Point Cloud Viewer

A simple point cloud viewer built with Fyne. This repository primarily offers a Fyne widget for viewing point clouds, but it also contains a standalone viewer. The standalone viewer

Reads PLY, PCD, PTS, and XYZ files and renders them as interactive 3D point clouds with mouse-controlled rotation and zoom.

Examples

Viewing 970k point goat scull from from Artec 3D.

Simulated seabed from _examples/seabed.

Features

• Supports PLY, PCD, PTS, and XYZ point cloud formats
• Interactive arcball rotation, panning (Shift+drag), and scroll-wheel zoom
• Orientation cube with click-to-snap face selection
• Home view and zoom-to-fit buttons
• Point picking with coordinate and RGB display
• Scale bar with configurable units
• FPS counter overlay
• Level-of-detail (LOD) decimation during interaction
• Y-up and Z-up coordinate system support
• Keyboard shortcuts: h (home), f (fit), +/- (zoom), arrow keys (rotate)

Installation

Library

To use the viewer widget in your own Fyne application:

go get github.com/borud/pointcloud

Demo application

Pre-built binaries for Linux (amd64, arm64), macOS (arm64), and Windows (amd64) are available on the releases page.

Or build from source:

go install github.com/borud/pointcloud/cmd/pointcloud@latest

Using the widget

The Viewer is a standard Fyne widget that you can embed in any Fyne application. It uses a functional options pattern for configuration.

Minimal example

package main

import (
    "log"

    "fyne.io/fyne/v2/app"
    "github.com/borud/pointcloud"
)

func main() {
    myApp := app.New()
    w := myApp.NewWindow("Point Cloud")

    v := pointcloud.New()

    pc, err := pointcloud.ReadFile("model.ply")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    pc.Normalize()
    v.SetScale(pc.NormScale)
    v.SetPoints(pc.Points)

    w.SetContent(v)
    w.ShowAndRun()
}

Configuring the viewer with options

Use functional options to customize appearance when creating the viewer.

v := pointcloud.New(
    pointcloud.WithBackgroundColor(color.RGBA{30, 30, 30, 255}),
    pointcloud.WithDefaultPointColor(color.RGBA{255, 150, 255, 255}),
    pointcloud.WithOrientationCube(true),
    pointcloud.WithHomeButton(true),
    pointcloud.WithZoomFitButton(true),
    pointcloud.WithInfoLabel(true),
    pointcloud.WithScaleBar(true),
    pointcloud.WithScaleUnit("m"),
    pointcloud.WithFPS(true),
    pointcloud.WithMaxZoomOutFraction(0.3),
)
v.SetUpAxis(pointcloud.ZUp)

Loading from an io.Reader

Each format has a dedicated reader function that accepts an io.Reader, and there is a ReadFile convenience function that auto-detects the format from the file extension.

// Auto-detect format from file extension.
pc, err := pointcloud.ReadFile("scan.pcd")

// Or read a specific format from any io.Reader.
f, _ := os.Open("scan.ply")
defer f.Close()
pc, err := pointcloud.ReadPLY(f)

Available readers: ReadPLY, ReadPCD, ReadPTS, ReadXYZ.

Working with point data directly

You can construct a PointCloud programmatically instead of reading from a file.

pc := &pointcloud.PointCloud{
    Points: []pointcloud.Point3D{
        {X: 0, Y: 0, Z: 0, R: 255, G: 0, B: 0, HasColor: true},
        {X: 1, Y: 0, Z: 0, R: 0, G: 255, B: 0, HasColor: true},
        {X: 0, Y: 1, Z: 0, R: 0, G: 0, B: 255, HasColor: true},
        {X: 0, Y: 0, Z: 1, R: 255, G: 255, B: 0, HasColor: true},
    },
}
pc.ComputeBounds()
pc.Normalize()

v := pointcloud.New()
v.SetScale(pc.NormScale)
v.SetPoints(pc.Points)

Updating points without resetting the view

Use SetPointsPreserveView to replace the displayed points while keeping the current orientation, zoom, and pan. This is useful for streaming or live-updating point clouds.

// Initial load.
v.SetPoints(pc.Points)

// Later, update with new data without resetting the camera.
v.SetPointsPreserveView(newPoints)

Controlling orientation programmatically

// Set a custom home orientation using a quaternion.
q := pointcloud.QuatFromAxisAngle(0, 1, 0, math.Pi/2)  // 90 degrees around Y
v.SetOrientation(q)

// Snap back to default home view.
v.HomeView()

// Auto-fit the point cloud to the viewport.
v.ZoomToExtents()

Writing point clouds

f, _ := os.Create("output.ply")
defer f.Close()
pointcloud.WritePLY(f, pc)

Controls

The viewer has two camera modes: orbit (default) and flythrough (first-person). Toggle between them with the g key or the eye button in the toolbar.

Orbit mode

Input	Action
Drag	Arcball rotation
Shift+Drag	Pan
Scroll wheel	Zoom in/out
Click	Pick nearest point (shows coordinates in info label)
h	Reset to home view
f	Zoom to fit all points
+ / -	Zoom in / out
Arrow keys	Rotate in 5-degree steps
g	Enter flythrough mode

Flythrough mode

In flythrough mode the camera moves freely through the point cloud using FPS-style controls.

Input	Action
W / S or Up / Down	Move forward / backward
A / D or Left / Right	Strafe left / right
Space	Move up (world space)
Q	Move down (world space)
Drag	Mouse look
Scroll wheel	Adjust movement speed
g	Return to orbit mode
Escape	Return to orbit mode
h	Return to orbit mode and reset home view

Orientation cube

Click a face, edge midpoint, or corner of the orientation cube to snap the view to that direction.

Benchmarking

Install benchstat for comparing results:

go install golang.org/x/perf/cmd/benchstat@latest

Run benchmarks on your current (known-good) code and save as baseline:

make bench
mv bench/new.txt bench/old.txt

After making changes, run benchmarks again and compare:

make bench
make benchstat

benchstat will show per-benchmark deltas with p-values, making it easy to spot regressions:

               │  old.txt   │              new.txt               │
               │   sec/op   │   sec/op     vs base               │
Draw_1M-10       45.2ms ± 1%   44.8ms ± 2%  ~ (p=0.394 n=6)
Projection_1M    12.3ms ± 0%   15.1ms ± 1%  +22.76% (p=0.002 n=6)

Sample data

The data/ directory contains sample PLY files from Artec 3D. These files are provided by Artec Group 3D Scanning Solutions and remain the property of their respective owners.