Point Clouds in VR

June 17, 2022 James Branagan

Virtual Reality (VR) can be a powerful tool that allows users to explore project sites from anywhere they happen to be in full, true to life scale. Walk around and explore design concepts overlaid on the point cloud, see how well new equipment fits in the space, get up close to areas of a site or situations where it would be difficult or dangerous to normally, explore a site that could be located on the other side of the world, the possibilities are endless.

A couple of options we have to view captured data in VR include Leica’s TruView and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.

Leica TruView and TruView VR

With the 2022.0.0 release of Leica’s free TruView viewer for point clouds we can now view point clouds in VR. Note that you need both TruView and TruView VR installed to take advantage of VR. Anything that can be viewed in TruView can now be seen in VR, including model data, meshes, and geotags.

Inside the VR environment all the regular TruView tool are available. Measuring distances and viewing Geotags is easily done with the VR hand controls.

Epic Games Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine will give us a different experience. We lose the ability to take measurements and see attached geotags but, within Unreal we can add photo realistic textures to the mesh of our point cloud or modeled data, add sounds, people and other objects and set up lighting to create a hyper realistic environment.

About the Author

Civil Solutions Applications Expert<br><br>As a software applications expert I provides knowledgeable and competent support and training, specializing in AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Infraworks, Advance Steel, ReCap, Pix4D and Leica's suite of point cloud tools including Register 360 and Cyclone Model.
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