Prior to the development of digital solutions, photogrammetry programs were primarily analog or custom systems built for government agencies.
A key step, involving very complex least squares mathematics, is triangulation which determines exactly where the cameras were positioned when the photographs were taken.
Photogrammetrists that contributed to SOCET SET's Triangulation include Scott Miller, Bingcai Zhang, John Dolloff, and Fidel Paderes.
SOCET SET has the ability to read terrain data formats, including: DTED, USGS DEM, ASCII (user-defined), LIDAR LAS, ArcGrid, SDTS, NED, GSI, GeoTIFF.
One of the primary accomplishments of this effort was to migrate the product to UNIX Platforms, including Sun, SGI, HP, and IBM.
Helava employees Scott Miller, Janis McArthur née Thiede, and Kurt de Venecia brought in-depth experience in the field.
Leadership of the project passed to Neal Olander around 1992, and after this time, SOCET SET (which before then was only sold to government customers) began to be distributed commercially.