June 13, 2011 -- Swiss company gs-soft AG has used the TatukGIS Developer Kernel to develop the MssStick® product for user-friendly visualization and generation of military map layers and reference grids with military symbology and unit structures. MssStick resides on an USB flash drive (pendrive) which plugs into a computer’s USB port. No installation is required. Start up requires just one click. Multi-touch screen gestures are supported on tablet computers.
MssStick® is based on another gs-soft product known as MSS (Military Symbol Service), which is implemented into a number of systems used by the Swiss Armed Forces, including systems provided by THALES, TADIRAN, ELTA, EADS, ELCA, and gs-soft. MSS reflects the following military standards: NATO - APP-6A, U.S. Armed Forces - MIL-STD-2525B, and Swiss Armed Forces - Regl. 52.2 (Symbole und taktische Zeichen).
An important feature of MssStick is the MSS Symbol Library composed of 2,000 military symbols and tactical graphics. Frequently used symbols are organized into a gallery for easy and fast access to the correct symbols for a given situation, to reduce the time required to prepare a map layer. A built-in symbol editor provides the means to add additional information to selected symbols, such as its state and fill-color. Pins can be used to present text information on the map.
Other important features are easy generation of an ORBAT (Order of Battle) with operation specific structure of units and resources and the ability to generate and share military reference grids. A search function provides a fast way to find units or points within the reference grid.
The MssStick export function enables simple and fast generation of military documents to Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, etc., or export of a map layer directly to Google Earth. Print options include printing to a PDF file.
Besides the military specific features, MssStick users appreciate the intuitive GUI, which is designed to minimize learning time and training costs, and the fast map pan and zoom response times. The TatukGIS PixelStore (SQL database) data format is used to efficiently store and display huge - 4 gigabytes - raster map and digital terrain model (DTM) grid layers.
gs-soft has been using the TatukGIS DK (VCL edition) for its GIS development requirements since 2005. Besides the affordability and royalty-free licensing, gs-soft cites a number of important benefits:
- Support for a wide variety of layer types to accommodate all military uses and situations,
- Complete Projection and Coordinate System support to accommodate all uses and situations,
- TatukGIS PixelStore format for efficient handling of huge raster map layers and DTM’s,
- Possibility to create applications that can run without installation (with just one click),
- 3-dimensional map display and relief shading based on a DTM model held as a PixelStore layer,
- Support for full integration into the new Microsoft Ribbon based GUI design,
- Significantly faster applications than possible with GIS engine alternatives,
- Solid support for the Oracle database engine,
- Support for multi-touch screen gestures on a Windows tablet computer.
- Availability with source code (Delphi, our preferred development environment)
More information about gs-soft AG is available at: www.gs-soft.com
