Point cloud display

Owned by Omar Lamrani
Last updated: Apr 23, 2021
2 min read

Version française

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 produced from a captured image. RGB values from an image taken by the scanner are often interpolated, therefore not as precise as the intensity and may show oddities such as cars or leaves on walls.

  • 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. The user can decide to view or not each class, change the title of the class and specify a display color in the explorer.  At times, the point cloud is not classified, in such case all points will be considered unclassified class “0” or “1”.  It will also be possible to use the algorithms available with VisionLidar in order to classify the point clouds (see Classification Algorithms section). 

  • Color by normals: This option colors points differently whether they are on horizontal planes or vertical planes. The normals must be calculated beforehand otherwise the point cloud will only be displayed with a uniform colour. (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.