Point Cloud Engine

A brief (and rather rough) demonstration of the point cloud engine AM Artist developed with KyberTeatro. Sorry for the video compression, which makes strange artefacts.

The system was used in the participatory multimedia performance “#Gaza Edition. Voices of the living city” by and with KyberTeatro (Italy) and Medeber Teatro (Belgium). This demo shows the main functions of the system used live during the show to accompany the dramaturgy.

Features: extraction of 3D data from Google Earth for any area of the world (provided elevation data exists), converted to OBJ and then to a point cloud; scalable number of points to render; progressive loading of visible areas for very large point clouds, as in a video game; interchangeable textures between the real one and any other; real-time point size adjustment; flight system and viewpoint change with a PS4 controller; “crumbling” and “reconstruction” effects on command over specific areas; transformation of the point cloud into a sea. All in real time.

Performance: 5,200,000 points, stable 30 fps on a laptop with an 11th-generation i7 processor and a 3080 GPU, simultaneously handling three other light patches for the show.

The show was produced by KyberTeatro and Soc. Coop. Aquilone di Viviana, and presented with Medeber Teatro for the eleventh edition of the LMDP International Festival of Theatre, Art and New Technologies, organised by KyberTeatro in Cagliari.