This is a part of series of blog posts to update QGIS community with the outcome of the funding we had raised during late 2021 to improve elevation and point clouds in collaboration with North Road and Hobu. For other updates see part 1 and part 3.

Point cloud filtering

With this feature, you can filter the point cloud data based on the classes or any other attributes. This is very similar to filtering available for vector layers.

Filtering data allows you superimpose for example building on top of the raster representation of your point cloud data:

Examples of filtering you can use:

• Classification = 2 - only show ground points

• ReturnNumber = 1 - only show the first return or ReturnNumber = NumberOfReturns for the last return

• Z >= 10 AND Z <= 50 - only show a slice from the range of elevations

The filtering window also displays statistics of some of the parameters.

2D/3D Camera sync

When you navigate in the 2D map, you often want to see the 3D map view also updated and vice versa. This feature also allows you to view the extent and camera angle of your 3D map view on 2D map.

New point clouds styling method

There is a new 3D styling mode for point cloud which follows the 2D styling. This means you do not need to apply the same styling, e.g. Classification twice: once for the 2D map view and another for the 3D map view. Once you set the 3D style to follow 2D map, any changes in 2D map style will be automatically displayed in 3D map.

Camera and navigation improvements

This feature was funded by QGIS.org to improve 3D map navigation. Users can now better move, rotate both the map and camera. The 3D map navigation is now more inline with other applications like Google Earth.