Global Mapper v25.0

What is the best way to assist rendering speed?

Good afternoon, sorry if this has been asked before, the responses I see seem to pertain to older versions.

My new machine has 64GB of ram.  I know the RAM is excessive for this application, but am wondering if there is any advantage to using RAMdisk here, or if normal system caching is going to be enough?

GPU has been upgraded, but from what I understand that's not really a main player in optimization.  The new CPU has 12 virtual cores,  I know certain functions will multi-core all on their own, but would welcome thoughts on how best to make that aspect work for me.

Thanks in advance!
John

Answers

  • JeffH@BMG
    JeffH@BMG Global Mapper Developer Trusted User
    Answer ✓
    Hi John,

    A number of Global Mapper's operations are multi-threaded, and so can take advantage of multiple cores. You are correct in assuming that we generally don't use the GPU for core functions (so no CUDA/OpenCL usage), though obviously the GPU comes into play with the 3D viewer.

    With respect to multi-threading, we don't typically get it for free, so specific operations need to be converted to take advantage of multiple cores. We've tried to hit the pain points as much as possible, but more cases exist where that would be helpful. Probably the best thing that you can do is to identify the functions you think would benefit, and let us know. I take by your post title that "rendering speed" is one, but specifics (like type of data you are dealing with, etc.) can help us focus in.

    Thanks,

    ~Jeff
  • John Horrigan
    John Horrigan Global Mapper User
    Jeff, thanks for your response!

    My work is almost entirely flight path creation from calculated data, or reconstruction from telemetry.  That means a lot of attention gets paid to absolute altitude, pitch and bank correction on radio altimetry and lat/long correction for flight technical errors.  Read a lot of other parameters massaged outside of mapping software and then imported as a (nearly) finished product into GM.  Depending on who needs to look at the result, that data may change file types and come in as KMZ (another thread which Bob has kindly helped me with)

    Terrain is as high resolution as I can get without going to LIDAR (not yet able to make the case for that component).  Fly through is useful, however if it were Christmas, I would ask Santa for the ability to control flythrough groundspeed, pitch and bank angle from the data.  Having that ability would allow me to partially re-create things like Enhanced GPWS presentations.

    I have noticed quite an improvement in rendering if I move or scale the map just by shifting GM to the new machine.  Loading time with the data files on M2 has decreased by about 80%.  3D viewer and flythrough is where the 'knock your socks off' improvements have been noticed.   

    One (off topic) thing I have noticed though is that I cannot seem to scale the pivot axes size in the 3D viewer like I could on the older machine on V 18.  Since I installed the newer version on the new machine when I switched licences, I can't tell if this is a rendering thing or if it is a feature change going to 19.  with 18 I was able to set the altitude and scale of the axes, so, for example, place it on a mountain top and extend the axes to I could visually depict when the flight path cleared it.  Is that still possible?

    Thanks again
    John
  • JeffH@BMG
    JeffH@BMG Global Mapper Developer Trusted User
    Hi John,

    Sorry, a little slow responding. I've added a new ticket for the scaling/placement of the pivot axis, #24340. Not sure when it will be scheduled, but when it's fixed, we'll notify you here. Thanks!

    Best regards,

    ~Jeff