Chesapeake Times Vol 22 | July 2025
If you’ve worked on a target-picking project with ATR or synthetic aperture sonar, you’ve probably seen firsthand how fast contact counts climb and how quickly the targets folder in your SonarWiz Project starts to balloon. Every flagged feature creates a high-resolution image, and those images add up fast. With synthetic aperture sonar, even a single contact might generate tens of megabytes. Multiply that by a thousand, and you’re deep into triple-digit gigabytes before the first review session.
SonarWiz 8.04 introduces major updates to how contacts are created, stored, and displayed, all designed to keep pace with these modern workflows.
No More Stored Images by Default
Contact images are now rendered on-the-fly from the source sonar data. They’re no longer written to disk when a contact is marked. This change significantly reduces overall project size and eliminates the need to manage image storage manually. For ATR-heavy workflows or high-resolution sonar systems, it means leaner projects and faster performance.
If you still need image files, for handoff, archiving, or interoperability, you can export them at any time using the Contact Manager. Embedded images in reports and exports continue to work just as they always have.
Smarter Image Sizing
Contact images are no longer tied to fixed dimensions. In SonarWiz 8.04, users can define the image area by dragging a rectangle around the target in the Waterfall Display. Larger features get full coverage. Smaller ones don’t bring along extra seafloor. This adds precision to every contact and improves the relevance of each capture.
Visual Feedback for Contact Shape
When a contact is selected, SonarWiz now highlights the symbol and draws a polygon around the associated image extent. This makes it easier to see the size and orientation of the contact without opening the editor. With variable image sizing now in play, this visual feedback helps users quickly scan and verify targets across the map.
Figure 1: Two contacts of different size: one as large as a shipwreck and the other small and centered on some debris
Expanded Limits and Live Updates
SonarWiz 8.04 removes the 9,999-contact limit. The new system supports dense datasets without requiring manual pruning or project splitting. It also removes the old “Recapture Images” command, which was once used to refresh stored contact images after gain or color adjustments. Since images are now rendered live, they automatically reflect the latest sonar processing settings, no extra steps required.
Project Compatibility
Projects created in earlier versions can be opened in 8.04 without issues. Stored contact images will be ignored, but all metadata and structure remain intact. If you need to revert a project from 8.04 to an older version, you’ll need to export contact images before moving back. Older versions may also assume contact images are square, so non-square captures might not display perfectly in legacy tools.
SonarWiz 8.04 contact workflows are built for scale and flexibility. Whether you’re managing thousands of ATR hits or reviewing a dozen key targets, your process now uses less disk space, supports more control, and responds directly to how the data was processed. It’s a better way to handle what matters and to keep survey teams focused on the features, not the folder size.
-David Finlayson