Point clouds

swissSURFACE3D models all natural and man-made objects of the surface of Switzerland in the form of a classified point cloud. These high-accuracy and high spatial density data are collected by airborne LiDAR. Zipped .laz files in the Swiss LV95 coordinate system for square areas in 2020 can be downloaded for most of Switzerland (all Switzerland in 2023).

Potree, the open-source WebGL based point cloud renderer for large point clouds is used for viewing. The Potree user interface displays a point cloud (see this area of the village of Saint-Cergue) for an area together with an OpenStreetMap of the area that is displayed by clicking on the control at the top-left.

The centre of a user's browser window is marked with a blue square. To match the locations on the map and the point cloud it is necessary to tilt, rotate and drag the point cloud (for Windows: left click to tilt and rotate; right click to drag) so that the arrow on the map points to the north and the tilt is close to zero (the arrow disappears when the tilt is zero).

Point clouds are accessed on the main Jura Mountains map via red squares on a layer (the layer control is at the top-right of the screen).

For the technically minded, implementation notes for installing Potree and preparing the point clouds will be prepared shortly.

20 August 2022