3D Points clouds from Mahabalipuram (India) created with VisualSFM

 

1 – Load a colored point cloud in CloudCompare

2 – Use its PCV plugin to compute the ambient occlusion of the point cloud. Save the resulting point cloud as a ASCII file.

3 – Use the following command to apply the ambient occlusion to the RGB values :

awk ‘{ print $1 ” ” $2 ” ” $3 ” ” int($4*$7) ” ” int($5*$7) ” ” int($6*$7) }’ input.xyz >> output.xyz

“LiDAR VR Viewer” is an Android application freely available on the Google Play Store which dives the user into a virtual reality made of 3D point clouds surfaces. It stands as an affordable VR experience with the use of simple head-mounted displays such as Google cardboard while offering a possible navigation into the data by the mean of a bluetooth controller.

UPDATE:  3D point clouds can now be rendered as spheres or surfels

 

Download the point cloud within the Android application LiDAR VR Viewer