Heidelberg LiDAR Operations Simulator ++
HELIOS++ is a general-purpose software package for simulation of terrestrial, mobile and airborne laser scanning surveys written in C++11. It is developed and maintained by the 3DGeo Research Group at Heidelberg University.
Precompiled versions for Windows and Linux are available under releases.
A docker was made available (no python support yet)
git clone https://github.com/tumcms/helios
cd helios /docker
To start the docker run:
UUID="$(id -u)" GID="$(id -g)" docker-compose run helios
To start the docker as daemon:
UUID="$(id -u)" GID="$(id -g)" docker-compose up -d
docker-compose exec -u phaethon helios bash
Do not forget to shutdown the docker after use with docker-compose down
As a starting point, please consult the wiki. We suggest you take the "first steps" tour to get to know the core concepts of the software.
Official website: https://uni-heidelberg.de/helios
For scientific and collaboration inquiries please contact the HELIOS++ team at helios@uni-heidelberg.de
We have also published a preprint on HELIOS++. If you use HELIOS++ in a scientific context, please cite
Winiwarter, L., Esmorís Pena, A., Weiser, H., Anders, K., Martínez Sanchez, J., Searle, M., Höfle, B. (2021): Virtual laser scanning with HELIOS++: A novel take on ray tracing-based simulation of topographic 3D laser scanning. arXiv:2101.09154 [cs.CV]
BibTeX:
@misc{winiwarter2021virtual,
title={Virtual laser scanning with HELIOS++: A novel take on ray tracing-based simulation of topographic 3D laser scanning},
author={Lukas Winiwarter and Alberto Manuel Esmorís Pena and Hannah Weiser and Katharina Anders and Jorge Martínez Sanchez and Mark Searle and Bernhard Höfle},
year={2021},
eprint={2101.09154},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={cs.CV}
}
HELIOS++ can be invoked with following syntax:
helios --help
Show the help for helios++ usage
helios --test
Perform necessary tests to check everything works as expected
helios <survey_file_path> [OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS]
Perform requested simulation.
NOTICE specifying the path to the survey specification file is mandatory
Available general OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS are:
--assets <directory_path>
Specify the path to assets directory
--output <directory_path>
Specify the path to output directory
--writeWaveform
Specify the full waveform must be written
--calcEchowidth
Specify the full waveform must be fitted
--fullwaveNoise
Enable random noise at full waveform computation
--fixedIncidenceAngle
Sets incidence angle to exactly 1.0 for all intersections
--seed <seed>
Specify the seed to be used for randomness generation.
The seed can be an integer number, a decimal number or a timestamp
string with format "YYYY-mm-DD HH:MM:SS"
--lasOutput
Specify the output point cloud must be generated using LAS format
--zipOutput
Specify the output point cloud and fullwave must be zipped
--lasScale
Specify the scale factor used to generate LAS output
-j OR --njobs OR --nthreads <integer>
Specify the number of simultaneous threads to be used to compute
the simulation
If it is not specified or it is specified as 0, then all available
threads will be used to compute the simulation
--rebuildScene
Force scene rebuild even when a previosly built scene is available
--kdt <integer>
Specify the type of KDTree to be bulid for the scene.
The default 1 is for the simple KDTree based on median balancing,
2 for the SAH based KDTree and 3 for the SAH with best axis one
--kdtJobs <integer>
Specify the number of threads to be used for building the KDTree.
Using 1 forces sequential building, 0 as many threads as available
cores and n>1 implies using exactly n threads.
Using more cores than required might degrade performance due to
overhead.
--sahNodes <integer>
Either how many nodes must be used by the Surface Area Heuristic
or the number of bins for the fast approximation of SAH
--disablePlatformNoise
Disable platform noise, no matter what is specified on XML files
--disableLegNoise
Disable leg noise, no matter what is specified on XML files
Available logging verbosity OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS are:
--silent
Nothing will be reported
-q OR --quiet
Only errors will be reported
-v
Errors, information and warnings will be reported
-vv OR -v2
Everything will be reported
IF NONE IS SPECIFIED
Errors and information will be reported by default
Available logging output mode OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS are:
--logFile
Reports will be emitted through standard output and output file
--logFileOnly
Reports will be emitted through output file only
IF NONE IS SPECIFIED
Reports will be emitted through standard output only
Unzip compressed output:
--unzip <input_path> <output_path>
When helios++ is executed with --zipOutput flag, output files are
compressed. They can be decompressed using --unzip.
The path to a readable helios++ compressed output file must be
given through input path.
The path to a writable file/location must be given through
output path.
The demo simulation can be executed as follows:
LINUX
./helios data/surveys/demo/tls_arbaro_demo.xml
WINDOWS
helios.exe data/surveys/demo/tls_arbaro_demo.xml
Build instructions for advanced users and developers are available here.
For running pyhelios, we suggest setting up a seperate conda environment. Run
conda env create -f conda-environment.yml
in the base environment of your conda installation, while you are in the HELIOS++ root directory. Then run
conda activate pyhelios_env
to activate the environment and
python pyhelios_demo\helios.py data\surveys\toyblocks\als_toyblocks.xml
to run a demo survey including visualisation.
See LICENSE.md