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There is one at the base camp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet
Hardwire - CAT 5 cable is not likely to work consistently, Cat 6 and Cat 7 cable is recommended, shorter is better, but 100m is possible.
Fiber to your PC also works, but the fiber modem cards are pricey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gi-Fi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gi-Fi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wi-fi-802.11ac-router,3386.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wi-fi-802.11ac-router,3386.html

These new WIFI devices are fast, but much slow than a cable connection.
However unless you are trying to store point cloud images in the cloud it is unlikely you will tax a 802.11ac wifi link.

Point cloud cameras and the related infrastructure are expensive, both in data size and $$
leica-geosystems P20 $115,000.00.

Leica System 1200 GPS

I've seen sub-centimeter accuracy while using this device. Although it's a little pricey (approx 30k if i remember), it's still a civilian unit.

Doesn't matter.. you aren't going to get better than 10m accuracy without DGPS and 1m with it. Surveys have to be right to centimetres - no GPS can do that (possibly some of the military stuff, but I'd be surprised if even they were that accurate).

You don't need military GPS to be that accurate, it can be done with differential phase GPS. See: here. By using a fixed base station at a location with known coordinates, one can expect to see accuracies in the 1 to 2 cm range as long as the receiver is within 10's of km from the base station. There are several manufacturers who make gear that can achieve this level of accuracy, see Leica, Magellan, and Sokkia. I've been using Leica gear at work mostly, and have see ~1cm accuracy under good conditions pretty consistently. A lot of legal surveying in remote areas is done exclusively with GPS, especially in the northern parts of B.C and Alberta. I've done legal surveys with GPS in the Vancouver area, but getting high accuracy in urban areas is more difficult because of multi-path noise and qoor signal quality from obstructions such as buildings. Also people in the city get mad when you cut down trees to get better reception ;)

There are already systems that make use of both the GPS and GLONASS simultaneously (see, for example, this Leica survey unit). Due to the previously small number of GLONASS sats in view, they probably don't give much more accurate results, however, having access to a greater number of satellites is useful when there are obstructions (e.g. trees) that would otherwise cause a very poor quality fix.

http://gi.leica-geosystems.com/LGISub1x4x0.aspx

The normal model description says it's >3.0 OD, and they've upped the bit depth to 14. So you'll be probably getting more than enough data (film has its limits, too). I'd say that they've thought this through themselves.

These photos they are scanning are different from the ones scanned and released earlier to press, Internet, etc., because these are now targeted for research use also.

Leica and a few others have been manufacturing this type of sensor for a while now.

http://www.leica-geosystems.com/corporate/en/ndef/ lgs_57627.htm

Sensors of this size are typically used in airborne photography, because they would be too expensive to launch into space (too much weight/power needed). The link above is to the ADS40, the previous iteration had a 112 megapixel ccd... this version (from the site) can capture about 100Gb per hour of flight.

from the TFA.....
Google Earth will not replace high tech programs like AutoCAD or ESRI's ArcGIS

The topic missing from this discussion is a simple question: Where does all this data come from?.

You can't plan bike routes, model road trips, view cityscapes, etc. unless you have good data to start with. Neither Google Earth nor KML function to build geographic data. The tools for doing that are as follows: v

ArcGIS, for vector-based data and some imagery.

ERDAS IMAGINE, for imagery, and

for all you open source kiddies:

GRASS and GRASS for Macs

Without these basic development tools, client-side web apps like Google Earth don't exist. These data have a long history and complex standards for verification and use.

In a community normally so concerned with standards, metadata, etc., I am surprised by the Gee whiz view comparing Google Earth and similar client side apps.

The truth is that for decades, earth observing satellites have used pushbroom sensors. These sensors continuously sweep out an image, accumulating pixels 24/7, and some of them have up to eight wavebands (think "colors"). For example, Landsat 7 does 14 orbits per day, and takes 16 days to image the entire planet. Its view is 185km wide, with a combination of 15m and 30m pixels depending on the band. This works out to an image about 12000 pixels wide. To exceed the puny TNO 2.5 Gigapixel image, just accumulate a strip that's 208400 pixels (3125km) long. This is about a quarter of an orbit for the satellite, which happens in under 52 minutes (faster than the 70 minute TNO image). And as mentioned above, there are eight wavebands in the image, so it'll be well over 10 gigs.

Not entirely true, Ive seen depth information captured using multiple scans from a laser system such as those used by Leica Geosystems (formerly Cyra) that could be combined with photgraphy to produce models that are accurate. Of course, there would be no way to get the rear of the object without changing position.

Also, the software is almost at a level with modern PC's where you could possibly have real-time results. At siggraph this year I saw a handheld scanner that could scan a human head and interpolate it as a 3d-character rendered in near-real-time. They said give it about three more years. Cool stuff.

Looks like there are not many GIS geeks in the /. Overlaying a GPS tracking on a map is routine work for many applications look this links, ESRI
ERDAS

Doesnt say if this is capable of GPS-2 or whatever its called. As someone who uses GPS to manage infrastructure, I'd like to see some more precise GPS without having to spend $20,000 on Trimble or Leica equipment.

Here is a link that mentions it.

Even better 1000 points per second, and accurate to +/-.1mm at 10 meters... Cost & robustness tend to keep it out of the construction markets & limited to precision industrial metrology apps though.

Technically, you *can* use the two station system to land a plane. It works like this...

Receiver 1 is fixed. It is hooked into a computer system that outputs correction data in real time (RTK or real time kinematic), radio recievers coupled with another GPS receiver provide spatially correct location for both Horizontal (XY) and Vertical (Z). Many companies provide solutions for individual-level tracking.

Trimble
Leica