4 ms·

Anyone know where I could license/purchase hi-res LIDAR scans for use in game development?

by mentos 9y ago

masklinn 9y ago
The national mapping agency of the country you're interested in I would expect. For the UK, it's the Ordnance Survey (https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk)
swebs 9y ago
The UK scans are public domain. https://environment.data.gov.uk/ds/survey/index.jsp https://environment.data.gov.uk/ds/survey/index.jsp
- edent 9y ago
  Just to clarify - they're not Public Domain. They are released under the Open Government Licence - which is compatible with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 and Open Data Commons Attribution License. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licen...
RosanaAnaDana 9y ago
Depends what you're talking about. Scans of objects? Terrains? Buildings? Different LiDAR data sets for very different tasks. Here is free LiDAR for the state of Oregon: https://gis.dogami.oregon.gov/lidarviewer/ https://gis.dogami.oregon.gov/lidarviewer/
Dangeranger 9y ago
Google Maps is making their data available for gaming now as well[0]. [0] https://developers.google.com/maps/gaming/ https://developers.google.com/maps/gaming/
- hughes 9y ago
  While exciting, the barrier seems pretty high to even get access to some of this data. You have to contact their sales department, which probably means it has Enterprise-level pricing.
oasisbob 9y ago
The data from the Puget Sound LIDAR Consortium [1] is freely available, you just need to ask for an account. (Not 100% sure on licensing terms, though.) Seattle / King County just finished a rescan in 2016/2017 and the data is stunningly good. [2] Really good consistency and density. The DLM/classification/cleanup seems excellent. [1] http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/ http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/ [2] (private, need an account) http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/lidardata/restricted/projects/2016king_county.html http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/lidardata/restrict...
- RosanaAnaDana 9y ago
  Heh. Good to see people like the products.
  - oasisbob 9y ago
    Heh, I get the impression you spend a lot of time in Corvallis? ;) Really though - as a beginner, I started with the 2003 data, and had a really hard time with it. Had to deal with file conversions rerun ground classifications and thin and do all sorts of cleanup to sorta get where I was trying to go.
    - RosanaAnaDana 9y ago
      ;-) yep.
fenwick67 9y ago
opentopography.org has free data throughout the US (point clouds and rasters), but the resolution varies. I personally [1] have imported it into Unity for a terrain heightmap. [1] https://github.com/fenwick67/unityterrainfromtiff https://github.com/fenwick67/unityterrainfromtiff

Anyone know where I could license/purchase hi-res LIDAR scans for use in game development?

by mentos 9y ago

Anyone know where I could license/purchase hi-res LIDAR scans for use in game development?

The national mapping agency of the country you're interested in I would expect. For the UK, it's the Ordnance Survey (https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk)

swebs 9y ago

The UK scans are public domain. https://environment.data.gov.uk/ds/survey/index.jsp https://environment.data.gov.uk/ds/survey/index.jsp

edent 9y ago
Just to clarify - they're not Public Domain. They are released under the Open Government Licence - which is compatible with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 and Open Data Commons Attribution License. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licen...

RosanaAnaDana 9y ago

Depends what you're talking about. Scans of objects? Terrains? Buildings? Different LiDAR data sets for very different tasks. Here is free LiDAR for the state of Oregon: https://gis.dogami.oregon.gov/lidarviewer/ https://gis.dogami.oregon.gov/lidarviewer/

Dangeranger 9y ago

Google Maps is making their data available for gaming now as well[0]. [0] https://developers.google.com/maps/gaming/ https://developers.google.com/maps/gaming/

hughes 9y ago
While exciting, the barrier seems pretty high to even get access to some of this data. You have to contact their sales department, which probably means it has Enterprise-level pricing.

oasisbob 9y ago

The data from the Puget Sound LIDAR Consortium [1] is freely available, you just need to ask for an account. (Not 100% sure on licensing terms, though.) Seattle / King County just finished a rescan in 2016/2017 and the data is stunningly good. [2] Really good consistency and density. The DLM/classification/cleanup seems excellent. [1] http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/ http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/ [2] (private, need an account) http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/lidardata/restricted/projects/2016king_county.html http://pugetsoundlidar.ess.washington.edu/lidardata/restrict...

RosanaAnaDana 9y ago
Heh. Good to see people like the products.
- oasisbob 9y ago
  Heh, I get the impression you spend a lot of time in Corvallis? ;) Really though - as a beginner, I started with the 2003 data, and had a really hard time with it. Had to deal with file conversions rerun ground classifications and thin and do all sorts of cleanup to sorta get where I was trying to go.
  - RosanaAnaDana 9y ago
    ;-) yep.

fenwick67 9y ago

opentopography.org has free data throughout the US (point clouds and rasters), but the resolution varies. I personally [1] have imported it into Unity for a terrain heightmap. [1] https://github.com/fenwick67/unityterrainfromtiff https://github.com/fenwick67/unityterrainfromtiff