The point cloud may be displayed many different ways with VisionLidar, provided the information is available. The display options are in the first section of the “View” menu:
Color by RGB: Displays points with their color issued from the source file. Usually RGB values are deduced from an image taken by the scanner when the scan was taken. Since it’s interpolated, it’s not as precise as the intensity and may show oddities such as cars or leaves on walls. It can also
Color by intensity: Intensity is the measure of the laser signal return strength for each point. It is shown as a grayscale from 0 to 254. This method produces a rendering which is much like a black and white photo, but which is also much closer to reality than the RGB rendering, due to its nature. There is an option in the setting allowing to change the minimum and maximum value of the greyscale, adjusting the view for point clouds that are too dark or bright.
Color by class: Displays points by their class value. A list of classes is available in the explorer in the “Classes” tab. The points may have already been classified in some way; some data comes already classified through standard classifications from aerial survey, some automatic classification algorithms from VisionLidar are available or else they will all be in the “Unclassified” class (class 0). The explorer will allow the user to control the name and the color associated to each class.
Color by normals: This option colors points differently whether they are on horizontal planes or vertical planes. The normals must be calculated first for this display to work correctly (Menu: Analyze / Compute Normals).
Color by scan: Displays each source file with assorted color tones, which can be chosen in the explorer (see the “Scans” tab in the explorer). The tone also shows the intensity values. The list of scans in the explorer can be used to hide selected scans or translate and rotate them individually.
Color by elevation: Displays the point cloud according to the elevation of the points.
Color by distance: Displays the point cloud according to the distance from a given plane.