Screen Shots and Gallery
See the dazzling range of visual effects Manifold® System creates on-screen, for the web, in user presentations, for publication in Google Earth and in printed materials. Providing the widest and deepest set of capabilities for creating memorable presentations and visual displays that can make complex data instantly comprehensible, Manifold provides users with professional, easy-to-use power at unprecedentably affordable low cost.
Internet Map Server Live Web Sites
For a gallery of Internet Map Server (IMS) web sites, please visit the Live IMS Examples page.
Video Demos and Presentations
Supercomputer Speed - See the Manifold / NVIDIA CUDA demo video to see Manifold in action using NVIDIA. See a one minute task get done in two seconds! Amazing! Manifold is the only GIS in the world that can use NVIDIA CUDA for supercomputer performance. See the Manifold Supercomputer GIS presentation, which also includes the CUDA demo, to learn why NVIDIA CUDA is so fast and for background on why modern computing is shifting to parallel processing.
SQL Server 2008 Spatial - See the Manifold and SQL Server 2008 demo video to see Manifold in action with SQL Server 2008 spatial while simultaneously using Microsoft Virtual Earth.
Spatial DBMS and Large Images - Manifold can even store large images in SQL Server 2008 spatial! See how in the Storing an image in SQL Server 2008 demo video. Outstanding!
The Flashy Demo in 10 Minutes or Less - Can the Flashy Demo really be done in ten minutes as claimed in Help? See a live demonstration in a 12 MB WMV file as Dr. Arthur Lembo of Salisbury University takes the ten minute challenge.
For Google Earth Users
Manifold is the world's finest tool for creating KML / KMZ for display in Google Earth. This is such a popular use of Manifold there's a web page just for Google Earth users! Visit the Manifold Tools for Google Earth page to learn more.Publishing Manifold surfaces to Google Earth - Manifold can draw spectacular maps from freely available data using a combination of web and local sources. The image at right shows a Google Earth presentation created by Manifold that combines USGS surface data analyzed, colored and cut by Manifold together with Google Earth. The image at left shows how Manifold can create the desired Google Earth publication in WYSIWYG perfection. Note the precision with which the surface overlays the background satellite image exactly as it would appear in Google Earth, with Manifold matching projections on the fly automatically.
If you have Google Earth installed please download some sample KML files created, in seconds, with Manifold. Download the KML Samples zip file. Unzip the archive and then double-click on a KML file and watch Google Earth do its "zoom from space" thing to see the GIS data. Wow! Google Earth is a great "free viewer" for GIS data and Manifold System is the quickest and easiest way to publish for Google Earth.
Gallery of Screenshots
Creating Maps with Manifold and Image Servers - Manifold is the only GIS that provides fast and effortless integration of Image Servers within map layers. The use of image servers is revolutionizing GIS by providing worldwide coverage for maps, including highly detailed satellite imagery and street maps, with zero effort required by the user. Many different image servers at once can be combined together with layers created in Manifold for fantastic effects and clear exposition of data.
Image server modules are small snippets of code provided for free that enable Manifold to connect to providers like Virtual Earth, Yahoo! Maps and Google Earth to automatically pull down georegistered satellite photography, street maps or other imagery to fill whatever map window you want. As you zoom in or out, or pan or scroll around the right imagery is automatically fetched from the provider at the right resolution, completely and perfectly georegistered to whatever other layers you want.
The thumbnails at right show the use of image servers in Manifold to map the locations of French chateaus in the Loire Valley. The green diamonds show the locations of over 850 chateaus in a Manifold drawing that was imported from a Google KMZ file posted by a French chateau enthusiast. The bright red squares and labels show several of the most famous historical chateaus. These were marked by zooming in to the satellite imagery in Manifold and clicking to create and label points. To provide context a background layer of satellite imagery is from Virtual Earth. Roads are a middle layer taken from Yahoo! Streets, with the "white space" between roads and road labels made transparent so the background satellite imagery shows through. This display can be created in only a few minutes!
The entire presentation is "live action" in Manifold, so we can zoom far in to see each individual chateau in the satellite imagery at high resolution. Clicking on the second thumbnail at right opens the high resolution display seen when zooming in to the region about the icon for the famous chateau at Chambord.
Afghanistan: Superior Spatial Editing and Selection Transfer - Manifold System can transfer selections from vector drawing layers in a map to image layers or surface layers and vice versa. This technique allows "cookie-cutting" of images using drawing areas as a guide. The thumbnails at left show an image of Afghanistan that has been cookie-cut out of the NASA "Blue Marble" image of the Earth as seen from space. The Afghanistan image has been exactly trimmed to the borders of Afghanistan shown in a countries drawing. One screenshot shows just the Afghanistan image alone in Latitude / Longitude projection. The other screenshot shows the Afghanistan image in Orthographic projection (a view as the Earth appears from space) overlaid upon a background of the original NASA Blue Marble image. Image effects include use of transparency to de-emphasize the background and Gaussian Blur to create a drop shadow. Manifold can easily re-project drawings, images, surfaces or anything else seen in maps. The maps shown consist of several image, drawing, and label layers. For details, see the User Manual Topic on creating this image.
US per capita Homocide rates, by State - Although terrains are most typically used to show 3D views of terrain elevation surfaces, the 3D effects they provide make possible many different dramatic presentations. This view utilizes a "flat" terrain that has been colored using a satellite image of the entire United States. The image was acquired using a Virtual Earth image server and then manipulated with Manifold image editing tools and selection transfers from a vector map to create a "cut out" of just the US surrounded by a black frame. Next, per capita state homocide rates were transfered to small circular buffer area objects at the centroids of states. These areas were then thematically colored and extruded using area overlays on the terrain to form a 3D bar chart. An experienced Manifold user can create the entire project start to finish in ten minutes. This image was created using Personal Edition with no other extensions required. Click on the illustration for a more detailed view.
Earth from space shown in Manifold System - These scenes were created by projecting an image into Orthographic projection and then layering it in a map with several layers using alpha masks, invisible pixels, layer transparency to create the "haze" effect at the edges of the globe. The initial images were created from GLOBE terrain elevation data and then processed with a Relief effect and color changes in ocean areas. One of the images shows a polar aspect orthographic projection, correctly wrapping an ordinary, cylindrical lat/long image into a polar view. Cool! For details, see the User Manual Topic on creating this image.
Pasteur Institute Study in St. Petersburg - An amazing series of maps created by Dmitri Bagh in Manifold for the Pasteur Institute showing comparative occurrence of Leptospirosis in various animal and human populations. The complete series shows use of cartograms, grid analysis and isoline (contour) analysis. The thumbnails above illustrate an overview of the city, district populations of dogs, individual cases in dogs in the city center and an overall isoline (contours) analysis of Leptospirosis cases in dogs throughout the city.
3D Synthetic Scene overlaid on real scene - The image at the left was created using expert-level manipulation of Manifold. The central part of the image is a Manifold-generated terrain view of the terrain in the area draped with an overhead photograph. The 3D terrain image is placed on top of an ordinary photograph of the same shoreline shot from a boat. Because the terrain is shown from a camera viewpoint that is the same as the location of the boat when the photograph was taken, both the terrain image and the photograph line up. This illustration shows the uncanny realism possible through expert usage of Manifold. (Image created by Andrew Mitchell)
Two Views of Devil's Lake - These images show a 3D terrain view created by Manifold of Wisconsin's Devil's Lake State Park. The images combine a synthetic 3D terrain automatically created by Manifold from a USGS DEM (Digital Elevation Model), colored for height, with a transparent digital orthophoto overlay taken from aerial photography. The first thumbnail shows Devil's Lake State Park in a view looking east across the south end of the lake. The south arm of the moraine that helped create Devil's Lake appears as the green elevation in the old river channel between the East Bluff on the left and Devil's Nose on the right. The second thumbnail shows a more overhead view. (Images appear courtesy of Paul Pingrey)
Radial Distances from Antenna - A nice, clear map of the airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma that was taken from a USGS 7.5 minute SDTS file downloaded free from the USGS web site. The map shows a planned antenna with circles at 500, 1000 and 1500 meter radii from the antenna. Manifold's ability to manipulate multiple layers to create an "edge" along the main airport area for a sense of dimensionality helps create subtle, but effective, visual presentations. The shot also shows simple use of labels for a legend plus a scale bar. Clear, elegant, and easy to create.
TIGER/Line 1997 CD Coverages - Created for our TIGER/Line 1997 page, this map shows which TIGER/Line CDs cover which parts of the US. "Exploded Map" cartography is easy with Manifold, because the system can easily drag selected items to a new location. Select the states to be moved and then drag them outward slightly. Unlike consumer mapping programs that force display of an entire built-in map, with Manifold you can create maps that show only that portion of the map you wish, exactly as desired.
For details on creating exploded map examples like the image at right, see the User Manual Topic on creating that image.
Top 20 Oil Producers - A print layout showing the top 20 oil producing countries, with reserves in billions of barrels of oil. Minicharts show the percentage of the top 20 production volume each country contributes. Print layouts like this are easily shared in Manifold by saving them to a PDF. Download an example PDF for this layout by right-clicking on this link and choosing Save.
Manifold Desktop - A large view showing a Manifold desktop opened with multiple windows. Manifold can simultaneously layer surfaces, images (either local or from remote image servers) and drawings, while creating contours from surfaces. The desktop shows how the same data can be open in multiple different windows at the same time. Manifold has "selectback" so that if data, like a drawing showing contours, is open in one map window and that data is selected or modified hen all other windows showing that data will also be automatically updated.
In this example we see a satellite image open in its own window in the upper left corner. In the middle we see a drawing of contours open in its own window. To the right we see the contour drawing overlaid as a layer on the satellite image in a map window. At the lower left we see a group of surfaces seen together in a seamless mosaic in 2D view in a map window, together with drawing layers and labels. Only Personal Edition ($245) is required for the capabilities seen.
3D View of the Grand Canyon Flooding - Click on the thumbnail to see a 780 KB animated gif of the Grand Canyon flooding in Manifold System. This animated .gif was created using a DEM data set of the Grand Canyon imaged in a terrain window in Manifold, which provides an automatic 3D view of elevation data. Manifold can draw a semi-transparent "waterline" plane through a terrain at a given level for waterline analysis. The flood effect was created by setting the water level higher in ten even steps and then making an animated .gif of the results using Microsoft GIF Animator.
Contributions from Users
Image Servers: Finding a Meteorite Crater in the Chesapeake - Manifold image servers are often used as backdrops for other data. These images show the accidental rediscovery of a large meteorite crater in the Chesapeake Bay in the United States. A Manifold user was searching for waterfront properties for a new home. The user did not want the home to be in a very low-lying area that might be flooded during storms. The solution was to go searching for properties based on various criteria using Manifold, and using image servers (Virtual Earth, Google Earth and Yahoo! satellite imagery and street maps) for background orientation. To find areas that would not be flooded the user imported terrain elevation surfaces from very high resolution US Space Shuttle radar scans of terrain heights downloaded for free from NASA web sites. The surfaces were colored by height to make it easy to see at a glance which waterfront properties were located on a slight elevation above the water so they would not be flooded while still being close enough to the water to allow for a dock for boats and other recreation.
The user was astonished to see an arc of dramatic elevation jump on Virginia's Gloucester peninsula, almost a perfect edge of a circle, as can be seen from the circle drawn in on the second image, and knew right away that such geographic features are usually portions of volcanic or meteoritic craters. A little research indicated that a previously unknown meteorite impact crater was discovered in the Chesapeake at that location in 1983. It was discovered indirectly from core samples drilled in the ocean floor far away and refined by oil exploration samples ten years later. However, the edge of the crater is immediately obvious in Manifold, showing the visual power of GIS. No doubt numerous impact craters are yet to be discovered, along with lost cities and other archaeological features, that could easily be seen by looking at thematically colored elevation data in Manifold where small differences in elevation pop right out. The Shuttle data is colored so differences of only five feet in height are colored differently, making a subtle change immediately obvious. The illustrations show how different data can be combined for greater insight, and how partial transparency can be used in layers in Manifold to allow a background to show through an upper layer.
Image Mosaics - Manifold's extraordinary georegistration and image-editing capabilities allow users to take images from aircraft and then mosaic them together to create georegistered overhead aerial images at a fraction of the cost of traditional procurement. The thumbnail at right shows an image created in Carbon County, Utah. County GIS staffers hired a Cessna from the local airport for a few hours and used a consumer digital camera to snap a series of overhead photos. After "a lot of pointing and clicking" the images were georegistered and formed into a mosaic covering the region of interest. Total cost was only a few hundred dollars, a tremendous savings over the tens of thousands of dollars such remote sensing image acquisition normally requires. Click on the thumbnail at right to see a 2 MB image that provides a closer view. Click on the thumbnail at left to see a small portion of the full resolution image.
User Meeting and Online Forum Contributions - Presentations at user meetings as well as discussions in the Manifold online Georeference forum often include many beautiful and practical examples of maps created in Manifold. Please visit the forum for authors and author's comments on how these extraordinary examples were created.
Tracking eagles with ARGOS satellites and Manifold IMS
Bio3, a company in Portugal, uses Manifold to create a Biodiversity Tracking System for tracking populations of Golden eagles and Bonelli eagles. Eagles are tagged with a GPS-equipped portable tracking transmitter that automatically reports position through the ARGOS satellite system to the Bio3 centralized DBMS stored in PostgreSQL. Bio3 has created software that enables company biologists to use Manifold's spatial DBMS capabilities to directly connect to PostgreSQL to explore the DBMS for spatial processing and reporting. Click here for an example Manifold workspace image. Eagle locations and other data are also displayed in near real time via a Manifold IMS web site, illustrated at left, that is available to registered users of the biodiversity project. The application created by Bio3 can be used for many other types of tracking applications, such as tracking other wildlife, or commercial projects such as tracking vehicles, trucks, ships, navigation bouys or almost anything else that can be equipped with a GPS tracking device. Please visit the Bio3 website for additional information on Bio3.
Landscape planning for a road surface
Created with Manifold plus a font editor used to create the tops of trees. Note the use of aerial imagery background.
Landscape planning process
This image shows a series of maps illustrating the process used to create the above image. Each of the three maps was created in Manifold.
Leak Detection for Water System in Sint Maarten
Manifold was used to record GPS locations for relevant facilities and critical information.
Bicycle Club Map
Created in Manifold 5.50, using scripting to generate connected line strings and distances.
A Manifold 6.00 map created to support data sales, allowing selection of tiles based on addresses, township lots or other variables.
Project Management and Billing Support
Used internally to help keep track of projects.
Bureau of Land Management Map
Created by a volunteer using Manifold to produce an updated recreational travel map for a region in Utah. Created in Manifold 6.50 with some editing in Paint Shop Pro. Download the full resolution TIF image (approximately 86MB): Right click here and choose Save.
Bureau of Land Management Map (other side)
The rear side of the BLM map seen above. Download the full resolution TIF image (approximately 88MB): Right click here and choose Save.
North Atlantic Hurricane Frequency
A frequency analysis of North Atlantic basin hurricanes for the period 1851 to 2005. More intense color shows more frequent hurricanes.
Delhi Road Inventory
Roads created from ground survey data in Delhi, India using Manifold 5.5.
Power Line Profile
Profile for a Power Transmission Line, drawn completely using Manifold 6.5. Manifold was used for the entire process, beginning with initial route selection using 50k topo maps and 6m satellite imagery, processing the survey data and preparing the plan and profiles using scripts.
Road Asset Inventory
Very elegant presentation created from ground survey data showing assets on a roadway (labels are turned off in this screen shot).
LandSat imagery from GLCF (channels combined with Manifold 6.50), showing a few planned seismic lines cutting across prestine rain forest in the Naga Trust.
Digitized Topo Map
Background digitized using a different package and imported into Manifold and finished with additional layers and cartography.
Limited 10 Day Money Back Guarantee
See for yourself the incredible power and modern conveniences of Manifold: Manifold Personal Edition, Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition as well as the Geocoding Tools extension are sold with a limited money-back guarantee for 10 days from the date of purchase. See the Returns and Refunds page for details. Order Manifold today and download tomorrow with no risk!
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