Using USGS las files to create ion terrain

CesiumJS
1

I’m trying to achieve better tree visualization for low-altitude (helicopter) simulation visualization. I’ve had some luck with the following and was wondering if anyone has a suggestion on improving the process:

  1. Download las files from the USGS NationalMap

  2. Use las2las to keep only first returns:

las2las -v -i $1 -o filtered.las --first-return-only

  1. Use las2ogr to create a shape files:

las2ogr -i filtered.las -o filtered.shp -f “ESRI Shapefile”

  1. Use goal_rasterize to create a GeoTiff:

gdal_rasterize -3d -tr 1 1 filtered.dbf filtered.tif

  1. Use gdalwarp to add the spatial reference set to the tif:

gdalwarp -s_srs ‘+proj=utm +zone=18 +datum=NAD83’ -t_srs ‘+proj=utm +zone=18 +datum=WGS84’ filtered.tif filteredFinal

  1. Upload the final GeoTIff to ion.

The results look OK although I’m probably going to have to do some more tuning to improve the appearance.

Ideally I would just upload the original las file into ion and it would have a pipeline to do all of the above.

Any ideas out there?

Thanks, Matt.

2

Hey Matt,

I’m curious about this as well! You might get more feedback if you post this in the ion community repo (https://github.com/AnalyticalGraphicsInc/cesium-ion-community/issues). If it’s a common enough workflow I can imagine ion supporting this.