Geo Week News

March 14, 2017

NCTech Made a $13k Lidar Scanner

nctech

The competition for the low-cost 3D scanning market continues to grow. Last week, NCTech released details of a $13,000 3D capture device.

The LASiris VR is designed to capture and colorize point clouds with high-def imagery, enabling users to produce immersive walkthroughs and virtual tours of real-world places. To that end, NCTech is calling the device a VR camera (not a “3D scanner”) and marketing it to professionals in architecture, survey, construction, forensics, video games development, and visual effects creation.

Specs

The LASiris VR includes a camera that captures 120 megapixel HDR imagery with a 360° by 300° FOV. The device also includes a lidar sensor, which gathers 300,000 points per second at a range of 100 meters. The sensor’s 30 mm accuracy should be ideal for capturing VR experiences.

For storage, it uses SD cards. Since these cards can be swapped out, they enable a high level of control over storage amounts, and easy sharing between computers without the purchase of extra hardware.

An example colorized point cloud

An example colorized point cloud

Control, Processing and Sharing

Users control the VR camera with NCTech’s new mobile apps, which run natively on iOS and Android devices.

The LASiris VR processes all captured data using NCTech’s ColourCloud software, which the company has installed this software on the device itself. This enables the device to automatically register the 3D scans, map them to the HDR imagery captured by the camera, and deliver a colorized point clouds to your mobile device for review.

ColourCloud has also been designed to run on Google’s cloud platform as part of NCTech’s OnestopVR cloud solution. In addition to processing, Onestop VR also supplies services for easy backup and sharing of VR data.

NCTech has not announced a release date, but has indicated that the product will begin shipping soon.

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