
Pointscene.com: Explore Real World 3D Scenes from Lidar Data - anttiviljami
https://pointscene.com/explore/
======
dmlorenzetti
Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, but I really dislike this style of website
that requires you to poke around for ages trying to figure out what it's
about, or what value it would bring me to use it.

Examples:

\+ The title of this HN post promises it uses Lidar data, but one of the three
examples I looked at had nothing to do with Lidar, and the other two didn't
mention Lidar at all.

\+ That first example shows a drone-based measurement system, but it wasn't
clear the measurements were done by the website, as opposed to the data's
originator.

\+ The second example I looked at purports to show a volumetric analysis of a
concrete plant, but it has no description, and I don't see any actual analysis
taking place. On the other hand, my laptop slows to a crawl whenever I'm on
that page, so it must be doing something. The comments on that page did
promise that I can "activate" a map, but gave no indication what that means,
or why I should want to do so.

\+ The "upload" page states that in three steps I can start measuring my data,
but it doesn't give me any reason I should upload my data to somebody else's
website, rather than just take measurements myself. What's superior about the
website's tools? What formats are supported? No indication, and apparently no
way to find out unless I sign up and start trying to upload data.

\+ The "plans" page implies, without making explicit, that if I upload with a
free account, I will automatically share my data with others, but not be able
to measure it, nor be able to download somebody else's data. So let's say I
get a free account. What can I do with my data? Conversely, let's say I pay
for an account. What measurements can I make? How do I discover what data are
available for me to download? And what indications do I have of the quality of
the data (e.g., what's the spatial resolution, what are the errors in the
measurements, and have the data been vetted in any way to ensure there were no
processing errors)?

So where's the value?

Note I'm not saying there's no value here. Maybe there is. But the website
doesn't do anything to make its value proposition clear -- unless I'm willing
to poke around through enough of their examples, and the examples I looked at
didn't show me anything useful.

~~~
nightski
I have no affiliation with Pointscene but to me it was rather simple. You can
upload your 3D point cloud data and share it with others to view. I figured
this out within a few seconds of looking at the site.

Lidar comes in because that is a common method to capture this data.

With a higher level account you can measure, download, and have private data.
I'm not sure how useful that would be, but that's the value proposition.

~~~
davijo
Thank you for your insight as well! If interested in further testing you can
reach me at jonne @ pointscene.com

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ethbro
Out of interest, I assume most of these are then mapped back to planar
geometry for rendering. Does anyone have any links for the math / current
frameworks for this?

~~~
anttiviljami
It's pure pointcloud rendering. See
[https://github.com/potree/potree](https://github.com/potree/potree)

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edejong
The Netherlands made available all the LIDAR points in the whole country and
offered a point-cloud viewer of the data on [1]. The resolution is quite good,
so you might want to have a look.

[1] [http://www.ahn.nl/pagina/apps-en-tools/3d-pointcloud-
viewer....](http://www.ahn.nl/pagina/apps-en-tools/3d-pointcloud-viewer.html)

~~~
tomarr
The UK has too from the Environment Agency, largely undertaken for flooding
studies, (apologies for the longform URL):

[https://data.gov.uk/data/map-
preview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fenviro...](https://data.gov.uk/data/map-
preview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fenvironment.data.gov.uk%2Fds%2Fwms%3FSERVICE%3DWMS%26INTERFACE%3DENVIRONMENT
--
6f51a299-351f-4e30-a5a3-2511da9688f7%26request%3DGetCapabilities&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geostore.com%2FOGC%2FOGCInterface%3FSERVICE%3DWMS%26UID%3DUDATAGOV2011%26PASSWORD%3Ddatagov2011%26INTERFACE%3DENVIRONMENT%26LC%3D800000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000&amp;n=55.816&amp;w=-6.236&amp;e=2.072&amp;s=49.943)

