Point cloud data holds great potential for many applications in surveying and modelling. However, processing these point clouds, especially when dealing with many hundreds or thousands of setups, can be a daunting task for traditional desktop workflows, tying up labour and computing resources. Here is where the cloud comes in, offering a powerful solution to streamline point cloud registration processing.
This post explores how Vercator leverages cloud computing to deliver high-speed, high accuracy registration results to increase your productivity. We’ll show the challenges of conventional tools and show some of the savings Vercator users gain from our cloud registration process.
Desktop vs Cloud
Let’s review the existing desktop approach provided by vendors such as Leica, Faro and Trimble to the Vercator cloud-first approach:
Figure: A comparison of desktop registration software and Vercator.
Speed: the cloud difference
Parallelisation is the simultaneous execution of tasks. Using standard desktop hardware, parallelisation is undertaken with multi-core processors and hyper-threading. In 2024, cutting edge commercial processors can have 20 cores. But the cloud, accessed through Vercator, offers near infinite computing power, accessible on demand, with power that would be cost prohibitive in a local desktop environment.
For this reason, Vercator allows large quantities of point clouds to be registered simultaneously. The efficiency improvements delivered by parallelisation scale with the density and size of files, and the results can be dramatic. Based on our users, Vercator’s cloud-based processing provides up to an 80% reduction in project delivery time compared to desktop alternatives for the largest and most data-heavy projects.
Table: A comparison of desktop registration software workflow times and Vercator workflow time savings.
The big difference in the Vercator workflow times in the table above is in labour time, which is a small proportion of overall time. In most cases the user time can be measured in minutes with the bulk of the workflow time taken by the automated processing, leaving the user time free for other tasks.
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Workflows and cloud-based processing
Most of the popular desktop software currently available for point cloud processing is still rooted in the hardware of the major vendors e.g. Leica Cyclone Register 360 or Faro Scene. Inevitably, this causes problems when trying to include other types of scans into a new workflow — the tendency of manufacturers when faced with interoperability will almost always go back to "just use ours."
However, cloud-based software-driven automation is here now with Vercator, and it is profoundly changing point cloud data handling and speeding it up, increasing productivity and reducing time to delivery. A future-proofed strategy and future-focused approach will require a software-focused solution that is more flexible and able to take advantage of opportunities as they emerge.
The great thing about a cloud-enabled software-driven approach is that many new developments will be included in existing software solutions as new versions are rolled out. They are giving you a risk-free method to being at the forefront of new developments.
Software advances change the game both in what 3D point clouds can accomplish and how they are created. Vercator has pioneered the latest innovations in point-cloud technology, and we’re here to help you understand and access these opportunities yourself.
