OpenOSX.com, a business dedicated to serving the Mac OS X community, has released its Grass Pre 2 CD, which lets you install Grass (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) GIS (Geographical Information System) Pre 2 for Mac OS X.
The OpenOSX Pre 2 CD offers Mac OS 10.0.x through 10.1 compatibility (including dual processor support) and additional modules, along with bug fixes. With over 350 modules, Grass is the “only real alternative” to ArcView GIS, Jeshua Lacock, the owner of OpenOSX.com, said.
Grass GIS offers 3D dynamic spatial analysis and visualization. Users of Grass include NASA, USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), among others, Lacock said. The OpenOSX CD installs a long list of all the required libraries and programs for full functionality, he added
The following programs are installed and fully configured for Mac OS X: Grass 5.0 Pre 2, NVIZ, XFree86 4.1.99.1, XDarwin 1.0a3, Tcl/Tk 8.3.2, XFree86 4.1.99.1, PostgreSQL 7.1.2, Unix ODBC 2.0.7, Mesa 3.4, Tcl/Tk 8.3, FFTW 2.1.3, and GDAL 1.1.4 (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library). File formats supported by Grass are: GeoTiff, Tiff, DXF, SDTS, DEM, Shape, ELAS, PNG, ARC, MIF, Tiger, Garmin, and ASCI.
Features include: ortho-rectification; digital elevation model creation and editing; hypsography (contour lines) generation; automated digital line graph (DLG) creation; project raster and vector data in over 100 projections; thematic polygons generated autonomously; the ability to export and import GIS Data with attributes; classification and reclassification; shaded relief with 16-bit precision; statistical analysis; coordinate conversion; neighbor variance; geostatistics and spatial data analysis; 3D visualization; and surface prediction. Simulation modeling capabilities are: erosion modeling; storm water runoff; soil and water assessment; watershed calculation; and wildfire spread simulation
Lacock has published the Grass Pre2 binaries for free and immediate downloading. The binaries don’t include the required Xfree86 or the other software that ‘s installed by OpenOSX.com’s CD. The OpenOSX Grass CD is US$30 and six-month CD subscriptions are available for $80.