

Visualizing The Matterhorn as an 860,000 point cloud - bsudekum
https://www.mapbox.com/pointcloud/matterhorn/

======
computer
I applaud the makers of this demo for adding a gif-based fallback on the error
page for those of us who have no WebGL support. It shows:

"Your browser does not support this demo. Here is what you are missing:"

[[https://www.mapbox.com/pointcloud/matterhorn/css/error.gif](https://www.mapbox.com/pointcloud/matterhorn/css/error.gif)]

------
mbq
It is actually a raw data from UAV mapping; the whole story:
[https://www.mapbox.com/blog/sensefly-drone-mapping-
matterhor...](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/sensefly-drone-mapping-matterhorn/)

~~~
Sprint
I don't think so, the raw data should be much more accurate down to deci-, if
no centimeters.

~~~
7952
Height data derived from photogrammetry usually has lower vertical accuracy
than that (even on fixed wing planes with better sensors).

------
psuter
The company behind the technology to turn images into point clouds is Pix4D
[1]. Their website has another few pretty demos.

[1] pix4D.com

------
flurinegger
Doesn't work in Chrome/Chrome Canary/Safari on OS X. Just get a black screen
after the points are loaded

~~~
dpedu
Works on Chrome on 10.8 here. But not Safari.

~~~
flurinegger
I'm still on 10.7, Chrome 32.0.1664.3 dev

------
bane
it's just as fun to flip it around and explore the big hole in the ground

------
heliotron
This crashes Safari on my mac. Seems to be a segfault originating somewhere in
the graphics card driver. Card is an ATI HD 4870. Running MacOS X
10.8.5/Safari 6.0.5.

~~~
mark212
worked for me in Safari on my Retina MacBook Pro. Running OS X 10.8.5 and
Safari 6.0.5

~~~
heliotron
Yes, I think it must be a problem with the graphics card or driver rather than
the browser itself.

------
okueng
This is a low res version of the original data, because of limitations of
webgl. If you want to see the making of, as well as the full res pointcloud
(over 300 millions!!!), check out this video:

Mapping the impossible:
[http://youtu.be/jh4kRatBNkk](http://youtu.be/jh4kRatBNkk)

~~~
okueng
Wrong link, the video mapping the impossible is this one:
[http://youtu.be/NuZUSe87miY](http://youtu.be/NuZUSe87miY)

------
StavrosK
Can we get Leap Motion support in this? Their API is pretty simple/well made,
and it's very well suited to easily rotating 3D stuff.

------
tekmate
i don't have a reference to compare it to aside from a heightmap i used for
some rendering years ago, but 25mb for the *.asc seems pretty big for the
quality it puts out

------
pagekicker
What's the point of point clouds?

~~~
mark212
my question also. This is useful for what, exactly?

~~~
tinco
Point clouds are not very useful themselves, if we had a choice we would skip
them. They are the result of turning any measured data (like pictures or depth
samples or whatever) into a 3d visualisation.

Ideally you have collected enough data to reconstruct the surface geometry
with reasonable accuracy, but realistically often you don't.

Our minds are rather good at inferring surface geometry from point clouds, our
algorithms not so much yet as far as I know. So sometimes (as in the case of
this visualisation) it suffices to show people just the point cloud.

