An Introduction to Point Cloud Compression Standards

The prevalent point cloud compression (PCC) standards of today are utilized to encode various types of point cloud data, allowing for reasonable bandwidth and storage usage. With increasing demand for high-fidelity three-dimensional (3D) models for a large variety of applications, including immersive visual communication, Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), navigation, autonomous driving, and smart city, point clouds are seeing increasing usage and development to meet the increasing demands. However, with the advancements in 3D modelling and sensing, the amount of data required to accurately depict such representations and models is likewise ballooning to increasingly large proportions, leading to the development and standardization of the point cloud compression standards. In this article, we provide an overview of some topical and popular MPEG point cloud compression (PCC) standards. We discuss the development and applications of the Geometry-based PCC (G-PCC) and Video-based PCC (V-PCC) standards as they escalate in importance in an era of virtual reality and machine learning. Finally, we conclude our article describing the future research directions and applications of the PCC standards of today.