The 3D Viewer

Explore millions of 3D points directly in your browser — no plugins, no desktop software, no downloads. The 3D viewer is the heart of Lidarvisor: rotate, zoom, toggle layers, and switch visualization modes to understand your data from every angle. This page explains everything you can do in the viewer.

Camera Controls

The viewer uses your mouse (or touchpad) to navigate in 3D space:

Action	Mouse	What It Does
Rotate	Left-click + drag	Rotates the camera around the point you clicked
Zoom	Scroll wheel	Zooms in and out
Pan	Right-click + drag	Moves the camera sideways, up, or down without rotating

Tip: If you get lost or the data is out of view, click the Center view button (crosshair icon on the left side) to zoom the camera back to fit your entire point cloud.

2D and 3D Views

By default, the viewer is in 3D perspective mode, which lets you rotate and view the data from any angle.

Click the 2D / 3D toggle button (on the left side of the viewer) to switch to 2D top-down mode. In this mode, the camera looks straight down, which is useful for:

• Getting an overview of the entire area
• Comparing your data with background satellite imagery
• Drawing measurement lines and profiles

Click the button again to return to 3D.

Visualization Modes

Your point cloud can be colored in four different ways. You can switch between them using the dropdown on the point cloud node in the left panel (the project tree):

RGB (Original Color)

Shows the points in their original recorded colors. This only works if the LiDAR data includes color information (which depends on whether a camera was used during data collection). If your file has no RGB data, the points will appear in a single default color.

Classification

Each point is colored according to its classification category — for example, ground in brown, vegetation in green, buildings in red, water in blue, power lines in yellow, etc. This mode is most useful after processing, when the AI has classified the points.

You can customize the color of each class: click the small color circle next to any class name in the project tree to open a color picker. Click "Reset" to go back to the default colors.

Intensity

Shows points in a grayscale range based on their laser intensity value. Intensity represents how strongly the laser signal bounced back from the surface. Hard surfaces like roads and buildings tend to have high intensity (bright), while vegetation and water tend to have lower intensity (dark).

Elevation (Height)

Colors points on a gradient from low elevation (cool colors) to high elevation (warm colors). This gives you a quick visual sense of the terrain shape.

Background Maps

The viewer can display a satellite imagery background behind your point cloud. Click the Background map button (on the left side) to cycle through three options:

1. No background — a plain dark or light surface (depending on your theme)
2. Bing satellite — satellite imagery from Bing Maps
3. Cesium satellite — satellite imagery from Cesium Ion

Background maps help you orient your data in its geographic context and compare your point cloud with satellite imagery.

The Project Tree

When a project is loaded, the left panel shows a project tree — a hierarchical list of all assets in the project. This is your main control center for managing what is visible in the viewer.

Toggling Visibility

Each item in the tree has a checkbox. Tick or untick it to show or hide that asset in the viewer. For example:

• Untick the original point cloud to see only the classified version
• Untick all vegetation classes to see only buildings and ground
• Tick a terrain model (like DTM) to overlay it on the view
• Tick vector layers (like contour lines or building footprints) to see them overlaid on the point cloud

Some vector layers are interactive: if your project includes vegetation analysis results, clicking a finding polygon in the viewer opens a Finding Details panel with its area, volume, and distance to the nearest wire.

Expanding Nodes

Point cloud nodes can be expanded (click the arrow) to reveal individual classification classes:

• Ground
• Low Vegetation
• Medium Vegetation
• High Vegetation
• Building
• Water
• Road Surface
• Power Lines
• Towers
• And many more...

Each class has its own checkbox, so you can show or hide individual classes.

Status Indicators

Assets in the tree may show status badges:

• UPLOADING — the file is still being uploaded
• TILING — the file is being prepared for 3D viewing (with a progress indicator)
• ERROR — something went wrong during processing
• EMPTY — no data was found for this asset (e.g., no buildings were detected)

Asset Information

Raster assets (terrain models) show an info tooltip when you hover over the information icon. This explains what the layer represents and how it was calculated.

Overlaying Multiple Layers

One of the most powerful features of the viewer is the ability to overlay multiple data layers simultaneously. For example:

• Show the classified point cloud with contour lines overlaid
• Show a DTM hillshade (a shaded terrain surface) with building footprints on top
• Show the original point cloud with a background satellite map

Use the checkboxes in the project tree to mix and match layers until you get the view you need.

If your project includes ground control points, they appear in the viewer as cross markers over the point cloud — see Ground Control Points.

Raster Layer Selection

When your project has multiple terrain model types (DTM, DSM, CHM, Slope Map, TIN), you select which one to display using radio buttons in the project tree. Only one raster layer can be shown at a time.

Camera Animations

The viewer can fly the camera around your point cloud automatically — a polished, repeatable fly-around you can watch, download as a video, or share with someone who has no account.

Click the Animations button (movie icon) in the bar at the top of the screen to open the animations panel. Four animation styles are available on every project as soon as its point cloud is displayed — nothing needs to be enabled at processing time:

Style	What it does	Best for	Length
Orbit (Turntable)	Circles your site a full 360° at a steady height and distance	Compact, roughly square sites	~15 seconds
Spiral Reveal	Starts high and wide, then spirals inward and downward as it circles	A dramatic intro for a presentation or client preview	~20 seconds
Top-Down Flyover	Looks straight down and travels across your site from one end to the other	Long or linear sites — power line corridors, roads, railways, rivers	~15 seconds
Cinematic Fly-In	One smooth approach from a high, wide shot down to an angled close-up	A project thumbnail or the opening seconds of a video	~6 seconds

Hover over a style name in the panel for a full description. Each style offers three actions:

• Play — runs the animation live in the viewer. When it finishes (or when you press Stop), the camera returns to exactly where it was before.
• Download video — records the animation and downloads it as a WebM video file. The video is rendered frame by frame, so it comes out smooth even if the live viewer is not. A progress bar tracks the recording — keep the browser tab visible while it runs, or the recording is interrupted. If your browser cannot encode video, this button is hidden; Play and Share still work.
• Share link — creates a link that opens the project in the shared viewer and plays the chosen animation automatically. The recipient needs no account — just the link.

If the panel says it is waiting for the point cloud, give the viewer a moment to finish loading the tiles, then the actions become available.

Eye-Dome Lighting

The viewer uses a rendering technique called Eye-Dome Lighting (EDL) to make point clouds easier to read. EDL adds subtle shadows around points to give the cloud a sense of depth and shape, even without surface reconstruction.

You do not need to configure this — it is enabled by default. If you are an administrator, you can adjust EDL settings (strength and radius) from the admin panel.

Performance Tips

• Close unnecessary layers: Untick layers you are not actively looking at. Each visible layer uses graphics memory and processing power.
• Use 2D mode for large datasets: Top-down 2D mode is less demanding on your computer than 3D mode.
• Use a modern browser: Google Chrome generally provides the best performance for 3D rendering.
• Check your graphics drivers: Make sure your graphics card drivers are up to date for the smoothest experience.

Next Step

Now that you can navigate and explore your data, it's time to process it. Head to Processing Your Data.

To measure distances and areas, extract elevation profiles, or read the exact coordinates of any point, see Measurement Tools.