Tokyo released point cloud data of the entire city for free

[_____k]

Link: https://info.tokyo-digitaltwin.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/3dmodel/

[Retr0id]

What do I need to click to get the pointcloud version? I'm just getting regular untextured polygons.

[nullhole]

Free reminder that the USGS is involved in an epic, nearly decade-long collection of mid- and high- density lidar of the entire continental USA, and the QC'd data (point cloud & derived) is published gratis for everyone to use:

https://www.usgs.gov/3d-elevation-program

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/3d-elevation-program-fy25-...

https://www.usgs.gov/3d-elevation-program/3dep-spatial-metad...

[lxdlam]

I must say this is tremendous. There are many different AIGC explorations in 3D topics, with such high quality dataset, it will greatly assist current workflow and accelerate the 3D creative evolution.

[RandomBK]

A couple of cities have been doing this as well. Vancouver Canada has lidar point clouds covering the entire city, going back to 2013.

[0] https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/lidar-2022/inf...

[1] https://x.com/edwardjxli/status/1871676981143875725

[reustle]

https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/switzerland-in-3d

> Switzerland is one of the first countries to possess a detailed 3D buildings model covering the whole country. This digital model of Switzerland consists of approx. 70 million 3D objects. Besides every single building in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein, bridges, cable cars, forests, individual trees and geographical names are also represented in 3D. Two movement modes enable interactive navigation through space. Discover digital Switzerland from the air in flight mode or take a virtual stroll around a 3D model of your own village or neighbourhood.

[ks2048]

I wonder if this dataset has been added to OpenStreetMap (or what the legal restrictions could be). If I look at Zurich on https://osmbuildings.org/ it seems like it has all the buildings in 3d.

[rnewme]

This might be a stupid question, but isn't Switzerland known for its countless hidden bunkers and defense positions? Doesn't mapping and publicly exposing basically the whole country only bring negatives and nothing positive?

[cdaringe]

Crashed on my old iPhone 6SE, but could tell it was getting cool!

[cpa]

In france, the national geodata institute (IGN) has captured lidar data of the whole country (20 points per km2 if memory serves, in the OP it’s 30p per km2).

https://diffusion-lidarhd.ign.fr/visionneuse/?copc=https:%2F...

[yarri]

Background on the Tokyo government’s digital twin program, including sourcing and maintenance efforts

https://github.com/tokyo-digitaltwin/roadmap_v1.0/blob/main/...

[ranger_danger]

Login-walled. Anyone have an archive that doesn't require endless cloudflare captchas (looking at you, archive.ph)?

[confooseddd]

xcancel.com with proxy enabled in its setting for media seems to work

[bamboozled]

So fun to explore, it has to be the greatest city on earth, just a marvel in so many ways.

[Dig1t]

I would love to use point cloud data like this to make a map for a video game. What is the state of the art for turning point cloud data into 3D models?

Anyone know what the best of the best is?

[fsloth]

What would the game be like? There are many ways to get as-built buildings at scale from existing datasets. For example there are cesium tiles. OSM data contains footprint polygons with height which means extrusion is trivial.

To explore know production algorithms for pointcloud-to-mesh check out the ones provided in cloudcompare and meshlab and see if any fit your purpose. Afaik there is no one objectively best recipe so you need to know what you want and be aware of the tradeoffs and constraints.

Note that for real time large scale cityscapes for complex buildings you likely need lods, impostors etc - which you don’t get for free. If you use just polygon extrusions you can likely bucket like a square kilometer of buildings to a drawcall (or more).

[Stevvo]

Simplygon is used in MS Flight Simulator bcs it can generate seamless LODs. LOD 0 can simply be a Delaunay triangulation.

[lilalomoslama]

some parts of germany are also available. some buildings are simple, some have a really good 3d model. for example here is the data for bavaria https://geodaten.bayern.de/opengeodata/OpenDataDetail.html?p...

[Havoc]

How do they collect point cloud data at scale?

[araes]

Here's a link to the people out of Huntsville, AL who do a lot of survey acquisition work in America, and did the collection effort noted in the Reddit post below. [1]

The About Us video shows some of the planes, equipment, collection flights, survey patterns, and data applications for the collection efforts. Other pages have notes on the planes and work done.

[1] Revolution Flight, Survey Subunit, https://www.surveyaircraft.com/about-us

[lbotos]

speculating: Lidar from a plane?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Albany/comments/1hdxkz0/comment/m1z...

Imagine a route like this, except many lanes. I was trying to find a pic I saw the other day of one over NYC

[JCharante]

Great for cgi and video games

[fngjdflmdflg]

Now we just need the comment telling us why only Japan was able to accomplish this task, or how their implementation is 100x better than any others.

[aprilthird2021]

Tokyo is one of the biggest, most visited, and most well known cities in the world. I don't think this is warranted

[whamlastxmas]

Japan is a super cool and unique place in terms of aesthetic and culture. I don’t see any problem in people celebrating that

[yieldcrv]

Feels like where Google Earth was 22 years ago