Visualizing high resolution three-dimensional and two-dimensional data of cultural heritage sites

The combination of 3D acquisition (terrestrial and airborne LiDAR, structured light, structure-from-motion) and 2D imaging (photographic, multispectral, panoramic, orthorectified, reflectance transformation) techniques allows the geometry, appearance and other aspects of culturally significant sites to be objectively documented. Traditionally, these data are usually transformed into models such as 3D textured meshes before they are visualized or analyzed—an often time- and effort-intensive process. We propose a system for the direct visualization and analysis of such data, allowing the different aspects recorded to be layered together, and co-visualized with annotations and other relevant information. We describe the required technical foundations, including gigapoint and gigapixel visualization pipelines that enable the dynamic layering of high-resolution imagery over massive minimally-processed LiDAR point clouds that serve as the base spatial layer. In particular, we introduce the pointbuffer—a GPU-resident viewdependent point cache—as the foundation of our gigapoint pipeline, and outline the use of virtual texturing for draping of gigapixel imagery onto point clouds. Finally, we present case studies from sites in Jordan and Italy.