Brad Nesom May 24 '11 at 19:44

They have a couple of add-in tools that support viewing the images in a ActiveX container that let you use there measuring and metadata tools as well as the ability to view the other aspect of the location. There IMS/AGS addin was very thin and in the end didn't offer much functionality and in some places was more a problem then when we just hooked into Bing; which we found was the exact same imagery.

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Tell me more about the addins and what platform you used. Even thin abilities would help me. –  ksjosh82 May 24 '11 at 19:10
They have/had a Active-X addin that was part of there ArcIMS integration kit. We took that; then using Fiddler and Firebug were able to disassemble what the calls and functions looked like; then wrote our own logic. There code took your screen click; converted it to a Lat/Lon and then grabbed from there index the right image. Very kludgy –  D.E.Wright May 24 '11 at 19:16
They also told me that they have a ImageNavigator API that is used to publish obliques –  ksjosh82 May 26 '11 at 21:42

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