Vulkan Point Cloud Renderer (VPCR) is a high-performance, real-time point cloud rendering software that builds on the Vulkan-based framework provided by TGA. It efficiently renders large point clouds, making it ideal for visualization and analysis in various fields such as robotics, computer vision, and geospatial mapping.
The development of VPCR was inspired by and references the following papers:
- Schütz, M., Kerbl, B., & Wimmer, M. (2021). Rendering Point Clouds with Compute Shaders and Vertex Order Optimization.
- Schütz, M., Kerbl, B., & Wimmer, M. (2022). Software Rasterization of 2 Billion Points in Real Time.
In addition to these, we have incorporated our own innovations into the project. We've added Level of Detail (LOD) rendering and different anti-aliasing approaches to enhance the rendering quality. The user-friendly GUI is implemented using the ImGui library.
To launch the renderer, you need to provide a path to the point cloud file you want to render. VPCR can take .gltf or .glb files as input. Here's how you can do it:
# From the build directory, run the following command
./VPCR --scene_file /path/to/your/pointcloud.gltf --resolution 1000 1000
# or
./VPCR --scene_file /path/to/your/pointcloud.glb --resolution 1000 1000Replace /path/to/your/pointcloud.gltf or /path/to/your/pointcloud.glb with the actual path to the point cloud file you want to render.
We have tested VPCR with several free point clouds available online. We recommend the following for initial testing:
Please note that you need to download these point clouds in .gltf or .glb format before rendering.
This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License. See the LICENSE file for details.