Impressive Results with 3D Laser Mapping So Far
- anthony milou
- Jul 16, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 4, 2024
I have been waiting for a few years now for something to hit the market that combined the incredible speed of capture that you obtain with 3D laser mapping along with the accuracy and clean results you have with terrestrial 3D laser scanning. I honestly thought it would take a few more years to reach this point but advancements in 3D capture are happening quickly and it seems we finally have some real progress here.
A few years ago I was given a demonstration for a hand held 3D laser scanner to capture in 3D the industrial building at one of our project sites. The 3D scan of most of the factory interior covering hundreds of square metres took just 30 minutes to complete which is unbelievably fast, yet when I saw the end results I just didn't feel there was enough detail and accuracy to proceed with this.
Late last year I came across an online forum post with a lot of positive feedback regarding something from a company from Germany I had not heard of before, NavVis, with a laser mapping system called the VLX V2. This piece of equipment looked like something from a science fiction movie but the forum comments it was receiving regarding its accuracy, and the still images and video I could see of the end results made me take notice. The results did not at all look like what I was use to seeing from 3D mapping, the 3D models it produced were very sharp and clean.
“Advancements in 3D capture are happenning quickly and it seems we finally have some real progress here”
If interested you can see the forum post here to give you an idea of the level of positive feedback the VLX was receiving at the time.
It has been a few months since I went ahead with the purchase of the NavVis VLX and I can say that so far my expectations have been met and in many ways exceeded. The time it takes to complete a 3D capture of a site is basically the time it takes to walk through the site with the VLX. For example the below site of a shopping centre completed for a client in Brisbane took under an hour (compared to 2 days of conventional scanning to complete the same project site previously).
Recent experience with much smaller projects has also really been insightful as to just how much time can be saved on site. A single storey existing dwelling that needed to be documented in order to provide floor plans and elevations was completed in just 7 minutes (i.e. the time it took to walk through the exterior and interior areas of the property). I found that it took longer to unpack and pack the VLX than it took to actually complete the work! In the past such a site would have taken at least 2-3 hours to complete a single storey building and surrounding exterior areas.
“I found that it took longer to unpack and pack the VLX than it took to actually complete the work”
The greatly reduced time frame actually provided the opportunity to interact much more with the owners on site and discuss the project, something that would have been much more limited in the past due to the work taking over most of the time that was available.
What is just as impressive is that the 3D models generated from the VLX are always available online given that the processing to achieve the end result is natively in the cloud so its easy to make the 3D capture available to other work colleagues for collaboration or to the client in order to discuss the project; something that has been difficult to achieve in the past given the large size of the project files.
Where to next for 3D laser mapping? Even when I believe that I have the most advanced equipment available I am always mindful of what may be just around the corner in terms of what could advance the craft of 3D capture still further. The next significant milestone I am looking forward to with 3D laser mapping is having the end result indistinguishable in terms of the detail captured in comparison to traditional terrestrial 3D laser scanning which still has the edg ein terms of resolution. Currently with the VLX the accuracy is impressively comparable but the level of resolution captured is not quite at the same level of very high detail captured as with terrestrial 3D laser scanning (i.e. 6mm of resolution with the VLX compared to 1.9mm with the Leica RTC360). I think once that point is reached of not only achieving accurate and sharp results but also very high resolution, which is likely to be within the next 5 years, it will allow for 3D laser mapping to dominate for most if not all applications where a survey accurate 3D capture solution is required; can't wait!
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