Potree puts Big and Beautiful LiDAR in Your Browser

Just in time for INTERGEO 2015, the Potree software was released in its latest 1.3 version. Potree is a WebGL based point cloud viewer for very large datasets. The Potree software allows to publish large LiDAR point clouds on the Web such that anyone can explore the data with nothing more but a modern browser. The interactive 3D viewer not only visualizes the LiDAR in many useful and intuitive ways but also comes with tools to perform various measurements. As its only Gold Sponsor, rapidlasso GmbH is the main supporter of this powerful open source package by Markus Schütz.

The long-term sponsorship of rapidlasso GmbH has directly supported a number of useful features such as the integration of our award-winning LASzip compressor using the pure javascript version contributed by Hobu Inc, optimization for massive airborne LiDAR data, profile selection, tools for distance and area measurements, options to color by classification, return type, and point source ID, and a clipping tool. The particular features sponsored in the most recent 1.3 release of Potree are the incredible Eye Dome Lighting (EDL) and faster data conversion for large data sets. A number of interesting showcases (including the CA13 example shown here) are available on the Potree page.

In the near future the Potree software will be distributed together with the LAStools package to offer a one-click solution for generating Webportals that host and distribute large LiDAR data sets and offer interactive online visualization and exploration. Potree is open source software that is free for anyone to acquire and to deploy. Please remember that using open source software is not the same as supporting open source software. Given the positive experience that rapidlasso GmbH has had with Potree we can only encourage other geospatial companies to support with time or money those open source projects that help your business.