ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we discuss different visualization tools for three-dimensional (3D) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) point clouds. We explain the design and implementation of one such visualization tool that has specific system requirements. The requirements include the implementation of a browser-based tool, supporting 3D point rendering using OpenGL standards, displaying analytics in the form of charts using Javascript, and facilitating user interactions for performing semantic classification in the entire point cloud or in user-selected regions of interest. The visualization tool is thus a part of the larger visual analytics tool involving the semantic classification of the point clouds. Such a tool is important for the semantic understanding of the dataset. Here, a cloud-based distributed system is used for the semantic classification of large-scale point clouds and is integrated with a visualization tool. We demonstrate the visual exploration of the Dayton Annotated Laser Earth Scanning (DALES) airborne LiDAR point cloud, thus showing the effectiveness of the tool.
